מאבק על הייצוגים האתניים של יהודי טורקיה במדינת ישראל הצעירה

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During the period of mass immigration from 1948 to 1951, over 34,000 Jews migrated to Israel from Turkey, constituting about five percent of all immigrants arriving in Israel during that period and about one-tenth of all immigrants from Asia and Africa. During those years, the State of Israel was engaged in absorbing Jewish immigrants on an unprecedented scale and attempting to integrate ethnic groups perceived as non-modern into an Israeli melting pot. From the establishment's perspective, the connection of immigrants from Asia and Africa to their home countries was often viewed negatively due to their being perceived as pre-modern or developing and because of the definition of most of these countries as ‘enemy states.’ Against this backdrop, immigrants from these regions were widely considered to be passive agents in the formation of state governance mechanisms and even as a burden on the ‘absorbing establishment.’ In March 1949, however, Turkey became one of the only countries to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. This development not only enabled Turkish immigrants to maintain cultural, political, and even national ties to their country of origin—unlike most MENA countries—but also allowed them to position themselves as strategic players in promoting Israel’s foreign affairs. In this article, we examine the efforts of prominent leaders of the Turkish Jewish community in Israel to leverage their unique position as part of an internal struggle among these leaders over the community’s status and identity. We identify two separate systems of self-representation: one – led by Shabtai Dinar, a Foreign Ministry official and local Turkish leader affiliated with Mapai – was aligned with the Labor Movement and the Mapai establishment narrative; and the other – represented by the journalist Yitzhak Yaish (Yaech) – was relatively democratic and incorporated a variety of grassroots voices, including opposition perspectives. To examine these diverse and contrasting images, we identify, for the first time, two types of sources: material from the ‘Major Archive,’ (the Israel State Archives), which primarily deals with the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey and the involvement of Turkish Jews in that process; and material from the ‘Minor Archive,’ namely community newspapers in Israel, which reveal elements not documented by the establishment. Drawing on the case of Turkish Jews in Israel, we propose a reevaluation of the intricate interplay between grassroot voices and ‘establishment’ voices in the formation of new ethnic communities in Israel.