Israeli Black Panthers

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

Reuven Abergel, co-founder of the Israeli Black Panthers, speaks to more than 10,000 African asylum seekers gathered in Levinsky Park in support of their struggle, south Tel Aviv, January 7, 2014. (Activestills.org)

An Israeli Black Panther’s call for true democracy

We did not get to taste one drop of the promises in the Declaration of Independence. Now we must gather all the oppressed groups we have ignored.

By Reuven Abergel May 8, 2023

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

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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

An Israeli Black Panthers protest at Tel Aviv University. Shemesh is third from right. Yigal Bin-Nun (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Mizrahi rebel: Bidding farewell to an Israeli Black Panther

Kochavi Shemesh, one of the legendary leaders of the Israeli Black Panthers, believed that the liberation of Mizrahim was bound up with the freedom of Palestinians, black South Africans, and other oppressed people. He passed away last week at the age of 75. By Asaf Shalev Kochavi Shemesh, who was born in Iraq during World War II and…

By +972 Magazine May 19, 2019

African asylum seekers and human rights activists protest against deportation of asylum seekers at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on March 24, 2018. (Alster/Flash90)

At Tel Aviv rally, a Mizrahi-asylum seeker alliance is born

Tens of thousands crowded Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Saturday to show solidarity for asylum seekers facing deportation. ‘If we let the deportation happen, the Jewish people will have a stain on its history forever.’ It was an unusually hazy night in Tel Aviv. The lights from the stage caught the dust in long, yellow beams.…

By Joshua Leifer March 25, 2018

Israeli Black Panthers, including Charlie Biton, protesting on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, May 1, 1973. (Moshe Milner/GPO)

Israel’s Black Panthers remind us what their struggle was about

Back in the 1970s, the deep socioeconomic divide between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel led to a massive protest movement and the rise of the Israeli Black Panthers. A newly approved official civics textbook in Israel portrays the movement as violent and criminal. We called up three Black Panthers to remind us all of the true…

By Haokets October 11, 2016

Jewish immigrants from Yemen at a camp near Rosh Ha’ayin. (Photo: GPO)

The roots of anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel

The founders of the state, Jews of Ashkenazi origin raised on European ideas, viewed ‘Oriental Jews’ as backward and primitive from the moment they began arriving en masse on Israel’s shores. “An Ashkenazi gangster, thief, pimp or murderer will not gain the sympathy of the Ashkenazi community (if there is such a thing), nor will he expect…

By Edo Konrad December 1, 2015

Palestinians in Bethlehem commemorate the Nakba, May 14, 2013. (Activestills.org)

Fighting occupation must not blind us from remembering the Nakba

A solution to the problem of the occupation will be worthless if we do not gain the courage to take apart the human food chain that has become entrenched in this land since 1948. On Sunday night, I spoke at the annual protest march — this time in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv where it…

By Orly Noy May 31, 2015

Israelis march during a protest calling for social justice, Hatikva neighborhood, south Tel Aviv, June 14, 2012. (photo: Activestills.org)

Israeli Black Panther: Mizrahim must boycott the elections

Since its establishment and until today, not a single election has fundamentally changed the status of Mizrahim in the ‘only democracy in the Middle East.’ Now we must use the only tool we have left at our disposal and refuse to participate in the game altogether. By Reuven Abergel For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the upcoming…

By Haokets February 20, 2015

‘How can this monkey be talking about an ideology that developed in Europe?’

‘We are progress and modernization, freedom and equality, ‘peace and love.’ And they, what are they?’ On the history of the painful relationship between the Israeli Left and Mizrahim. By Ron Cahlili (Translated from Hebrew by Orit Friedland) The common wisdom is that Mizrahim and the Left are like oil and water, and that the two…

By Haokets April 17, 2013