Apartheid Israel (not a DBWI)

What if Israel had become the kind of state that Kalman Katzenelson advocated in The Ashkenazi Revolution, where Yiddish (not Hebrew - too Semitic) was the official language, and where non-Ashkenazim were denied the vote?
 

maverick

Banned
And how exactly could it happen?

I think that's what he is asking...;)


How? a worse holocaust leading to a more radical leadership? a worse war of independence in which Ethnic cleansing is a standart procedure?

Results? even more hate from the arabs and palestineans, and less support from the West and the United Nations...
 
How? a worse holocaust leading to a more radical leadership? a worse war of independence in which Ethnic cleansing is a standart procedure?

Results? even more hate from the arabs and palestineans, and less support from the West and the United Nations...
He's talking about split smong Jews, which is much harder to achieve. BTW, I found some interesting and pretty relevant article: http://www.meforum.org/article/707
 
Why would non-Ashkenazim settle en masse in a state that does not acknowledge their human rights.
<zionist>Because it's better than being exterminated by the Arabs perhaps?</zionist>

Or do you thing that the Arabs would tone down their Jew-hatred in this scenario, in order to facilitate a divide-and-conquer approach to Israel?
 
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ASB in my opinion.

Apartheid was the synthesis of many currents of South African thought. At the root was the belief that each race had its own destiny and therefore must be kept apart to develop independently . It also developed from previous segregation in South Africa, which had limited the right of blacks , and discriminated on the grounds of color .

Zionism did not have those cultural roots. Judaism itself is fairly inclusive saying that all Jews are the sons of Israel. Secondly, Zionism itself was based on the fact that all Jews comprised one nation. Thirdly, many Ashkenazi and Sephardi look very similar. Lastly, why would Sephardi move to Israel, if they are going to be second class citizens? They could just move to Iran if that was the case.

As for the article, many of the questions raised by Ashkenazi in the 1950s were fairly valid. Many Jews, especially those from Yemen and Morocco, lived in the Middle Ages and before coming to Israel, would have not felt out of place in the 1500s. One example is in Orwell's essay Marrakech, where he describes the state of that city's Jewry with pity, because of their backwards state.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Still, I think a really segregated Israeli state could only be born if WWII had not happened, and then there would be the problem with fitting a Israeli state in a TL without WWII.
 
Not going to happen with OTL Israel. Possibly with an Eastern European Israel or the "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" or something like that.
 
Well, considering that the occupied territories are treated like the bantustans were, isolated and impoverished, many people today already argue that an apartheid system exists in Isreal. If the Isrealis want to maintain a "Jewish state" in former Palestine, then a settlement needs to be reached quickly, for demographics are everyday working to create an Arab majority in the territory Isreal now occupies...
 
<zionist>Because it's better than being exterminated by the Arabs perhaps?</zionist>

Or do you thing that the Arabs would tone down their Jew-hatred in this scenario, in order to facilitate a divide-and-conquer approach to Israel?

yes, they would: Sephardi Jews had lived in the Arab world for centuries, and were largely considered Jewish Arabs, oxymoronic as that term might sound today.
 
Well, considering that the occupied territories are treated like the bantustans were, isolated and impoverished, many people today already argue that an apartheid system exists in Isreal. If the Isrealis want to maintain a "Jewish state" in former Palestine, then a settlement needs to be reached quickly, for demographics are everyday working to create an Arab majority in the territory Isreal now occupies...
That's why I said "not a DBWI", as my WI is that Israel is a specifically Ashkenazi state, rather than a more general Jewish state...
 
This is one of the AH challenges which really attracted my interest but left me think for days, trying to find half-plausible timeline. yourworstnightmare gave me general direction of thinking, with POD being healing of Russo-German split in late 19th century and WWI fought between Russo-German alliance and "Small Entente" of France and British Empire. Turkey had been dragged into the war on Entente's side (mirrored Geben).

Entente lost the war pretty badly. Osman Empire disintegrated, with Middle Eastern region being divided between Russian and German Empires. Russians took Constantinople and surrounding areas, plus Southern coast of Black Sea (effectively turning it into Empire's internal sea) and Cilicia (turning it into Armenian autonomous region). Greater Syria and most of OTL Iraq and Jordan became German colonies.

Zionist movement appeared and developed ITTL much as it did IOTL, so Germans encountered not very numerous, but very driven, well educated and well organized Yishuv. Battles between Ben Yehuda and Ezrah fund (ones who advocated that Jewish education should be based on ultimate language of science, literature and general enlightement, namely German) were still raging (see this) and "Germanists" used arrival of German colonial troops to tip the scales. Jewish Technical School in Haifa opened 2 years after WWI ended, with language of teaching being German.

Now, both victorious empires had their share of problems with their Jewish subjects and setting up Jewish National Area in Palestine seemed like a solution. Both Russian and German authorities started to encourage their Jews to move. Russians were more successful in doing so and German Palestine found itself with Eastern European Jewish majority, governed by highly Germanized Jews from the German Empire. There was no love lost between "Russians" and Oriental Jews and Germanized elite fully shared this haughty idea of German culture superiority. In their views Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europeans could successfully "graduate" into superior German culture, but Oriental Jews could not, at lest not in first generations. This (and belief that Germanization was the best thing which could happen to a Jewry since events around Mt. Sinai) lead to numerous ugly incidents (similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_residential_school_system). German imperial authorities did not care about democracy and equality within Palestinian Jewish community too much, being entirely happy with it being highly effective tool to control the land and exploit it's resources.

This course of events led to very highly consequences. Once colonial system started to crumble (it bound to, WWII or no WWII) and Israel obtained independence, it found itself deluded with waves of refugees from newly independent Maghrib countries and former German ME colonies (where Anti-Semitism had been raised for decades by British agents, who saw it as a tool to shatter German control over regions). And remember, this is sort of "ethnic democracy" at this point, with voting part of society firmly believing in Ashkenazim's superiority (little wonder, they're Ashkenazi themselves). Their solution of problem of Sephardim's assimilation? Enact series of laws, loosely based on OTL German citizenship laws, but with a twist. Citizen of Israel is either offspring of citizen parents or immigrant from Europe (mirroring "Ethnic Germans" provision of OTL German laws) or one who passed language and citizenship tests. Now, you can set level of this tests as high as you want to, making them effectively impossible to pass.

So, how is it for starters?
 
a worse war of independence in which Ethnic cleansing is a standart procedure?
It was.:(

<zionist>Because it's better than being exterminated by the Arabs perhaps?</zionist>

Or do you thing that the Arabs would tone down their Jew-hatred in this scenario, in order to facilitate a divide-and-conquer approach to Israel?
There was no "Jew-hatred", at least not on a large scale. Zionist activity was simply prohibited, and the Jews were constantly suspected for it. If Zionism meant Ashkenazi supremacism, than Jewish Arabs would not be zionist at all.
 
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