Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel by Haggai Ram

Author:Haggai Ram [Ram, Haggai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-10-26T00:30:48+00:00

” WORN OUT AND FILTHY RIFFRAFF”: HASHISH CONSUMERS IN ISRAEL

Throughout the 1950s, official discourse regarding criminal behavior among Mizrahim engaged in doublespeak, or at the very least was defined by ambiguity and irresolution. On the one hand, it was claimed that criminality was not more rampant among these immigrants than among other Jewish groups in Israeli society—that is, Israeli-born Ashkenazim or Jewish immigrants from Europe. Stipulating that it was “nigh possible to determine conclusively the share in criminality of veteran Israelis [anshei ha-yishuv ha-vatiq] and that of newly-coming immigrants,” a 1955 police report concluded: “It is clear that in certain types [of criminality], new immigrants play a larger role . . . but in the majority of [cases] there is no difference between immigrants and veteran Israelis.”³² The “widespread allegation” that criminality was greater among the “immigrants from the East” was thus totally “unfounded,” as police officials opined elsewhere: “Arguably, the percentage of criminals from among the new immigrants does not exceed the percentage among the country’s veterans.”³³

At the same time, however, the very same sources were prepared to restate that massive immigration from the Middle East and North Africa did account for the steep rise in criminal activity in Israel. Consider, for example, the following relatively subtle passage from the Police Annual Report for 1951—the year in which Jewish immigration to Israel in general, and to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa in particular, reached a climax:³⁴

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