Readers react to 'Sephardim and the post-Zionist question'

In the letters pages of the Autumn issue of the Middle East Quarterly comes reaction to Meirav Wurmser's piece, Sephardim and the post-Zionist question.

In this important article, Wurmser acknowledges that Israel's Mizrahim, who form half the country's Jewish population, have suffered real prejudice and discrimination at the hands of Israel's Ashkenazi elite. A tiny handful of anti- or post-Zionist academics have blamed Zionism for the Mizrahi plight, underrating or belittling Mizrahim achievement in Israel, idealising life for Jews in the Arab world and ignoring the part Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism have played in precipitating the mass exodus of 'Arab' Jews. But these views have very little support among Mizrahim themselves, who overwhelmingly vote to the right and do not identify with Israel's enemies. Morover, post-Zionism, which entails the abolition of the Jewish state, Wurmser argues, is the wrong medicine for the disease.

Read letters in full