My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

And yet Deri is not the issue but the metaphor. He will be fine. After a thirteen-year leave of absence, he is back in the public arena and is once again the political leader of Shas. (After the March 2015 election, in which Shas won seven Knesset seats, Deri joined the Netanyahu government as minister of the economy and minister for the development of the Negev and Galilee. In January 2016, he returned to his old post as interior minister.) His charisma is somewhat eroded and he has lost his larger-than-life stature, but he is a powerful player again in Israel’s power game. So as I leave his Jerusalem office I think not of him but of his community. The Oriental-Jewish story is simple and cruel, I think. Between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, Arab world Jewry experienced a relative golden age. As it was close to French and British colonial rulers, it enjoyed their patronage. It won rights it had never enjoyed before. Many Jews in North Africa and the Middle East benefited from all that Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis, and Casablanca had to offer. But by the 1940s and 1950s the magic of the Orient had evaporated. Colonialism retreated, Arab nationalism was on the rise, and Zionism was triumphant. Within a few years a civilization collapsed. Thousand-year-old communities disintegrated within months. With one swing of history’s sword the soft underbelly of the old Levant was sliced open. The enchanting, pluralist Orient was gone....