Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, left, gestures while meeting with President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office to discuss the progress of Middle East peace talks, Dec. 17, 1991, in Washington.David Levy, an Israeli politician born in Morocco who fought tirelessly against deep-seated racism against Jews from North Africa and went on to serve as foreign minister and hold other senior governmental posts, has died. He was 86.
Israel’s early leaders, mostly of European, or Ashkenazi, descent took a paternalistic attitude toward Jewish immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Many of these immigrants, known as Mizrahi Jews, were sent to shantytown transit camps and largely sidelined. “From the transit camp to the White House in Washington, to the State Duma in Moscow and on to the Elysée Palace in France,” Levy told Haaretz. “In all these places, the transit camp was with me as were those eyes who I felt were accompanying me. My great achievement is that I paved the way for many more and created a reality in which people began to believe in themselves, in their potential to dare and succeed,” he said.
Levy is considered one of the country’s most effective housing ministers for pushing a series of major housing developments that helped modernize the “maabara,” the word for the shantytown camps that housed Mizrahi Jews, including his own family, in the early decades of the state. “The life story of David Levy, the teenager that came from Morocco straight to the shantytowns, and from there made his way to the top leadership in the country – is a striking example of true and inspiring social leadership, which reflects the beautiful face of Israeliness,” President Isaac Herzog said.
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