The mass immigrations to Israel: A comparison of the failure of the Mizrahi immigrants of the 1950s with the success of the Russian immigrants of the 1990s

The two mass immigrations to Israel are compared, demonstrating the failure of the Mizrahi immigrants of the 1950s versus the success of the Russian immigrants of the 1990s. Almost in every respect the Russian immigrants had advantages over the Mizrahi immigrants: they arrived with greater human resources, the state was more affluent and less discriminatory against them, the society was more culturally open and socially tolerant, and their proportion in the total population was much smaller and hence not threatening. Whereas the Mizrahim lost their culture and ended up in the lower strata of society, Russian immigrants are in the process of entering the middle class and in control of the pace and rate of their assimilation.