Hani Zubida.Credit : Ella Barak

Hani Zubida is used to being automatically treated as a suspect at airports because of his name, but with the security interrogation he underwent on entering Israel on his latest home visit, he felt that the state’s emissaries overdid it.

« They put us through three checks. Aviva, my wife, almost lost it from the anxiety, » he relates. « A girl of 21 thinks I’m an Arab. She went to speak with the people in charge and it took hours. She went, came back, and then left again. Zubida. Arab. Terrorist. She has tons of questions. ’Are you two married ?’ Yes. ’Do you have children ?’ Yes. ’What are the children’s names ?’ »

Zubida has asserted many times that as an Iraqi-born Jew he lives in harmony with his Arab identity. But that doesn’t mean that he wants to be reminded every time anew of the humiliating procedure that 20 percent of Israel’s citizens endure when they have an impulse to go abroad on vacation.

« They always drive us crazy. I understand the security thing. In the past I tried to maintain my composure, but this time I was really not amused. What infuriates me is the ignorance that allows it to happen. But on the other hand, it balances out my perception of the world. I have a doctorate in political science, I’ve been on television, I’m famous – but in the end you have an Arab name, so cool it, you’re not really an Israeli. »

When he’s not waiting to check in, Zubida actually likes to challenge audiences with his dual identity. « I go to speak in the outlying areas, and they see me and get worked up. Straight off it bursts out of them : ’You love the Arabs.’ I say to them [whispering], ’Don’t tell anybody, but [shouting], you’re Arabs too. When you get home, what language do you speak ?’ I take out the phone and play music by Farid al-Atrash, and everyone enjoys it. ’So enough is enough. You’re Arabs. When will you realize that you’re Arabs ?’ »

The automatic routine of the security check – a man with a Middle Eastern appearance who’s suspected of being an Arab – could have been the subject of an article in the newly published essay collection Zubida co-edited with D^r. Reut Reina Bendrihem, « Black Brick : Mizrahi Jews Write a New Israeli Reality » (in Hebrew). It’s an ambitious book, unprecedented in its scale (557 pages), which seeks to propose a new Israeli ethnic discourse that is inclusive and open, in place of the present exclusionary approach that encourages hatred and serves mainly politicians and purveyors of poison. The book’s 80 articles are by scholars, intellectuals, artists and social activists, among them Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, Merav Alush Levron, Ishak Saporta, Yifat Bitton and Carmen Elmakiyes.

The book covers almost every conceivable aspect of Israeli life : from education to television, from the judicial system to public housing, from the Yemenite children affair to the Betar Jerusalem soccer team, from Shas to the kibbutzim, from femininity to masculinity, from food to design. The authors also include Ashkenazim, members of the Ethiopian community and Arabs.

« We wanted to give a platform to writers from fringe groups that have been excluded from writing the collective history of Israel, » the editors write in the foreword. What emerges is a critical panorama that expands the discussion and also opens it to groups that are not Mizrahi – Jews whose origins lie in the Middle East and North Africa. There’s a pronounced feminist voice, expressions of solidarity with Palestinian citizens of Israel and a call for true equality, all amid self-examination, acknowledgment of wrongs that have been perpetrated and a readiness for sincere dialogue about them.

The idea, says Zubida, 58, had its genesis six years ago in a social encounter. "It was in Nes Tziona, in the apartment of [political thinker] Benny Nurieli and [anthropologist] Reut Reina Bendrihem, who at the time were a couple. A gathering over coffee and beer, during which a conversation began about what was missing in Israeli society. I said that what was missing was new content, that we’re using obsolete concepts to view the contemporary world, and that we need to update them.

« I suggested publishing a collection of articles. That it should contain at least 50 percent women and that I also wanted representation from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union and Arabs. The goal of the book is not more bashing. You don’t have to agree with what I say, but let’s talk – and not in dialogue circles, where the strong comes to the weak and says, ’Come, take a seat, do some venting, and then go back to be with your friends.’ »

« Black Brick » opens with a poem by Moroccan-born Mois Bennaroch, « The Problem Doesn’t Exist, » which in a few lines bursting with irony encapsulates Israeli society’s recoil at open and frank talk about the wound at its heart. « Because the problem doesn’t exist / It mustn’t be talked about / Because if you talk about it / That means it exists / And you dare / To talk about a nonexistent problem / We will shut your mouth / Liquidate you / See to it that you’re fired / So that people will learn / Not to talk about problems that don’t exist » [translation by Ralph Mandel].

Poet Mois Bennaroch. If you talk about a problem, that means it exists.Credit : Yael Engelhart

Were there submissions that you rejected ?

Zubida : « There was an article that dealt, along general lines, with the subject of psychology and sexuality. There were things in it that there’s no chance anyone could live with amicably. I entered into a dialogue with the author, and to my amazement there was no room at all for negotiation. »

Something along the lines of « All Ashkenazi men are rapists of Mizrahi women » ?

« That’s putting it gently. »

What the book doesn’t have is vengeful loathing of Ashkenazim in the guise of talk about hegemony, or threats to settle accounts when the right really come to power.

« I am married to an Ashkenazi woman, who in my eyes is the smartest, most beautiful and most amazing woman in the world. We’ve been together for 30 years, » Zubida says, referring to Aviva Zeltzer, who was born in the Soviet Union, holds a doctorate in sociology and who has served as a high-ranking official in the Jewish Agency.

« One time someone said to me, ’Hey, you hate Ashkenazim, so how come you went and married one ?’ How can anyone say something like that ? My children are both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. God forbid I should hate Ashkenazim. Don’t even think about it. Ashkenazim are my brothers and sisters, and so are those from Ethiopia, and Palestinians and LGBTQ people – they’re all part of me. An establishment that manages things in a way that’s offensive is something else. I fight against that. But it has nothing to do with individuals. »

 

Window to the Mideast

People who saw Zubida, for example, when he was a political commentator and host on the Knesset Channel, undoubtedly recall his charismatic personality. He thinks fast and speaks fast, he’s as well versed in street slang as he is in academic jargon, and he has flights of self-humor and a comic delivery that could land him a special on Netflix.

« When Ron Kahlili did the [documentary] series ’Arsim and Frehot’ [derogatory terms for Mizrahim – roughly, lowlifes and bimbos], I mentioned the claim that there are Ashkenazi arsim too, » he recalls. « I said, ’Take me with my dark skin and the tattoos on the arms and legs, strip me down to my underpants, put a paper bag on my head and make slits for the eyes and the nose. And then next to me place a white Ashkenazi guy, uneducated, unemployed. Two people are standing there, one white and one black – ask people to guess which one is the arse. I bet you anything that 98 out of 100 people will say that I, who have a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees, am the arse. »

---

There’s no council of sages that says, ’Let’s screw the Mizrahim.’ It’s a repeating [process] that does away with almost every possibility of creativity, change or mobility. Even if it’s not done intentionally, the systems don’t move fast enough.

Hani Zubida

---

Zubida is also familiar with the claims of some that not only are Mizrahim not the objects of discrimination, but that they have actually prevailed : Popular culture in Israel has left its Eastern European roots behind and become ever more « Mizrahi. » Israeli pop is Mediterranean music, and almost all the singers here do trills. The sitcom « Savri Maranan, » which revolves around two families, one Ashkenazi, one Mizrahi, whose children have intermarried, is one of the most successful shows in Israeli television history. The Jewish traditionalism that’s attributed to Mizrahim has also gained dominant visibility. Almost all the leads on Israel reality shows kiss mezuzahs, put on tefillin (if they are men) and recite the kiddush on Friday evening.

Maybe you really have won ?

"Not really. It’s a pyrrhic victory. A lie. An illusion. What’s being displayed as victory is bread and circuses. It’s ’Take the crumbs that are under the table and get out of my sight.’ The talk is always about popular music, not about the musical canon. We are not the songs of Eretz Yisrael, not the high culture. We are a window to the Middle East, we are void of Israeliness.

« You did it – the elite. You decided that this is what you want from us. You gave messianic fascists millions to set up tefillin stands everywhere. I come from a secular communist family. You have stopped me in the street, put a gun to my head, loaded the bullet, and with a trembling finger on the trigger, you’re telling me : ’Motherfucker, put on tefillin or I’ll shoot you in the head.’ But I don’t know how to. Shoot me. Because of political coalitions and an inability to include us, you made all these things happen. »

One of the striking articles in the book, and the only one not written especially for it, is « The Conspiracy of Silence, » originally published in Haaretz in December 1996. In it, sociologist and public intellectual Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani writes accusingly about the Zionist left and the « new historians, » who, amid all their enthusiasm for dealing with the oppression of the Palestinians, he claimed, ignored the Ashkenazi hegemony that brought about the exclusion and oppression of Mizrahim and continued to do so. Sections of the article, which at the time sparked a public firestorm, remain painfully relevant today.

A similar contemporaneity can be found in the essay « Through and Beyond the Iron Curtain : The Mizrahim and Academia, » by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, a professor of Chinese and Middle Eastern history at New York University. The essay addresses the percentage of Mizrahi lecturers in Israeli academia, which has remained almost unchanged in recent decades, and the universities’ unwillingness to make public the data on the subject.

According to studies that Ben-Dor Benite cites, between 7 and 10 percent of academic faculty are Mizrahim, and the proportion who are Mizrahi women is far lower than even that – 1.5 percent. « Mizrahi women and men are excluded from academia in one way or another, and their numbers are low, » Ben-Dor Benite writes. « In a state of affairs like this, it turns out that precisely the discourse around the number of Mizrahim in academia is a subject that calls for research. »

The author bios in the book provide evidence that supports Ben-Dor Benite’s claims. Many of the contributors are Mizrahi scholars who hold teaching and research jobs at prestigious universities in the United States and other countries – but whose names aren’t familiar to most Israelis,.

The late Amnon Rubinstein, legal scholar and one-time education minister, recalls Zubida, "had an office next to mine when I taught at the Interdisciplinary Center [in Herzliya, now called Reichman University]. As education minister [in the mid-1990s], he was in charge of opening colleges in the country’s periphery. It was said at the time that this would advance the Mizrahim. It turned out that two types of colleges were created : rich private ones and negligible ones in the outlying areas.

« But even in the outlying colleges, not to mention at the universities, the majority of the faculty were also Ashkenazi. One time I was sitting next to Amnon at a conference. He looked around and then said to me, ’You’re the only Mizrahi here.’ »

Amnon Rubinstein. Zubida : « He looked around and then said to me, ’You’re the only Mizrahi here.’ »Credit : Hadas Parush

At this stage in the conversation, the following argument is usually made : Zubida, who is from an indigent immigrant family from Iraq, succeeded in cracking the glass ceiling, was an outstanding student and received scholarships, achieved a high-ranking position in academia and was even a TV star.

« That’s all true, and it’s exactly the reason there need to be another 52 percent like me, because I’m not special in the least. We’re supposedly here, supposedly constituting part [of the whole], but we’re not really here. Not really Israelis. It’s the Mizrahi present absentee. There are exceptions, and everyone enjoys pointing to them. »

What’s the mechanism that causes the exclusion to continue ?

« It’s like the masculine mechanism that leaves women behind. There’s no council of sages that meets and says, ’Let’s screw the Mizrahim.’ It’s related to how and where you grew up. It’s a repeating [process] that does away with almost every possibility of creativity, change or mobility. Even if it’s not done intentionally, the systems don’t move fast enough. »

Would you choose someone for a desirable position only because they’re Mizrahi ?

« If I were on some committee and two candidates showed up – a mediocre Mizrahi and a good Ashkenazi – I would take the good Ashkenazi. But if there were two candidates at the same level, I would choose the Mizrahi. That’s not happening today in the universities. There’s an Ashkenazi majority on the committees, and the choice is usually of the Ashkenazi candidate. There’s no escaping it. After all, it can’t be that we’re all dumb and unsuccessful, but that abroad they still want us. »

The discussion about the percentage of Mizrahim in academic positions repeats itself almost verbatim in regard to the Supreme Court. « A lot of people use that to excoriate the [legal] establishment. Hello – I’m not an idiot. I want a strong court in Israel, but I also want equality, » Zubida emphasizes. « There was once a [Supreme Court] justice named Edmond Levy, a Mizrahi who also wore a kippa. If he were a trans person who had undergone a sex-change operation and become newly religious, he would have been perfect – he’d fit a hundred [minority] categories. Now we have Yosef Elron and Gila Canfy Steinitz [both of them Mizrahim] on the Supreme Court. And what are they doing with Elron ? He’s being used to do battle against the Court. » [Part of the recent delay in the appointment of a new Supreme Court president was connected to Elron’s decision to submit his candidacy for the position, when the tradition has always been given to the longest-serving justice on the court, who in this case was Isaac Amit.]

And he’s gone along with that. He could have said up front that he supported Isaac Amit’s appointment as the court’s president based on seniority, and the chaos would have been prevented.

« I don’t have an answer. »

Yosef Elron : Zubida : « He’s being used to do battle against the Court. »Credit : Oren Ben Hakoo

 

Mark of Cain

Zubida arrived in Israel from Iraq with his family at the age of 6. That was in 1971, after his uncle David Dallal, together with another 13 people, was arrested on charges of spying for Israel and executed by hanging. He was raised in Petah Tikvah, and studied political science at Tel Aviv University, then obtained a doctorate at NYU in 2006. After a decade in New York, where his two sons were born, the family returned to Israel. In the years that followed, Zubida taught in the political science departments of both the Interdisciplinary Center and Yezreel Valley College.

In 2017, he coedited, with Raanan Lipshitz, « Stop – No Border in Front of You ! », a collection of Hebrew-language articles that deal with the way Israel’s borders were shaped by the ruling elites with a belligerence that was aimed both at the neighboring countries and also at the weaker population groups in Israel, who found themselves sent to the frontier regions.

Together with his academic work, Zubida was a busy social activist. He was among the founders of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, took part in the struggle to prevent the displacement of disadvantaged residents of the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Givat Amal, which was torn down in favor of a high-rise residential quarter – and in the lower-class Hatikva neighborhood in the city, was active in trying to integrate labor migrants and refugees into the Israeli labor market, preached coexistence with the Arabs and published numerous opinion pieces about these and other subjects in Haaretz (some co-written with Benny Nurieli).

Zubida was also a frequent presence in the media. He was on the staff of « Songs and Goals, » the iconic Saturday afternoon radio program that reported live about the ongoing soccer games ; and together with the singer Margalit Tzan’ani he hosted the radio program « This Isn’t Europe Here. » In 2022, « One City, Two Peoples, » a TV series he created, which dealt with the complex fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs in the country’s mixed cities, and with the impact on them of the « Torah core » settlement groups – was broadcast on the Knesset Channel.

Two years ago, Zubida and his wife moved to the United States, where he gravitates between Miami and New York, and is involved in various projects as a writer or consultant. The principal motivation for the move was the desire to be close to the children. Ohad, 27, is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Princeton ; and Idoh, 19, moved at the age of 13 to the Casa Grande, Arizona, branch of Barça Academy, the only one of the FC Barcelona residential training schools in the United States. Idoh Zeltzer-Zubida is currently playing with the second-tier team of Inter Miami, whose principal team includes such soccer superstars as Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and of course Lionel Messi.

Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University, November 2023.Credit : Yuki Iwamura / AP

On October 7, 2023, Zubida and Aviva were in Miami. « Black Brick » is dedicated to a friend of the couple, Yasmin Zohar, who together with her family – her husband Yaniv and their daughters Tehelet and Keshet – were murdered on Kibbutz Nahal Oz that day. They are not the only victims he knew. "The nephew of a friend was murdered, friends of my sons were at the Nova. When we woke up that morning in Florida, it was already noon in Israel. My phone was exploding with messages.

« Aviva sat in front of the TV and embarked on a two-week binge. She couldn’t stop crying. Over a period of years I wrote a million articles about the collapse of the state. I wrote that the [institution of the] state doesn’t exist in the Negev, doesn’t exist in the north – and there you go, it really doesn’t exist. But in my life I could never have imagined a scenario of horrors like that. »

Zubida isn’t about to defend, still less forgive, the shameful response of much of the academic left in the United States, including people he knew well or had met at professional conferences, to the Hamas massacre. « People tried to justify an unconscionable act. I never had a problem critiquing Israel, I don’t look before I leap. But my uncle was hanged in Iraq, my family suffered in the Farhud [the June 1941 pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad]. I am always aware of the fact that there needs to be a Jewish state, a place that will be an anchor for me as a Jew. People think that the criticism by me and others of this place is because we think it shouldn’t exist. It’s exactly the opposite. »

---

Some in the global left ’supported a brutal crime, and that is a mark of Cain that can never be erased.... One can say that the occupation is an unconscionable phenomenon, but October 7 wasn’t even on the grid, it was outside the equation.’

Hani Zubida

---

How do you account for the reaction of the American left ?

"Part of it is a reaction to an approach that existed toward Israel after the Six-Day War. Israel could do everything ; we were top guns in the eyes of the world. No one talked about the occupation, about the fact that hundreds of thousands of Arabs who lack citizenship live in Jerusalem, behind roadblocks and with sewage in the streets, and can be arrested at any time. The whole American left was flooded with Jews. In recent years, many have felt a need to balance that unreserved support, and what you see now is the absolute opposite, a 180-degree shift.

« It’s not only a conspiracy of silence, » he continues. « They supported a brutal crime, and that is a mark of Cain that can never be erased. There are people with whom I will never sit down. People who supported the massacre. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life, but what happened here is related to basic human decency. One can say that the occupation is an unconscionable phenomenon, but October 7 wasn’t even on the grid, it was outside the equation. »

 

Same old elite

In the article he has written for the new book, Zubida assails the permanent left-right dichotomy in Israel. In politics here, he asserts, « There is a broad ideological center of Jewish, Zionist, Ashkenazi men who bicker between themselves even as they subject the other groups to their will and their caprices. » From his perspective, there was no political upheaval in 1977, when Menachem Begin and Likud came to power for the first time. « No elite changed over… No significant change occurred in the order of priorities or in the economic system. For women, Arabs, Mizrahim or any other group that isn’t part of the elite, the sea was the same sea, and the sky was the same sky. »

A large number of people of Mizrahi origin vote Likud ; for them, the distinction between left and right does exist and is very significant.

« I’m not saying that the distinction doesn’t exist, only that it needs to be reexamined. You have to understand : The goal is to generate a discourse. I deliberately went to the extreme, writing that left-right is a lie, nonexistent. So come and prove that left-right [dichotomy] does exist. Who is a socialist ? Who is in favor of a free-market economy ? The person who sells the party to tycoons ? Netanyahu ? Which party dismantled the Histadrut [labor federation] and finished off the health maintenance organizations ? Who is to blame for there not being hospitals in the north ? We are living in a neoliberal system in which everyone talks the same talk. »

Tel Aviv demonstration, with MK Naama Lazimi, last year. « Inspires reverence. »Credit : Tomer Appelbaum

The Israeli left neglected the social element. But for several decades the division between left and right has been more about relations with the Palestinians and the aspiration for peace.

« Terrific. Got it. Is Yair Lapid left-wing ? »

No. But he’s Ashkenazi and a Tel Avivan, which is nearly the same thing.

« Benjamin Netanyahu is an Ashkenazi from Jerusalem ; [Justice Minister] Yariv Levin is an Ashkenazi from Jerusalem ; [Foreign Minister] Gideon Sa’ar is a Tel Avivan. All the mayors of Tel Aviv from ’Chich’ [Shlomo Lahat, the city’s mayor from 1974 to 1993] on were Revisionists with Mapai worldviews [referring to the forerunners, respectively, of Likud and Labor]. This whole discourse is very constricted and highly problematic. There is mostly hatred, incitement, zero ideology and lots of functionalism. I can count on the fingers of one hand the MKs who will help you if you call them up. »

Name one.

« Gilad Kariv [Labor/Democrats], a Reform rabbi. He’s a ’negative’ of me : an Ashkenazi male who wears a kippa – but he represents me in the Knesset more than many others. I believe that he wants the collective good. You can see that on him. Or Naama Lazimi [Labor/Democrats]. She’s like a sister to me, I’ve know her since she was a youngster. When she stands on the Knesset rostrum, it [inspires] reverence. When we were fighting against the expulsion of the residents of Givat Amal and Yad Eliahu, Dov Khenin and Gaby Lasky [former MKs from Hadash and Meretz, respectively] fought alongside us. With all the others, it’s narrow interests and survivalism. You have in the Knesset Mizrahim who get up and speak in the name of the struggle, and I feel like someone is shooting me in the head every time they speak. »

Dudi Amsalem ? May Golan ? [Both from Likud]

"Among others. Again, racism existed and still does, but is that any way to talk to people ? It’s like desecration of God’s name. Those people aren’t trying to make things better here. What they’re doing is exploitation of hatred and firing up a group only in order to maintain a system that is fundamentally flawed. Dudi Amsalem spoke of the demonstrators [against the judicial coup in 2023] in terms of [being owners of] Rolex watches. I have an urge to pass my body through combs of steel in order to forget that remark. Even if you don’t agree with them, how can you say something like that about people who stand selflessly [at protests], week after week, out of a desire to improve Israeli society.

« Were you ever at Kaplan [Street, center of the Tel Aviv demonstrations] ? People from all groups in the population are there.... The people who talk like that are exactly those who need to be afraid of what’s written in our book. Because, if people read it, they’ll see that there’s a better way to do things. »

You spoke about individuals with a vested interest in political survival. But it’s far more emotional than that. It feels like vengefulness, like hatred.

« In my article, I quote Malcolm X, who in one of his speeches spoke about the ’house slave’ : [reading from his essay] ’A Black man who identifies with his white masters until he loses his self-image and becomes part of the white machine. There are Mizrahim, Arabs and women in Israel, too, who continue to sanctify the left-right system and are battling within it from a narrow vision of vested interests and belief that personnel changes are the main thing. They undermine every important initiative of change that will dislodge the existing order.’ Likud took a Mapainik system, enhanced it and created the biggest employer in Israel. They’re giving everyone a job in the brothel they opened. You vote for them because it pays for you to. »

Avishay Ben Haim. His essay about Shas is uncritical, says Zubida.Credit : Emil Salman

One can only speculate whether Zubida includes the popular journalist-academic Avishay Ben Haim when he refers to a « house slave. » Ben Haim is represented in the book by an article he wrote about the Shas revolution. He terms it, justly, a movement that « raised a proud head » and describes its early members as « the most important Mizrahi fighters for equality in Israel. » On the other hand, Ben Haim ignores the fact that in the struggle for equality, the ultra-Orthodox Shas continues to exclude women, and when he discusses the issue of core subjects in the schools, he notes that on the eve of Arye Dery’s entry into prison, in 2000, he explained that Shasniks don’t teach the children core subjects, because first it’s necessary to get the Sephardi boys and girls to believe in themselves. That was 25 years ago, and to judge by the results on the ground, the Mizrahi children are still not up to core learning.

« I know Avishay well, » Zubida says. « A great many people ate up his vision of the First Israel and the Second Israel [which views the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi as the major fault line in Israeli society] like it was a treasure. He is pained by the rift his words caused, but he doesn’t grasp the role he played in it. I can testify that he is a very good person, but I will say gently, with no offense intended, that his argument did the opposite of what he thought it would do. It’s a thesis that conflicts with what our book is proposing, because it doesn’t constitute an opening to a dialogue. It’s justification for the bad situation that has been created here. »

Don’t you think that the battle in Israeli society has already been decided and that the victors are the Bibi-ists and the messianics ?

"Absolutely not. I must on no account think like that. Those people have so far won the battle for consciousness because no one has stood up to them and said, ’Enough.’ No one held a mirror up to them. There’s a group here that is poisoning the ground, making everyone feel like mutual enemies. Did you ever dream that there would be Israelis being held as hostages, and that government ministries would incite against the families seeking their release ?

« I was in Hostages Square [in Tel Aviv], and some people cursed Einav Zangauker [militant mother of captive Matan Zangauker]. I went to speak with them. They told me ’You’re a leftist.’ I said, ’That’s true, and you are right-wing, and if your children had been abducted, wouldn’t you be standing here and demonstrating for their release ?’ It’s part of the poison. I know – who am I, anyway ? I am Hani Zubida, a guy with a big mouth who says things that people don’t like, another esoteric type. But if I give in and Gilad Kariv gives in and Naama Lazimi gives in, we have nothing left. »

Some people say the solution is mixed marriage, like yours : In another generation no one would be talking about Mizrahim and Ashkenazim anymore.

« Do you know what the percentage is of children in Israel who were born to a mixed marriage ? It’s 11 percent [a low proportion]. That’s the data of the National Insurance Institute. A fine figure. My partner, D^r. Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida, wrote that only in Israel are marriages between Jews called mixed marriages. »

Ronen Tal

---