Out of Print, Out of Mind: An Archived Press Report on Early Israeli Settlements
- Kejsi Kajo
- Jul 15
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Disclaimer: For informational and educational purposes only. The author does not condone hostility or prejudice toward any religion or belief system. Commentary on the LIFE International source material is intended for historical context, critical analysis, and reflection.
Since the founding of the democratic Jewish homeland in 1948, Israel's internal assimilation struggles have weakened its shared national identity. The earliest settlers in Israel, who brought together cultural and geographic backgrounds from all regions of the world, had to navigate the complexities of diverse coexistence - similarly to Israeli citizens today.
The formative decades of Jewish immigrants’ collective transition in the Middle Eastern nation-state were documented in a front-cover article published in the March 1965 issue of LIFE International, the discontinued international edition of LIFE magazine. The 10-page illustrated feature, titled “Israel’s Perplexing Integration Problem”, addressed the troubled assimilation of the early-settler generations in Israel.
"Two immigrant streams" were initially established in the sovereign state: the Sephardic Jews, who immigrated from North Africa and Asia, and the Ashkenazim Jews, who immigrated from Europe. Other than their shared religious beliefs, the settler communities were "whole cultures apart".
Nationally administered urban centers could not "absorb the inflow" of the newcomers, who were mostly of European descent. The department that managed housing and employment assistance programs for the immigrants, the Jewish Agency Absorption Department, had to relocate most of the families to under-developed regions.
North African and Asian immigrants were predominantly assigned to the "undesirable" remote areas as they were "tillers of the soil without the education and technological skills of their brethren from Europe". The modern state of Israel initiated "long day" schools in Sephardic towns to foster knowledge in both children and adults. "Two of the most powerful instruments for immigrant education" were the Jewish Agency and the Israeli army.
North African engineer Eli Kenan attempted to explain the cause for the educational divide. He stated that "when Europeans came to Israel they came not only with their skills but also with their leadership", while North Africans "were accompanied neither by their middle class and rich nor by their communal leaders. Only the poor and unlettered immigrated".
LIFE-TIME correspondent Marlin Levin claims that in the first four years of "Israel’s new nationhood", Jewish immigrants from neighboring Middle Eastern countries doubled the population of the nation-state, which increased to "two and a half million people from 102 countries speaking 81 languages". The American author adds, "Essentially they come from two worlds: Occident and Orient". Israel's state-owned radio station and daily newspapers operated in ten languages. There were "a dozen political parties".
The Origins of Israel's Early Immigrants
‣ Occident, The West (derived from Latin "oriens", meaning rising sun)
Central and Western Europe - Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic/Slovakia), Romania, France.
Eastern Europe - Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus.
‣ Orient, The East (derived from Latin "occidens", meaning setting sun)
Asia - Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, Georgia (not the U.S state).
Middle East - Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon.
North Africa - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt.
Israeli residents naturally gravitated to "people of their own extraction and language". The author explains, "A British Jew will seek out a British-trained physician. An Iraqi Jew will go to an Iraqi attorney. Israeli-born don’t ask and don’t care". The rate of "intermarriages" between "Israeli-born children of Western and Eastern stock" was only 15%.
European immigrants, who lost their standing as the leading demographic, maintained their employment positions of greater compensation and status. The disparities were attributed to the education gap, rather than discrimination. "Still the Oriental immigrant suffers from lack of basic educational facilities", Levin noted, "for the simple reason that he has been shunted away from urban areas to new farm communities and development towns".
The author states that a large share of the national budget was allocated to housing, "about $170 million a year". He writes, "Israel spends more on housing than any other item in the budget except defense".
David Ben-Gurion, the primary founder of the State of Israel, commented on the adversities of bringing Middle Eastern immigrants into the national collective,
"There is no hereditary difference in the abilities of Jews from various continents. During the Middle Ages, Oriental Jewry held aloft the banner of Judaism, developed its poetry, philosophy and doctrines—a role formerly filled by the Jews of Babylon. But the Jews, like all other peoples, cannot escape the influence of those among whom they live. In recent centuries Jews in Islamic countries have lived in a society that was backward, corrupt, uneducated and lacking in independence and self-respect, and the damage done over hundreds of years cannot be repaired in a day”.
Israeli government leaders, "socialist Zionists from Poland and Russia" who "had pioneered the land from the beginning of the century", believed that the answer to socially integrating Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African immigrants into the democratic structure of the Promised Land was "more education". The Ministry of Education budgeted $13 million for a five-year "enrichment program" intended to foster the potential of Sephardic "promising children".
The director of the Department of Culture, Yitzhak Navon, who later became the 5th President of Israel, articulated the education initiative for Jewish communities of Eastern descent,
"First we teach them the [Hebrew] alphabet. Then we teach them who and what they are, to identify themselves totally as Moroccans or Iraqis or whatever. When we’ve done that, we teach them about their Russian and Polish Jewish brothers. Once they learn to read they can learn to respect and know themselves and their fellow Jews".
Sephardic Jewish immigrants "had neither the training nor the aptitude to enjoy the fruits of modern Israel", but they "added mannerisms, folk songs, humor, and colloquialisms to Israel’s culture". Yemenite jewelry and North African textiles "woven with gold and silver thread" became "major Israeli exports". Levin writes, "Israeli food is not Jewish food. Orientals brought their highly seasoned felafel, humus and tachina, their bourgel and kuba— dishes European Jews had never heard of".
The author claims that the only institution where all Israeli citizens were treated equally, regardless of their background, was the army. The Israeli Defense Forces, although deeply rooted in civilian life, operated independently of government-administered systems such as education, housing, and employment.
One education officer stated, "In the army we all wear the same clothes, eat the same food, curse the same officers. When a man hits the dirt on the obstacle course he sees that the Oriental or Ashkenazi beside him is biting the same dust".
The internal assimilation of Israel's diverse demographic remains a prominent concern to the present day. A 2023 Institute for National Security Studies research forum reported that "it is not clear what unites the Jewish population of Israel and whether it is more of a collection of minorities that is not necessarily a unified majority society".
The forum-based study, "Demographic Changes in Israel’s Urban Space and National Security", discussed "the intensity of inter-group tension in Israel" and the ongoing marginalization and socio-economic disparities affecting Israeli minority communities. The researchers determined that "the state has not succeeded in finding a place for immigrants who do not have a Jewish, Zionist, and Western narrative in their culture".
In 2024, Pew Research Center conducted a face-to-face survey of 1001 Israeli adults on "How Israeli Society Has Unified, and Divided, in Wartime". When questioned "on the prospect of Arab and Jewish Israelis living together peacefully", 37% of the participants were optimistic, an equal share of 37% of the participants were pessimistic, and the remaining 23% of the participants "said they are both, neither or that it depends".
The survey found that Jewish and Arab Israelis held different views on trust in the national government, the military's influence, and settler expansions in the West Bank. The contrasting interpretations of the Israeli lived experience reflects deep-rooted divisions within Israeli society.
Internal assimilation conflicts have shaped the national consciousness of the democratic Jewish state since its establishment in 1948. Regional instability and heightened intercommunal tensions predominantly suppress initiatives aimed at inclusion. The future of integration in Israel is uncertain.
