The challenge of the new Mizrachi narrative for multi-cultural education in Israel

The new Mizrahi narrative was devised and presented by radical Israeli groups suchas The New Democratic Rainbow. It challenged the Western Zionist Ashkenazi narrativewith its new educational message, proposing a multicultural alternative. This articlebriefly reviews historical-philosophical research regarding the claim by the new Mizrahinarrative that the image of the Mizrahi Jews in Israel was forged by the over-archingAshkenazi hegemony. It begins with a description of the structure of the pre-state Jewishcommunity at the revolutionary stage of its development, consisting mainly of AshkenaziJews arriving from Europe until the dramatic change in the wake of mass immigrationduring the first decade after the establishment of the state. This article proposes a threestagemodel for the analysis of counter-narratives, attacking the hegemonic metanarrative.According to this model, counter-narratives evolve in three stages andimplement a variety of different procedures at each stage, enabling it to resonate withinsocial networks of narratives. At the initial stage it challenges the hegemonic narrative; atthe second stage it tries to wipe out the borderlines of the hegemony; and at the thirdstage it liberates its authors from their lowly position. The concluding analysis points outthat the new Mizrahi narrative has fallen into a trap of its own making; however, to thisday it represents one of the main philosophical, cultural and historical schools of thoughtin Israel, calling for turning Israel into a multi-cultural state, which would be finallyintegrated within the Middle East.