Ashkenazim

Left wing activists protest against the war, calling to end the war in Gaza and Lebanon, outside the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, November 20, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?

Israeli leftists have been more divided and marginalized than ever since the October 7 assault, with joint Palestinian-Jewish struggle at a breaking point. Yet their sights remain set on long-term political change.

By Hadas Binyamini January 3, 2025

A Black Panthers protest in Jerusalem, 1971. (Yosef Hochman, courtesy of the Yad Yaari Research and Documentation Center)

Who is reaping the fruits of the Israeli Black Panthers’ struggle?

Half a century after setting off a political earthquake from the impoverished streets of Jerusalem, the radical Mizrahi movement has been largely forgotten. A new book seeks to untangle their contested legacy.

By Ben Reiff July 26, 2024

Activists from the Mizrahi left group Shovrot Kirot and the Kan2Come collective block Tel Aviv's Ayalon Highway during the anti-government protests, March 26, 2023. (Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

The dilemmas of the Mizrahi left in the Israeli protest movement

Prof. Smadar Lavie discusses the possibilities and contradictions of the Ashkenazi-dominated protests against the government, and traces the efforts of a small cohort of Mizrahi activists to make their voices heard.

By Shane Burley and Ben Lorber March 28, 2023

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Far-right politician and Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir visits Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, June 10, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The sheriff comes for his share of the colony’s spoils

Like Andrew Jackson in 19th century America, Ben Gvir represents a settler underclass demanding the full privileges derived from native dispossession.

By Avi-ram Tzoreff December 1, 2022

An activist from the Lo Nechmadim/Lo Nechmadot movement leads a crowd of social justice protesters on Tel Aviv's Ayalon Highway, July 15, 2012. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The Mizrahi left at a crossroads

On the verge of closure, a magazine that served as the ideological home of Israel’s Mizrahi left lives another day. But what do its financial woes reveal about the movement’s struggle in Israeli society?

By Ben Reiff December 16, 2021

Israelis mark the 26th Memorial Day for the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, October 18, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Good riddance to Rabin Square

The closure of Rabin Square presents an opportunity for the Zionist left to let go of its former leader’s legacy and embrace a politics of decolonization.

By Ben Reiff November 3, 2021

Hundreds of members of the Arab Liberation Army attend the funeral of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni at the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, April 8, 1948. (GPO)

Who fought in 1948?

A new book uncovers letters by Jewish and Arab fighters from the 1948 war, highlighting the personal lives of those who fought to establish Israel and those who tried to defend Palestine.

By Tom Pessah September 22, 2021

Three families hold an improvised, outdoor Shabbat dinner in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Givat Amal. Their homes were demolished following a years-long struggle against eviction without proper compensation, September 19, 2014. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

In the heart of Tel Aviv, a working class Mizrahi neighborhood fights its forced displacement

Israeli authorities and real estate moguls have for decades been displacing the residents of Givat Amal, who were sent to the neighborhood in the 50's to stop Palestinian refugees from returning to their land. Now, those who remain are struggling over the only home they've ever known.

By Oren Ziv September 19, 2021

An aerial view of the Asi River in Kibbutz Nir David, August 9, 2020. (Menachem Lederman/Flash90)

In one kibbutz, coexistence becomes an existential threat

The struggle to access a river in northern Israel has become a symbol of the discrimination Mizrahim face — and the myths Zionism tells about this land.

By Omri Najad August 16, 2021

Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, outside the PM's official residence in Jerusalem, Dec. 12, 2020. (Shir Torem/Flash90)

There is no defeating the right without Israel’s oppressed groups

If the Balfour protests are only interested in removing Netanyahu, it will not matter to their leaders how racist the alternative will be.

By Tom Mehager January 5, 2021

Israeli activists and supporters enter Kibbutz Nir David and swim in the Asi River for a couple of hours on August 14, 2020. (Photo by Mati Milstein)

The story of Israel’s Ashkenazi supremacy in one river

A river running through an Israeli kibbutz has turned into a site of controversy and violence that highlights how irrelevant the Zionist left has become.

By Lihi Yona August 18, 2020

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara attend the Jewish Moroccan Mimouna celebrations, Or Akiva, April 21, 2014. (Avishag Shaar Yashuv/Flash90)

How Likud’s Ashkenazi elite became the patron saints of the Mizrahim

Benjamin Netanyahu and his Ashkenazi allies are exploiting Mizrahi resentment in order to delegitimize the current protests.

By Orly Noy August 3, 2020

Israel Black Panther and political activist Reuven Abergil in his Jerusalem apartment, August 1, 2012. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

‘Our ideology is our pain’: Notes of an Israeli Black Panther

Reuven Abergel, one of the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers, talks about the complex relationship between the Mizrahim who led the movement in the 1970s and the Ashkenazi leftists who supported it.

By Reuven Abergel June 26, 2020