One of the most striking sentiments expressed by Mizrahis in Israel is a sense of disbelief. Some of these Jewish migrants from Arab countries are still stunned at the level of ignorance and prejudice that greeted them in the new Israel. For some reason, their new Jewish co-nationalists – who often came from the ghettos of Eastern Europe – thought the Mizrahis were backward and inferior, or, as Lyn Julius puts it, "badly educated" and "unwashed".

The Europeans couldn't get their heads around the fact of Mizrahis being poets or communists, driving cars or using toilets. How could they not know, wondered the Mizrahis, about the manner of life in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo or Casablanca?

What was at first a sense of shock swiftly turned into despair, as Mizrahis understood that the prevailing preconceptions among those in power would shape social status in Israel. It would also dictate the type of Jewish individual that would come to represent the country.

Zionism, the ideology that built the Jewish state, was conceived in Europe and was, inevitably, set to a European tune. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that half of Israel's Jewish population (and until recently a clear majority) is of Oriental origin. Or for the geographic inconvenience of Israel being in the Middle East.

Israel has a particular narrative about the "ingathering of the exiles", the Jewish migrants that arrived after its creation in 1948 from all corners of the world. The talk is of equality, melting pots and a "new Israeli", an amalgam of all those composite cultures. But in reality, Mizrahi culture was, and still is, considered to be an oxymoron. It was channelled into harmless outlets such as cuisine, craftwork and folklore – inconsequential gloss, the presence of which could then be used to bat off complaints of underrepresentation.

Meanwhile, proper, high culture is maintained as a European preserve. That's why former Jewish musical legends of the Arab world – feted performers, whose names still inspire adoration in the Middle East – ended up selling pots in the city slums of Israel. That's also why there are over 20 European classical music ensembles in the Jewish state, and just one Mizrahi outfit – currently on the verge of extinction.

You could, as Julius has done in this section, say that such prejudice is ancient history, the teething problems of a struggling new state. Many Israelis would emphatically agree with you. Others simply don't. The ones that still feel the daily impact of prejudice will laugh in your face – as I experienced, many times – if you declare social inequities to be done with. How can it be over, they'll ask, when it is etched into the county's DNA?

Those Mizrahis will shake their heads at your folly in suggesting – as I did – that the army, the Jewish intermarrying, the Mizrahi politicians and Israeli society at large have all hammered out all those early hitches. If it were over, they'll ask, then why would the recent, first Israeli series of Big Brother dissolve into an ethnic spat?

If it were over, why would Mizrahi kids still be refused admission into central city clubs? Why would there still be pathetically wide ethnic gaps in education or professional attainment? Why would the majority of Israel's judges have European surnames, while most blue-collar criminals are Mizrahi?

If it were truly over, then the country would reflect its Mizrahi composition equally, be visibly proud of its Judeo-Arabic heritage and of the longstanding Jewish affiliation with the Arab world. Then, as a confident, credible and socially cohesive country, it might have an entirely different take on relations with its neighbours in the Middle East.

Recognising that is not to suggest that Mizrahis didn't experience persecution in the Arab world. They did, as Julius (whose family fled from Iraq) points out. Researching my book, I heard many Mizrahi recollections of fear, suffering and discrimination in former homelands. But just as many readily share other memories: of happy lives, equal rights and considerate neighbours. "Our doors were always open," Mizrahis often told me, when they spoke of past lives in Arab or Muslim countries.

So what happens if we foreground the good times rather than the sporadic suffering? One history teacher at an Israeli school set up to rescue drop-out Mizrahis from the failing education system told me that kids typically turn up to class with set views. They think that the Arab world, in its manifest animosity towards the Jewish state, is continuing a long tradition of hating Jews.

When the pupils find out that it wasn't always like that, they start to ask different questions: "Hang on, so why are they so against us today?" The accepted view of the conflict, as centuries-old and defined by innate hatreds, suddenly collapses. A new narrative emerges, of a relatively recent struggle within a wide-frame of historic Arab-Jewish co-existence, creativity, productivity and plain old friendship. All of which might explain why this other story, the story of the Mizrahis, is so threatening to those who insist on holding tight to a monochrome script – one that helps to keep Arabs and Israelis stuck in a locked-down conflict, with no possible hope of escape.