Sephardim and Oriental Communities (, ''Sfaradim VeEdot Mizrah'') was a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and is one of the ancestors of the

Likud Likud (, ), officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement (), is a major Right-wing politics, right-wing, political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon in an alliance with several right-wing par ...

party.

History

The Sephardim and Oriental Communities party represented

Sephardi Jews Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

and

Mizrahi Jews Mizrahi Jews (), also known as ''Mizrahim'' () in plural and ''Mizrahi'' () in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or ''Edot HaMizrach'' (, ), are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jews, Jewish c ...

who were already living in Israel at the time of

independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

, and was part of Minhelet HaAm and the

Provisional government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, a transitional government or provisional leadership, is a temporary government formed to manage a period of transition, often following state collapse, revoluti ...

in 1948–49. Under the full title of ''The National Unity List of Sephardim and Oriental Communities'', the party gained 3.5% of the vote and four seats in the elections for the first Knesset in 1949. Represented by Moshe Ben-Ami, Eliyahu Eliashar,

Avraham Elmalih Avraham Elmalih (; 1885 – 2 April 1967) was a journalist, linguist, Zionist activist and Israeli politician. Biography Born in Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, Ottoman Jerusalem in 1885, Elmalih was educated in a yeshiva and an alliance school. He ...

and Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit, they joined the government as a coalition partner of

David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...

Mapai Mapai (, an abbreviation for , ''Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael'', ) was a Labor Zionist and democratic socialist political party in Israel, and was the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger into the Israeli Labor Party in January ...

party, with Sheetrit appointed Minister of Police. For the 1951 election, the party changed its name to ''The list of Sephardim and Oriental Communities, Old Timers and Immigrants''. However, they lost around half their share of the vote (1.8%) and half their seats, slumping to just two representatives. Only Eliashar retained his seat, with Binyamin Sasson taking the second. This time they did not join the government. On 10 September 1951 the party merged into the

General Zionists The General Zionists () were a centrist Zionist movement and a political party in Israel. The General Zionists supported the leadership of Chaim Weizmann and their views were largely colored by central European culture. The party was considered ...

, then the second-largest party in the Knesset and briefly a member of the governing coalition that made up the fourth and fifth governments (though they were expelled from the sixth after abstaining from a

motion of no-confidence In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an obse ...

). Some party members were not happy about joining the

and broke away to reform the party. They contested the 1955 elections with Eliashar as leader,Sephardim and Oriental Communities list (1955)
Israel Democracy Institute but failed to win a seat. Later on, the

merged with the Progressive Party to form the

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. For example, while the political systems ...

, which was briefly the third-largest party in Israel before merging again with

Herut Herut () was the major conservative nationalist political party in Israel from 1948 until its formal merger into Likud in 1988. It was an adherent of Revisionist Zionism. Some of their policies were compared to those of the Nazi party. Early y ...

to form

Gahal Gahal (, an acronym for ''Gush Herut–Liberalim'' (Hebrew: ), ''lit.'' ''Freedom–Liberals Bloc'') was the main right-leaning political alliance in Israel, ranging from the centre-right to right-wing, from its founding in 1965 until the establi ...

, which eventually became

Election results

References

External links

Party history
Knesset website {{Israeli political parties Defunct political parties in Israel Zionist political parties in Israel General Zionism Mizrahi Jewish culture in Israel Sephardi Jewish culture in Israel