米哈尔·比顿是一位社会学家，专门研究塞法迪和米兹拉希犹太社区。
Mijal Bitton is a sociologist who specializes in Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities.
退役中将加迪·艾森科特可能在10月27日终结本雅明·内塔尼亚胡近二十年的执政。他回忆说，曾有媒体人士建议他以父母在马阿巴拉相识为竞选素材，马阿巴拉是20世纪50年代犹太移民的过渡营。只有一个问题，艾森科特说：他的父母是在基布兹相识的。那位评论员很失望：“这故事太烂了。”对关注选举的美国人来说，这番对话只是个趣闻。对以色列人来说，它却解释了一切。
Gadi Eisenkot, the retired lieutenant general who could end Benjamin Netanyahu’s nearly two decades in power on Oct. 27, recalls being advised by a media personality to campaign on his parents’ meeting in a ma’abarah, one of the transit camps for Jewish immigrants in the 1950s. There was just one problem, Eisenkot said: his parents met on a kibbutz. The pundit was disappointed: “That’s a lousy story.”To an American following the election, the exchange is a curiosity. To an Israeli, it explains everything.
马阿巴拉收容了约65万犹太移民和难民，他们在1948年以色列建国后的几年里从阿拉伯世界各地抵达。这个国家接纳了他们，尽管世俗的欧洲阿什肯纳兹创始人瞧不起他们。
The ma’abarot housed many of the approximately 650,000 Jewish immigrants and refugees who arrived from across the Arab world in the years following Israeli independence in 1948. The state took them in even as the secular European Ashkenazi founders looked down on them.