The Trasness of Mizrahi Discrimination

תקציר

The article provides an anti-essentialist reading of anti-discrimination legislation within Israeli, providing tools to account for the systemic aspect of exclusion within private lawsuits. The anti-essentialist analysis opens up avenues for strategic use of anti-discrimination laws, specifically for groups that are not explicitly recognized as a protected category, such as Mizrahi or trans communities. From a trans perspective on anti-discrimination laws, the article proposes an innovative reading on discrimination on the basis of Mizrahi identity or Mizrahi-ness. The absence of a distinct category of Mizrahi or trans (or gender identity or ethnic origin) in Israeli law is not only a product of legislative lacuna but stems from the fact that trans people and Mizrahi communities are legally located “in-between” the most basic legal categories, male and female, the Jew to the Arab.<br><br>The article examines the ‘classical’ discrimination scenario the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services, and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law, 2000, was enacted to protect, the discrimination of young Mizrahi men at dance clubs, alongside the growing body of law on gender identity. The article closely reads these cases by using anti-discrimination theories, as well as, queer theory, trans studies and critical race theory. The article argues that anti-discrimination laws can better address structural discrimination by considering the ideologies that justify difference and differentiation between individuals and collectives. The article explores the idea that legally defined protected categories do not reflect pre-legal truth about one's characteristics or abilities but constitute them as inherent truth as a way to reinforce group distinctions. <br><br>The article examines the concept of the performativity of identities according to individual and group identity is constructed and contested through social interrelations. Identity is marked by practices that are both material and discoursive. Focusing on Mizrahi masculinity and its contextual and relative characteristics, the article attempts to locate the ideological standpoints that disadvantage Mizrahi identities. To this end the article examines the category of nationality in Israeli law and considers how it functions similarly to the category of sex in outlining social expectations. Focusing on the values and worldviews that construct the category of Jewish nationality, the article accounts for the impact of Jewish nationality on Mizrahi identity. The article further studies the intersections between racial signifiers and gender performativity and the limitations of legal discourse in recognizing these intersections.<br><br>Offering a road map for recognizing the intersections of race and gender, the article will return to anti-discrimination laws and propose an anti-essentialist reading of Mizrahi discrimination that bridges group affiliation, characteristics, and actions through looking at the performativity of identity. The article argues that an anti-essentialist shift is a natural development of the existing cases law. The article proposes that instead of asking whether one belongs or does not belong to this or that protected category, jurists should ask whether the decision was motivated by racist, sexist or nationalist ideologies? The article asserts that anti-essentialist analysis can undermine the mechanisms that fortify group and individuals’ privileges granted in relation to group identities. <br>