The framers of Israel’s Declaration of Independence were careful to situate the guarantee of “equality of social and political rights to all of its inhabitants” at the very heart of the text. Well versed in constitutional history, and steeped in both Jewish tradition and the principles of the enlightenment, they strove to create a foundational document that would be as inspirational as the American Declaration of Independence. Certainly, the purpose of the Jewish State was the “Ingathering of the Exiles.” But with its promise of “freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel,” surely it could also be the national embodiment of Isaiah’s “light of the nations.”
Or not. In Israel’s Black Panthers, Asaf Elia-Shalev forces us to confront the sometimes vast distance between constitutional aspiration and social and political practice. On paper, Mizrahi Jews in Israel have the same rights as their fellow Ashkenazi citizens. In reality, however, Mizrahi Jews often face prejudice and overt racism. This is particularly the case for the estimated 650,000 who ended up in Israel after fleeing or being expelled from Arab lands in the wake of 1948. To a political class and social and cultural elites rooted in Ashkenazi culture, Mizrahi Jews seemed “uncomfortably similar to … Palestinians.” And with their “Arabic tongues and Oriental manners and predilections … [they] posed a threat to Herzl’s vision of a European state in the Middle East.”
Without the networks and elite connections afforded by “protektsya,” a nepotistic system that still defines Israeli society, Arab Jews were consigned to remote villages and substandard neighborhoods. Mizrahi children were shunted into vocational and “opportunity” programming due to their “cognitive deficiencies.” Their parents and grandparents scratched out a living in the twilight world of marginal jobs, day labor, and the gray and black markets. Even the Jewish world’s obsession with the plight of Soviet (read: white and Ashkenazi) Jews only reinforced their alienation from the Jewish mainstream.
The consequences of this racism were dire. As the fifties gave way to the sixties and seventies, many disenfranchised and disaffected Mizrahi teenagers drifted into crime and delinquency. But a few belonged to grassroots youth clubs and literacy programs that exposed them to a much wider world — specifically, to the social upheaval unfolding in North America and Western Europe. For young North African and Middle Eastern Jews, it was a radicalizing experience. They noticed striking parallels between themselves and young, inner-city African Americans.
So it was almost inevitable that young, newly organized, and radicalized Mizrahi Jews would call themselves the Black Panthers, after the revolutionary group founded by Huey Newton in Oakland, California in the late 1960s. The American Panthers wanted change, and they were scary — at least to the establishment. Even better, their name invoked the common Yiddish slur for Mizrahim: shvartse khaye, or “black animal.” Under the leadership of visionary activists like Saadia Marciano, Reuven Abergal, and Charlie Biton, the Israeli Panthers provoked the Israeli establishment, took on a fundamentally racist police force, echoed their American namesake’s demands for equal justice and opportunity, and even managed to find their way into the highest echelons of Israeli power. After a three-hour meeting with a group of Panthers, Prime Minister Golda Meir concluded, “My dear friend, these boys are not nice.”
Maybe nice boys don’t make a revolution (incidentally, one of the flaws of this account is the relative absence of Mizrahi women in anything but background roles). But this book is a fascinating study of how what is essentially a network of street gangs can undertake a common cause and effect real social change. While the Israeli Panthers largely eschewed the violence of the original Black Panthers, they succeeded in mirroring their legacy as proponents of Mizrahi pride, culture, and community self-sufficiency. And in inaugurating an “era of radical awareness,” the Israeli Panthers created fertile ground for Shas, the political party that gave Mizrahi Jews a voice of their own in the Knesset. The Panthers demonstrated the power of radicalization, challenging assumptions about what Israel is.
Angus Smith is a retired Canadian intelligence official, writer and Jewish educator who lives in rural Nova Scotia.
