Zionist settlers stereotyped Yemenite Jews as primitive, submissive cheap labor

Evidence

This was no coincidence, explained Kadish L. Silman, a keen Bezalel supporter who was also a Hebrew teacher at the school; he added: “the Sephardim and the Yemenites are good material, they are more reliable and disciplined in work due to their lack of development. In addition, their living requirements are not so high.” The view that the Yemenite Jews were more primitive and therefore more submissive, that they were capable of various work and crafts and would manage on very little was accepted in the yishuv already in the 1880s. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who is best known as the father of modern Hebrew, wrote in his Jerusalem newspaper in 1886 that for the purpose of the expansion of the yishuv (i.e., the dispersion of Jews around the country) the Yemenite Jews would be best suitable. After all they were used to living and working among the Arabs as they had done in their country of origin as peddlers or craftsmen. And even if these works could not provide much of a living “the Yemenites are satisfied with very little,” and, “they are capable of being very patient and can endure any hardship or trouble.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 597

Categorization

• XREF: Internalized orientalism — the same colonial labor logic that characterized Arab workers — applied by Ashkenazi Zionists to fellow (Mizrahi) Jews; parallels Edward Said’s own argument about Orientalism and the divisions it creates within colonized populations.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox of a national liberation movement importing classic colonial categories of ‘primitive, submissive, low-needs’ labor to describe its own co-nationals — and enlisting the ‘father of modern Hebrew’ in that project — is dense enough to sit with. This is a core demonstration that orientalism was not only aimed outward at Arabs but functioned within the Jewish collective itself.
• QUESTION: How did the Yemenite community itself respond to or resist this framing? Were there Yemenite voices contesting their assigned role as ‘good material’?