Ethnic exclusionism in the periphery: The case of Oriental Jews in Israel's development towns

Students of Israeli politics have stressed cultural factors in explaining the success of right‐wing parties among Oriental Jewish voters. My argument is that closer attention must be paid to labour market relations in trying to explain both the anti‐Arab sentiments of Oriental Jews and their proclivity for right‐wing politics.

Oriental Jews compete with both citizen and non‐citizen Palestinians for jobs at the lowest end of the occupational ladder. This competition, I argue, can explain a great deal of their political attitudes. The data to support the argument are derived from an attitude survey conducted in 1988 in eight ‘development towns’ ‐ small working‐class communities populated mainly with Orientals and characterized by high unemployment rates and pervasive social and economic ills. These towns, and the sociologically similar slum neighbourhoods of major cities, provided Rabbi Meir Kahane, Israel's most vociferously racist politician, with the bulk of his electoral support when he was elected to the Knesset in 1984. In 1988 I found support for Kahane in development towns was almost three times as high as it was in 1984. (Kahane was barred from running for the Knesset in 1988 for being a racist.) Analysis of the data showed that this support was disproportionately concentrated among respondents who suffered most from the effects of labour market friction with Palestinian workers.