Unlike Regev, Asayag doesn't ingratiate herself with the white master Netanyahu
Op-ed: The culture minister has to pay a price for acceptance into the prime minister's elite. But there are Mizrahi women from the periphery who do not bow down to him.
Borrowing the famous British movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral," we can say that recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu has clashed with four Mizrahi women and one Ashkenazi woman. In other words, the time is right to discuss what do Orna Peretz, Ofira Asayag, Miri Regev and Nilli Aharon have in common, and what distinguishes them from Noa Rotman.
During this year's memorial ceremony commemorating the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, his granddaughter Rotman gave a fiery speech, condemning the Netanyahu government. That same evening, the savvy Netanyahu seized the opportunity, uploading a video to his Facebook page in which he condemned the "hypocrisy of the left," ending with a personal rebuttal of Rotman. This rebuttal was concrete, polite, and decorated by the settings of the Prime Minister's Office. The previous week, by sharp contrast, Netanyahu smiled arrogantly and told Likud activist Orna Peretz in Kiryat Shmona that she is boring him. Later he chose not to condemn his son Yair, who dubbed TV and radio personality Ofira Asayag a "vulgar beast."
What is the basis for this contrast between his polite response to Rotman, and the contempt, disrespect and disregard he showed Peretz and Asayag? More precisely, what is the mechanism that makes this contrast possible?
How is it possible that the leftist Noa Rotman, regarded by some of Netanyahu's supporters as "an enemy of the people," was treated respectfully by the PM, while Peretz and Asayag, both members of Netanyahu's right-wing, were humiliated by him? This contrast can obviously not be explained by simple partisanship. Rather, it is explained by what Prof. Meir Amor calls "the question of citizenship."
According to Amor, the polite respect accorded to some, and the degradation of others, are indicative of Israel's class divide, which sees Netanyahu and Rotman as citizens of "the First Israel," while Peretz and Asayag are citizens of "the Second Israel." Their Identity as Mizrahi women who grew up in the periphery is not the heart of the matter, but rather only a bureaucratic outcome of this class-racial mechanism.
In 1963 in Detroit, Malcolm X gave his unforgettable speech, in which he defined the "House Negro": an obedient, loyal and submissive slave, living in the white master's house. Regev, a Mizrahi right-wing woman from Kiryat Gat, adopts her master's classist terminology, and uses it against Asayag, who like her is a Mizrahi right-wing woman from Dimona. By doing so, Regev is cementing her status as the "House Negro" of Netanyahu's white administration.
Moments have passed since Metanyahu informed Peretz that she is boring him when, inspired by Columbus, the white ruler Netanyahu's journey into the black territories began. Netanyahu hovered between Sderot, Yeruham, Arad, Ofakim and Netivot, with the speed and skill of an entertainer moving from one city to the next to perform on Independence Day.
Each visit to these townships, with a clear majority of Mizrahi residents, was accompanied by vast reporting on social media of the passionate, admiring welcome he received. As Ofira Asayag put it in her Friday night monologue on TV, which will make the annals of Israel's history, "that's how it is with us in the periphery, we suffer and vote."
The purpose of Netanyahu's visits was to crown the Likud candidates in the coming municipal elections. The same candidates who will eventually become the next "anti-social MKs." If there is one thing that Netanyahu learned from Regev, it is that no one manages the township quite as well as the township's own people. And so we witnessed the horror show in which he crowned Nili Aharon, the Likud candidate for mayor in Yeruham, as the eventual successor of Miri Regev.
Netanyahu is mistaken. It is Rotman who should be boring him, and Peretz and Asayag who he should at least be polite to. The man who managed to bring down the Likud, landing the historic low-point of only 12 Likud seats in the Knesset in 2006, was a citizen of "the Second Israel," Amir Peretz from Sderot.
As history tends to repeat itself, we are left to wait patiently until the likes of Peretz and Asayag, like Amir Peretz before them, will steal the Mizrahi vote from the Likud, and again replace Netanyahu's throne with a rickety seat on the opposition benches.
Apart from the prospect of civil equality, such a development will show Regev and Aharon that women who are polite, who ingratiate themselves in front of the white master, will be remembered as those who lobbied the citizens of "the Second Israel" to make Mufletas, not as those who made history.
