Mizrahi immigrants were denied native-language broadcasts despite full severance from their homelands.

Evidence

[I make] this suggestion … to demand continuation of broadcasting in a foreign language, at a time when it is possible to hear a great many, varied broadcasts in Hebrew, the buttress of the people and a great and honored portion of its existential merit. If on the one hand we are obliged to disseminate the language amongst all the immigrants, to instill it through all means into every Hebrew home in the city, town, or farm, it being an important and determining force for integrating the people, the implication would be that we must reduce the dissemination or perpetuation of the languages of Exile… . It is certainly not my intention and not the intention of immigrants from Mughrabi-speaking lands to make permanent the requested broadcast, but so long as the current process continues and Kol Yisrael broadcasts in many languages, there is no justification why immigrants from the lands of the Maghreb and North Africa cannot hear programs in the Mughrabi language, perhaps more than any other immigrants from any other land of origin. There is no postal link with part of North Africa, the severance is complete, and the programs were calming and comforting. Why stop this small consolation? — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 694

Categorization

• XREF: The pleading, self-apologizing tone of the Parliamentarian asking for equal treatment echoes themes in ‘Home Boy’ about immigrant identity negotiation and self-justification.
• CANDY: A parliamentarian pleading that North African Jews, cut off entirely from home with no postal link, be allowed the ‘small consolation’ of radio in their own language — while European immigrants got theirs as a matter of course.