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“Either
the cake will be shared
by all or there will be no cake.”
30
years to the Black Panthers in Israel
Sami
Shalom Chetrit
On
March 21, a conference was held at Beit Hillel, the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem celebrating 30 years since the founding
of the ‘Black Panthers’ movement: a movement whose emergence
marked a turning point in the Mizrahim struggle for equality in
Israel. The conference hall packed with students, Mizrahi
activists, and people in solidarity with the radical Mizrahim
was characterized by an atmosphere of strong emotional
excitement due to the presence of a number of leaders from the
Panthers uprising. On the other hand, the presentations of the
Panthers leaders, activists and academtians regarding the
ideology and political goals of the Black panthers themmselves;
brought to light the changes the Mizrahi movement has gone
through, since the original Black Panther perception of their
oppression within class and racial terms to today’s heavy
emphasis on culture and identity.
The
event was initiated by Sami Shalom Chetrit, the chief editor of
Kedma – Middle Eastern Gate to Israel (kedma.co.il), and Eli
Bareket the executive director of Beit Hillel at the Hebrew
University; and was carried
out in cooperation with and the
assistance of other organizations as Shatil
and TZAH - Students for social justice, and Musrara
School of Photography headed by Avi Sabag.
The conference finale’ was a beautiful exiting concert by The
Israeli Andalus Orchestra, conducted by the Maestro Dr. Avi
Ilam-Amzalag, and the leading soloists Emiel Zrihan and Lior
El-Maleh.
Israeli
historiography continues to push the Black Panthers’ movement
to the outermost margins of the Israeli historical narrative, by
largely labeling them a negative event that everyone would be
better off forgetting. After thirty years since their initial
emergence, only a handful of academic studies about the Black
Panthers have been published. The most prominent question
emerges of why this is the case?
I for one, do
not expect the educational system to deal officially with the
Black Panthers movement or with the Mizrahi struggle in general,
largely because I do not expect anything from such a system to
begin with. But the larger question is why Mizrahi researchers,
writers, intellectuals and organizations also choose to ignore
the Black Panthers? After 30 years, many of these people are
afraid to identify with the Black Panthers struggle, and
[they]treat it as though it were[was] a case of a private
struggle carried out by a particular band of ‘not nice’
youth (to use former Israeli P.M Golda Meir’s famous remark
about them) from the Musrara neighborhood. Mizrahi politicians
love to continually emphasize that ‘We are not Black
Panthers’, thus implying that in contrast to the Panthers,
they are indeed ‘nice’. As Arye Derei [the political leader
of Shas, now in prison] remarked more than once, Shas is ‘a
positive movement which keeps order and quite and prevents
agitation in the streets’.
However, from
today’s 30-year retrospective, and after engaging in a
thorough research of my own, I state without hesitation that the
‘Black Panthers’ were the ground-breaking catalyst for the
Mizrahi struggle in Israel. Israel before March 1971 was a
different Israel than that of after March 1971. In the former,
the economic and cultural oppression was accepted by Mizrahim
with submissiveness, except for short rebellious outbursts which
were repressed with an iron fist by the government and its
Mizrahi collaborators, as in the case of the Wadi Salib Uprising
in 1959.
The Panthers
contributed to unmasking the economic and social relations in
Israel and revealed it to be a sheer battlefield. Israel before
the Black Panthers, refused to admit its policy of inequality
and denied its oppressive treatment of Mizrahim. Yet thirty
years later, Israel can no longer deny this economic and
cultural oppression which today is becoming increasingly acute.
The state is therefore in need of far more sophisticated
mechanisms and means[of]manipulation than those of mere denial
that it used in the past. Today, this increasing inequality is
conspicuous in the undisguised war of the rich launched against
any policy or self-organization of the Mizrahim aimed at
addressing their socio-political woes. Of course, it is only a
question of time before the masses of oppressed workers fight
back.
In
this sense, the gathering in the Hebrew University, together
with the Black Panthers heroes and their partners from the Left
movements is not only an expression of thanks and honor: it is a
genuine attempt to correct Israeli and Mizrahi historiography by
relocating the Black Panthers’ struggle at the center of
collective memory and an emerging alternative narrative so as to
constitute for us and for the coming generations, a source of
learning, understanding, consciousness and most importantly,
inspiration, to continue the struggle, for the long and
difficult road ahead.
The Ascent and
Decline of the ‘Black Panthers’ Movement:
A Selected
Chronicle of Events
The Black
Panthers’ uprising was begun by a group of young, unemployed,
dropout residents of the Musrara neighborhood located at the
border between East and West Jerusalem - a neighborhood whose
Western (Israeli) half came to be as a result of the expulsion
of its original Palestinian inhabitants during the War of 1948.
Due to its peripheral status at the border with the then
Trans-Jordanian side of Jerusalem, the early years of the
neighborhood were characterized by issues of daily
security,which ended in the wake of the ’67 war, because both
the Eastern and Western halves of Jerusalem came beneath Israeli
municipal and police control. The neighborhood was then housed
by 650 Mizrahi immigrant families, the majority of whom came
from North Africa, with a minority coming from Iraq.
The local youth
self organization began with demands from the municipal youth
departent, regarding the educational system and extra-curricular
activities.However these demands soon intersected with exposure
to the radical Left of matzpen [ a radical Socialist and
AntiZionist organization]which produced a radical Mizrahi social
consciousness attuned to social economic perspectives far wider
than the neighborhood they grew up in.
.
The First Stage: Radical Collective Confrontation
[January
13, 1971: The first article on the Black panthers in the daily ‘Al
Hamishmar’. The name appears for the first time when they are
quoted:’ We shall be the Black Panthers of Israel’.
March
3, 1971: The first demonstration in the Jerusalem Municipality
Square. All leaders of the emerging movement together with
members of ‘Matzpen’ are taken into preventive detention
before the demonstration, following the decision of PM Golda
Meir.
April
13, 1971: The Prime Minister’s office. A meeting is held with the
Black Panthers. Meir attempts to carry on a conversation similar
to a social worker’s talk with street gangs. After the meeting
she refers to them as ‘not nice people’.
May
18, 1971: Central Jerusalem, ‘The Night of the Panthers’, Between
5000 and 7000 people participate in a demonstration which, more
than any other activity stamped the Black Panthers with the
image of uncompromising radicalism.
May
28, 1971: Ten days after the Night of the Panthers, supporters and
Black Panther representatives get together in an assembly of
solidarity with the struggle, in a Tel Aviv cinema hall.
June
1971: The first
issue of ‘The Word of the Black Panthers’ is published as
the mouthpiece of the movement. For the first time, they refer
to their activity in unequivocal radical terms of Resistance and
Uprising in the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi context: “Our organization
has risen on the background of the bitterness, accumulated since
the first European settlers came to this country. Our
organization is the first expression of the Mizrahi Jews’
resistance - a resistance that has existed since we were first
introduced to Ashkenazi Jews.”
July
5 1971: The Quiet Demonstration. With full cooperation from the
police, Black Panthers from throughout Israel demonstrate with
no clashes and no use of force on both sides About 3000 men and
women assembled, among them 500 members and supporters of the
organization, mainly from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Demonstrators
carry banners with slogans denouncing discrimination, demanding
the liquidation of poverty and calling for Golda Meir’s
resignation. The Panthers prove to be in full control as to the
nature of their organization’s activities.
August
28 1971: Zion Square, Jerusalem. A stormy demonstration of thousands
is held where an effigy of Golda Meir is set on fire: “We are
warning the government that we will take all necessary means
against show trials of the Panthers’ activists…A state in
which half the population are kings, and the other half are
treated as exploited slaves – we will burn it down.”
October 15, 1971: In
an interview with the French daily Le Monde, Golda Meir
explains, “they [Mizrahim] brought discrimination with them.
Back in the countries they came from, there was discrimination
against them.”
January
18, 1972: Demonstration in front of Binyanay Hauma in Jerusalem, on
the opening night of the Zionist Congress. For the first time
the Black Panthers openly accuse the Zionist movement of being
responsible for the unequal socio-economic conditions of the
Mizrahim.
March
14, 1972: Jerusalem, The Black Panthers’ Milk project. In a
nightly, Robin Hoods style operation, (and one of many similar
activities), activists of the movement transfer bottles of milk
intended for the rich Ashkenazi suburb of Rehavia, to the
poorest neighborhoods in Jerusalem. A tag attached to the
bottles reads: “The children in the poverty stricken
neighborhoods do not find the milk that they need at their
doorstep each morning. In contrast, there are cats and dogs in
rich neighborhoods that get plenty of milk, day in-day out.”
March
27, 1972: “The Panthers’ Budget” is presented for approval at
the Knesset. Its name derives from the significant increase in
education and housing clauses, thus considered to be one of the
greatest immediate achievements of the Black Panthers.
May
1st, 1972:
A joint demonstration of the ‘Black Panthers’ with
‘Matzpen’ and ‘Siach’[New Israeli Left] against poverty,
discrimination and annexation of the occupied territories is
held in Jerusalem. The police disperses the demonstration using
force, and more than 60 demonstrators are detained.
June
11, 1972: Four leaders of the Panthers are arrested and accused of
possessing Molotov cocktail [petrol bombs] in Jerusalem, with
the intention of using them against the offices of ‘The League
for Jewish Defense’ belonging to Meir Kahana.
December
27, 1972: The Black Panthers National Conference is held in Jerusalem
aiming at trying to unite their ranks throughout the country.
The conference ends with no great success.
February
21, 1973: A group of Black Panthers unites with MK Shalom Cohen’s
‘Democratic Israelis’ faction towards the elections and sets
up “Enough - Black Panthers, Israeli Democrats.” The
unification causes a severe conflict with other Panthers who
strongly oppose participating in general elections claiming that
the movement is not ready.
April
18, 1973: Sixteen families in the poor Hatikva neighborhood in Tel
Aviv invade a building as a result of a Panthers’ initiative
in protest of the difficulties poor people face in housing.
June
22, 1973: The report of “The Prime Minister’s Committee Concerning
Children and Youth in Distress” is presented to the
government, two years after the committee has been appointed.
The report emphasizes the severe economic distress concentrated
among ‘immigrants from Asia and Africa’, and the lack of any
general social policy to deal with it.
Overall,
the period of the Panthers uprising, which continued primarily
between March 1971 and mid-1972, is crammed with more collective
confrontation activities than during the entire era of the
1950’s and 60’s. Moreover, in the above survey of events one
can see a gradual increase in radicalization concerning the
contents and means of confrontation, which, as shown below then
deteriorates to complete isolation and disorganization.
Second
Stage: From Political Party Politics to Disintegration
September
15, 1973: Elections for the ‘General Federation of Workers’ (the Histadrut).‘The
Black Panthers – Israeli Democrats’ win 3 seats in the
Executive Committee and are encouraged to participate in the
coming elections for the Knesset.
October
5, 1973: War. The Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack against Israel
on The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Israel enters a period of
intense security apprehensions, and deep mourning over the
thousands killed. The new protest is hitherto directed against
the ‘foul up’ of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan’s government
that did not foresee the sudden attack. The social protest is
swept aside to the margins of public debate.
December
31, 1973: Elections to the Knesset, (postponed from October), are
held. The Black Panthers campaign in two factions: Edi
Maslka’s ‘Blue - White Panthers’, and the ‘Black
Panthers – Israeli Democrats’ list, headed by Shalom Cohen
and Sa’adya Martziano. In their platform they note that “In
this country there are two classes: those that never go hungry
and those who are always screwed. This is not a discrimination
of this or that ethnic group. Entire classes - the class of the
oppressed majority, most of who are Mizrahim - are being brought
to their knees’.
As
Prof. Hanna Hertzog claims, on the way to the ballot box, as
every Mizrahi party from then on demonstrates, the Panthers
moderated their messages and oriented themselves towards
obtaining a legitimate place. After the failure in the
elections, the Black Panthers almost ceased to exist.
June
1974:
Shalom Cohen dismantles the pact with the Black Panthers
and devotes most of his activities to general political issues
and the Palestinian question.
February
1975: The list of the Panthers to the elections in the
teachers’ union is rejected on the pretext that the names
signed for the petition to participate in the election are
fraudulently obtained.
May
17, 1977: The Mizrahim revolt at the polls. The first political
turnover in Israel takes place as the Likud, led by Menahem
Begin, wins 43 seats in the Israeli Knesset in contrast to the
32 of the Labor Party, led by Shimon Peres. 75% of Likud voters
are Mizrahim. In his victory speech, Begin touches upon the
protest vote of the Mizrahim: “Today a historical turning
point has occurred… The citizens have proven that they are not
frightened slaves of the Ma’arach.” [The former front-headed
by the Labor Party].
All
lists that included Panthers failed except that of Charlie
Bitton who became a Member of Knesset as a Black Panther faction
on the Rakach list and Sa’adya Martziano who joined the
‘Shelli’ list [of the Zionist Left]. Bitton served as an
original and opposition radical Knesset Member for 15 years
until his political career ended in 1992. In the 1992 elections,
Bitton left ‘Hadash’ of which he was a member and ran as a
candidate for the ‘Hatikva’ party, but he was unable to gain
the minimum votes needed for entering the Knesset.
Adaptation
of Universal Radical Left Ideology to the Local Situation
The
wider ideological framework of the ‘Black Panthers’ consists
of two main factors: the first and main factor is the popular
basic neo-Marxist revolutionary discourse, which was absorbed in
the movement’s rhetoric in terms that included ‘oppressors
and oppressed’, ‘exploiters and exploited’, ‘unskilled
worker’, and of course, ‘equality’, ‘justice’, and
‘revolution’. These influences reached the group through
students in the Left movements, ‘Matzpen’ and ‘Siach’,
and also through American students, like Dr. Naomi Kiss, who
were close to and familiar with the struggle and discourse of
the movements in the U.S. in the 1960s.
The
second universal ideological component was the discourse world
of the Black struggle in the U.S., from whom they took not only
the name of the most radical movement ‘The Black Panthers’,
and the symbol of the panther and the fist (which was displayed
on every banner, slogan and T-shirt), but also central concepts,
mentioned above, like ‘The Blacks are being screwed’,
‘white power’, ‘masters and slaves’, ‘police state’,
‘brothers’, ‘equality of rights’, and others. The
adoption was not just symbolic. The members of the movement had
a high social consciousness and full understanding of the
language. However, what the Israeli Black Panthers took not only
the intensity of radicalization of the discourse from the
American Black Panthers, but also the determination in their
collective confrontation with the Israeli establishment.
The
Marxist and Black ideological influences were adapted to the
local situation as follows:
The
ultimate language of the Black Panthers, for the first time
directly attacked the manipulative myth that ‘Security
precedes everything’, by which the governments of Mapai
[Labor] silenced every protest. They claimed very clearly and
directly that a state in which there is such an unequal economic
situation of Mizrahim (and
of Arabs – as said in certain places, mainly by Bitton and
Shemesh) has no right to exist. This was expressed by
Martziano’s radical words regarding the division of the cake:
“Either the cake will be shared by all or there will be no
cake”.
Another
local ideological principle is the shattering of central myths
of European Zionism and the state, mainly presenting the
prevailing myths of ‘integration of the exiles’, and ‘the
law of return’ as false. The innovations here were in the
attack upon the ideological roots of inequality - namely, the
attack was not directed only at the political policy-makers of
the present, but also upon the World Zionist Movement that
induced the Mizrahim to immigrate to Israel with various false
promises and declarations. It is not by chance that the ‘Black
Panthers’ erased the word ‘Zionism’ from their political
jargon, albeit they never declared that they were anti-Zionists.
The
Black Panthers were also the first to make the connection
between the concepts of ‘class’ and ‘ethnic group’. They
often compared the way the new Russian immigrants were treated
by the absorption authorities (in the early 70s), with the
second generation of Mizrahim who were still living in dire
poverty. Thus they added another layer of comparison which
previously existed in the collective consciousness– that of
the absorption of Ashkenazim, and Mizrahim in the early years of
the state. In this way, they completely undermined arguments of
‘Modernization’ and a ‘sociology of Backwardness’, which
was based upon cultural rather than class analysis. In this, the
Black Panthers preceded the class-oriented sociologists in
Israel who appeared not accidentally, only after the era of the
Black Panthers became the focus of their research.
Radical
Effects on Israeli society
The
Black Panthers’ greatest achievement was their ability to
unmask the issue of the Mizrahim by presenting it as a permanent
issue on the political, public and academic agenda in Israel. No
one could pretend anymore that the problem was only a matter of
‘subjectivity’ or related to the set of priorities in
Mizrahi homes, as Golda Meir once advised: “Let them stop all
those family celebrations. Let them learn how to manage their
budget rationally. Let them work hard for their rights. They
should begin by having smaller families”. From then on it was
clear to everyone that the problem exists – though it is
continually avoided to be addressed.
According
to Tarrow’s factors of success and failure of [? Reference?],
we may claim here that the Panthers failed in translating the
‘protest circle’, which they managed to preserve for a
considerable length of time, into the institutionalization of an
organized social movement. Furthermore they failed in
transforming the mobilization of the masses into a forum in
which they could continue an institutionalized political
struggle. The Black Panthers most certainly would have wished to
see their movement grow into a popular social movement of ‘the
class of the Mizrahim in distress’, as Aberjil, one of the
panthers put it But they were unaware of the tragic role that
history bestowed upon them, as the ones who ‘broke through’,
but who were sacrifices for the cause of the Mizrahi and social
struggles in Israel - namely, to carry out a set of radical
effects which, in time, were to become achievements of a general
struggle, whose fruits other, more moderate movements, would
harvest.
The
‘Black Panthers’ triggered off an enormous radical effect on
Israeli society of which I will note three central areas of
influence:
First,
they granted legitimacy and acceleration, together with
additional political conditions, to the process of Mizrahim
leaving the hegemonous political center, headed by Mapai, to the
only alternative that existed at that time – the Likud. The
ballot revolt of 1977 was the significant landmark in this
process of which the year 1981 was the climax. After that came
the exit from the Likud as well to the new alternative of Shas.
Second,
the Panthers prompted a Mizrahi cultural awakening reflective of
the cultural oppression of the Mizrahim which began immediately
after their first protest and which continued in tandem with the
breakdown of Mapai’s hegemony. Initially it was music that
blossomed forth, followed by poetry and prose, and above all,
academic research. Later came cinematography and the arts.
Third,
the Panthers helped to bring about a radical social discourse in
Israel. The Panthers determined the elements of this discourse
in the precedent-setting connections they made between the local
class-ethnic struggle on the one hand and the universal
(Marxist) class struggle and ethnic Black struggle in the U.S.,
on the other. An additional element is the connection they were
able to make between the economic Left and the political Left
making them the first and last Mizrahim movement to do this
explicitly.
Most of all
however, I would like to emphasize the courage and devotion of
the group of youngsters from Musrara who stood up against the
forces of oppression and confronted the state headed by
Mapai on both the ideological and physical levels. It is sad to
note that since the confrontations of the Black Panthers, not
one Mizrahi movement has emerged which dared to carry out a
direct and brave confrontation with the state. As such, the
motif of ‘sacrifice’ has almost completely disappeared from
the life of the struggle. Shas, for example has not even
organized one demonstration against the policy of inequality,
for the simple reason that Shas itself is an continuous
governing party which is a partner to this policy making. Only
brave radical confrontation is capable of raising consciousness
and clarifying to the oppressor that ‘things cannot continue
as normal’ anymore. Only through the confrontation and
sacrifice of the Black Panthers could the consciousness of the
struggle be opened in the 1980’s and 90’s allowing for
cultural creativity, educational development, community
empowerment and alternative ideological confrontation.
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