Mizrahim

Sapir Sluzker Amran and Carmen Elmakiyes Amos, 2023. (Shiraz Grinbaum)

Why this Mizrahi feminist movement is disbanding — but not disappearing

Shovrot Kirot aimed to bring together marginalized communities in Israel to build a new political force. But facing funding shortfalls and internal divisions after Oct. 7, its leaders have been forced to rethink their strategy.

By Nathalie Rozanes February 28, 2025

Miami Beach Police along Ocean Drive, in South Beach, Miami, Jan. 16, 2016. (Adam Fagen/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

When a Jew shot by another Jew cries ‘Death to Arabs!’

Mizrahim can continue to deny their identity, but they cannot shed their skin. The Miami shooter’s bullets remind them: after all, you’re Arab too.

By Orly Noy February 19, 2025

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

Latest

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

The scene where a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants hit an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, October 9, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

How Israel’s emergency plans widened the south’s class divides

Four teachers at an Ashkelon high school reveal how the state’s handling of Oct. 7 evacuees played into racial, economic, and geographic inequalities.

By Roy Cohen January 10, 2024

Israeli teenagers sign their names onto a letter declaring their refusal to enlist in the army and serve a dictatorship in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories, Gimnasia Herzliya, Tel Aviv, September 3, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

A lesson on Israeli ‘democracy’ from an 18-year-old draft refuser

Previous generations of Israelis closed their eyes to the oppression of Palestinians, Mizrahim, and asylum seekers. Our generation can be different.

By Yahli Agai September 5, 2023

An elderly Jewish man seen in Kfar Shalem, 1969. (Boris Carmi /Meitar Collection / National Library of Israel / The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection)

From Salama to Kfar Shalem: How Mizrahim fit into the ongoing Nakba

The expulsion of Salama’s Palestinians, the settling of Mizrahi Jews in their place, and the eviction of those residents decades later reveals the mechanism by which Israel continues to erase Palestinian existence.

By Doron Yacov and Adi Golan Bikhnafo May 15, 2023

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

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

Right-wing activists protest the annual Pride parade, Jerusalem, August 2, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The far right always has a next target

The threat to Israel's LGBTQ community underlines how a state designed to eject a particular group from its midst will always look for new targets.

By Natasha Roth-Rowland January 21, 2023

An Israeli Border Police officer points his weapon at journalists and Palestinian paramedics during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters in north Ramallah, near the Beit El checkpoint, occupied West Bank, December 22, 2017. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

The rebellion of Israel’s second army

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi hands over to his successor a ‘policing army’ that is more autonomous, settler-led, and lethal than ever.

By Yagil Levy December 26, 2022

A display at Amram's exhibition on the Yemenite Children Affair in London. (Joanne Rosenthal)

‘Ragged rats’: London exhibit captures the racism that tore apart Mizrahi families

The new exhibition highlights the overlooked role of diaspora Zionist organizations in the kidnapping and adoption of Israel’s Yemenite children.

By Leeor Ohayon December 1, 2022

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