Has anyone seen this documentary? I've been trying to find a video of it but cannot find it anywhere.

Apparently this documentary reveals one ugly secret of Israel's past: deliberate radiation poisoning of 100,000 Sephardic Jews in the early 50's, complete with equipment provided by the U.S. They were apparently singled out due to their darker skin complexion than the Ashkenazic Jews.

From what I heard about the documentary, I am absolutely disgusted that this happened, and the lack of outrage shown towards the Israeli government for hiding this. Here they are expecting repatriations for the Holocaust, yet deny this to the Sephardic victims of mass radiation poisioning who are apparently affected to this day(kind of like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki residents).

But this can't be surprising. The evolution of human rights has taken a long time in the US. Look at the criticism of the supposed hypocrisy of the French government pro=Arab stand, and the discrimination by French society of Muslim, dark skinned minorities. Israel is no different, and has not been since it rejected the Christ.

EdoRiver, What does Christ have to do with this?The US is maybe the most Christian nation on Earth, and yet until Martin Luther King Jr.(1960's) official discrimination against colored people was the norm.

Also, Danial, I can't find any copy of the movie for Hire, but I found the director's E-mail here.

PS.As I understand it the movie is in hebrew without subtitles.

Blacks/coloured/etc are still discriminated.

Wow, this is news to me. We should try to get an interview with the director. Are there any books or documents that discuss this further? I need to do my research.

Danial, you can find a copy here.



And you rock for bringing attention to this. I think I'll order a copy too.

Antongarou, did you guys hear anything about this in Israel?

Yes, the movie was screened on a major TV channel about 2003- at the time I wasn't much for documentaries and such, so I didn't see it, but that is the reason I told Danial he may have problem understanding it- it was produced by an Israeli, about Israelis, for Israelis.It was part of the general discourse of the discrimination against the Sephardic Jews going on since the 80's(including Ehud Baraks apology during his campaign)- right now it is pretty much accepted that they were treated badly during the years they came here and is a matter of common knowledge.

There is a whole different stink about "abducted Yemeni children"- Sephardic, specifically Yemeni, children that the doctors told the mothers were stillborn or died in the first few days of their life but instead were given to Ashkenazi families for adoption, which may or may not be true, the mothers believe it to be true of course, but there are so few evidence(to either direction) that such thing happened that it may be just a matter of them being in denial for years, or a few isolated incidents that got blown out of proportion.

Wow that's really interesting. It's actually surprising that we didn't hear much about this in the Arab world.

Yeah no kidding. The Arab world would've had a field day with these findings.

I suspect it is because the Arab rulers&media don't want Arabs to think that there are "Good Israelis" and "Bad Israelis"-they may start thinking for themselves and ask themselves if the line between the "good" and the "bad" isn't that hard and fast, they may even (God Forbid!) decide that Israelis are people and not hateful caricatures/demons/whatever.Much simpler to portray all Israelis as evil and leave it at that.

Another possible reason is that the Arab media may not be listening to the inner Israeli discourses, only bothering to check on the one between Israel an the world.

This one is much more likely.

Three points.

1.

I don't know everything that happened in Israel in the last few decades, especially in the 1950s, but this whole thing doesn't make sense.

Sephardic Jews were discriminated against, yes, but not because of their "race", but because they were less sophisticated than European/American Jews. Making them "whiter" wouldn't have changed what European Jews perceived as "wrong" about them.

"abducted Yemeni children"

Abducting and adopting children doesn't usually help against their "race". It does, however, make it possible to teach the "right" culture to them.

I think that the two legends contradict each other. There was either a belief that Sephardic Jews were too dark OR a belief that they were biologically all right (and fit for adoption). It cannot be both.


2.

The reason the Arab world doesn't talk about this is because it is about Sephardic Jews. Sephardic (Arab) Jews don't exist according to most propaganda about Israel being some sort of American imperialism. If Sephardic Jews exist, Israelis become what Palestinian Arabs are: discplaced refugees. That would change the dynamics considerably.

For example, Israel would then have the right to invade any Arab country it pleases, since Arab countries traditionally understood that they had a right to invade Israel because of Arab refugees coming from it (even when these refugees fled AFTER an attempted invasion).


3.

I have heard that Sephardic Jews were discriminated against in Israel, especially Yemenitic Jews. But my own experience has been that they arelooked up to because of their better and more correct pronounciation of Hebrew.

My own experience was also that anti-Arab racism in Israel is mostly a sympton among Sephardic (and, oddly enough, Russian) Jews. Ashkenazim seem to be fairly immune*.


(* I did find a newsletter of the Anglo community in Jerusalem that advertised for shops that hire only Jews. As an English speaker and Anglophile myself I was devastated and shocked to see that English-speaking people were part of the problem! But conversations with taxi drivers who didn't speak English and insisted on Hebrew even though they appeared to be able to understand Arabic made me think that perhaps most Anglos are not very racist, or not as much as some other people.)

1)The thing is that Ashkenazi Jews tend to be both more left leaning and come from more prosperous(middle class) families, so there is much more tolerance among us.I suspect it is a matter of both culture and socio economic class-most of us have relatives in European countries and/or the US, and the "Jewish vote" in those countries also goes traditionally left-of-center.

2)Also the matter about the Russians and Anglo speaking community is easily understandable: the newer Russian immigrants are what may be nicknamed "cultural snobs", i.e. they consider the middle eastern culture of Israel to be "Inferior" to their own European culture, viewing Arabs as being "inferior" is a very easy and logical extension of that.The Anglo speaking community, to judge from the friends I have there tends to be more Orthodox and right-of-center politically, both of which contribute to prejudice against non-Jews.

Antongarou,

I cannot say that I shared your experiences.

I don't know what you mean by "left-leaning" but if it has something to do with tolerance, it must be some other left than we have here in Europe (or there in Europe, I am in Ireland). The Jewish vote in Germany wasn't really that left-wing, not for a long time. Jewish politicians are more prominent in the Christian Democratic Union (right/centre) and Liberal Democrats (in Germany right-wing liberals). I don't know about Britain or France.

I think the Russian immigrants in Israel feel week and long for somebody to look down to and treat like they have been treated in Russia. They are wrong, and they are destroying the country that welcomed them!

I am a cultural snob too. I don't see anything wrong with that.

I also don't see how Orthodoxy and right-of-centre politically contribute to prejudice against non-Jews.