Why one word blew up the Israeli election campaign – with Matti Friedman

Listen to Episode

With just a week to go, Israel’s election campaign caught fire at the weekend, thanks to an incendiary intervention by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s most ardent media supporters. Channel 14’s Yinon Magal re-opened a deep racial divide when he repeatedly referred to Netanyahu’s prime challenger, Gadi Eisenkot - whose family roots are in Morocco - as a “monkey”. What are the origins of the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi divide in Israeli society - and what place does it continue to play in the life and politics…