Abstract

Abstract 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 ele...

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