Joseph, I wish your Polyyanna view of the sefardim/ashkanazim relationship among the frum in EY would be true. In American, I think discrimination is less an issue because the sefardi population is smaller, so it melts into the majority without being threatening. In EY, it is very much present, unfortunately. I can’t understand why an otherwise wonderful community full of chesed still feels the need to categorize. but it happens. There is very little intermarriage between frum sefardim and ashkenazim, unlike among the chilonim. Yeshivos, and some neighborhoods as well, take in sefardim only to fill a quota. there are some sefardim who change their last names so they will have less discrimination (ie get their kids into ashkenazi yeshivos). To be dan l’kaf zechus, it may be because it is important to preserve individual communities’ mesora, so that to some degree there will always be differences, in a positive way. But we need a way to preserve people’s uniqueness and still respect each other for being different.
With the chilonim, the army and then university act as an equalizer, and everyone comes out the same in the end, which is why I believe there is actually less discrimination. Yes, the State and the ruling European elite showed great disdain for the immigrants from N Africa and Mid-Eastern countries, and they were treated very poorly, to put it mildly. But once they integrated, gave up their “antiquated” customs and behaviors, and became “Israeli”, a lot of that discrimination disappeared. For example, at my workplace, there are highly educated chiloni sefardim and ashkenazim getting along just fine, plenty of mixed marriages as well, generating no raised eyebrows. I don’t know if it is representative of all of Israel, but things have improved a lot since the early days of statehood in the secular population.