On the topic of shmad I’d like to say that I don’t think hayom making aliyah is a problem of shmad as some may be asserting here – but on the other hand what the tzionim did to the sefardim during the early days of this country is absolutely disgusting. If it wasn’t for their strong emunah p’shuta as well as the work of certain gedolim like Reb Yoilish and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and probably more than anyone else Rav Ovadia ztz”l there wouldn’t be any frum or even traditional sefardim left. My wife’s family came from Morocco and my mother in law was initially the only one of 11 kids to go off and intermarry. B”H she came back and remarried a yid, but today of those other siblings she is the only one frum and almost the only one married to a Jew. When asked how her family could just drop Torah when they were all frum in Morocco she said everyone always told them the medinah is the mashiach you’ve been waiting for all these centuries so now you don’t need religion anymore. Check out Rav Kahane’s HY”D speech where he details how they would put sefardim in transit camps and not grant the fathers work permits unless they showed an ishur from Misrad haChinuch that they had enrolled their children in chiloni schools – i.e. give your kids a non-Torah education or watch them starve.
The early tzionim did full-fledged shmad b’kavanah – all just so that the sefardim would give more votes to their degenerate socialist parties instead of following the gedolim as they were naturally inclined to do. You can argue that things were tough in Muslim countries and indeed they were – but that does in no way shape or form make the spiritual holocaust of Sefardi Jewry by their fellow Jews forgivable!