"They were the sons and daughters of the Jewish exodus from the Arab world, known nowadays as Mizrahi (plural: Mizrahim), but more commonly referred to at the time as Sephardim.

They soon found themselves being racialized as Black ¹ by a hegemonic Ashkenazi class tracing its heritage to Europe, whose vision of a Jewish state had not much accounted for Mizrahim before the Holocaust eliminated two-thirds of European Jewry.

[2 of x]

#palestine

¹ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-04-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-guerrilla-filmmaker-who-caught-israels-black-panthers-on-tape/0000017f-db3b-db5a-a57f-db7b3ca80000

"Israel’s Ashkenazi founders greeted the Mizrahi with racist disdain.

Authorities hosed them down with pesticide; settled them in remote desert camps ¹ or crammed them into the homes of exiled Palestinian refugees ²...

[3 of x]

#palestine #mizrahi #mizrahim #ashkenazi

¹ https://www.haaretz.com/2015-04-18/ty-article/.premium/a-giant-gap-in-consciousness/0000017f-e746-df5f-a17f-ffdeec1a0000
² https://www.972mag.com/salama-mizrahim-nakba-palestinians/

"...proletarianized ³ them and funneled them into menial labor ⁴; suppressed ⁵ their culture; separated ⁶ thousands from their children; and forced tens of thousands to undergo radiation ⁷ that led to serious health complications.

[4 of x]

³ https://archive.org/details/swirsky2/page/n3/mode/2up
⁴ https://www.972mag.com/shovrot-kirot-mizrahi-feminist-activism/
⁵ https://www.972mag.com/how-can-this-monkey-be-talking-about-an-ideology-that-developed-in-europe/
⁶ https://www.972mag.com/mizrahi-graves-yemenite-israel/
⁷ https://www.haaretz.com/2004-07-30/ty-article/running-rings-around-the-victims/0000017f-dbf2-d856-a37f-fff2ea490000

"All the while, a rebellion was brewing.

The Panthers mobilized thousands in downtown Jerusalem, hurling glass bottles, bricks, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at police.

Immortalized as 'The Night of the Panthers,' it was the largest civil disturbance that Israeli authorities would face until a mass uprising ¹ of Palestinian citizens five years later, commemorated every year since as Land Day ².

[5 of x]

¹ https://www.972mag.com/land-day-strike-palestinian-citizens/
² https://www.972mag.com/topic/land-day/

"Despite their seismic entrance into Israeli history, half a century later, the Panthers and their rebellion have been largely — and perhaps wilfully — forgotten.

'I went on a tour of Musrara that Reuven led; my mind was just blown by this guy,' Elia-Shalev recalled. “Around 70 years old, and he had this fire and sense of urgency, and spoke so compellingly about his life.

[6 of x]