Mizrahi Jews occupy a not-quite-white middle rung in Israel’s racial hierarchy

Evidence

At the same time, the Jewishness of Arab Jews is complexly undercut by their Arabness. Popularly referenced as “Mizrahim,” Yahouda Shenhav makes evident just how racially indexed such reference nevertheless remains by pointing out that it literally translates as “Easterners,” itself code for “Orientals.” Abba Eban, longtime foreign minister (1966–74), warned that “One of the great apprehensions which afflict us is the danger of the immigrants of Oriental origin forcing Israel to equalize its cultural level with that of the neighboring world.” In the complex codes of Israel’s raceless racial history, Mizrahim occupy a status as not-quite-white, more so than Palestinian citizens of Israel, to be sure, but less so than the whiteness, the Europeanness, of Ashkenazis. Mizrahim look a little like Israel’s post-apartheid “Coloureds.” — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 600

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the racial coding behind the term ‘Mizrahim’ as a translation of ‘Easterners’/‘Orientals’.
• XREF: The post-apartheid Coloured comparison invokes racial categorization schemes from South Africa, echoing Goldberg’s comparative apartheid analyses. — connects to: Jewish racialization varies with historical stability and splits along West-East rather than unified lines — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 39
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 600