My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

“You wouldn’t get it,” Gabai tells me. “You are from here. You belong. In Israel you are always at home. You own the place. But I was raised knowing that there was an inner circle that I was not a part of. There was an alpha group, and I was not in it. Because there was so much love at home, I was empowered. I had my own well of strength. So I insisted on breaking in. I wanted to be with the strong, with those who belonged. That was also the message I got from my family. Their first message was education: study, study, study. But it was clear that knowledge on its own would not suffice. To really get ahead one had to bleach oneself. Progeny bleaching was the best vehicle for social mobility. My beloved grandmother would say it to me in her native tongue: ‘For you, Gal, a Moroccan will not do, only a Polish boy.’ And this went right into my subconscious. No way would I have a Moroccan spouse—if I’d married a Moroccan he would have been an earnest social worker and I would have been a caring high school teacher, and in the evenings we would listen to nice ethnic music in our three-room apartment in a Beersheba housing estate. But because I was ambitious, I had to mate with white power. I had to dilute the black in me with white sperm.