Israel's Black Panthers: A Book Launch Party

Seemingly everything that there is to say about Israel and Palestine has been said, with deeply entrenched viewpoints becoming only more so in recent months amid war between Israel and Hamas. A new book provides a fresh intervention into the Israel-Palestine debate by focusing on Mizrahi Jews and reviving the memory of a largely forgotten episode from history. With this event, author Asaf Elia-Shalev launches "Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth.” A book of narrative nonfiction, it tells the story of a group of young Mizrahi Jews from a slum in Jerusalem who launched a struggle for equality in the early 1970s. Inspired by the American revolutionary group of the same name, the Israeli Black Panthers shattered Israel's self-image as an egalitarian Jewish utopia, and served as one of the earliest voices advancing Israel-Palestinian peace. Their story connects the Mizrahi struggle to other movements for civil rights and racial justice taking place around the world in the 1960s and ‘70s. Elia-Shalev will share what made this group of street toughs turned revolutionaries so compelling that he decided to devote years to collecting relevant archival press accounts, and government documents and interviewing surviving Panthers. Even fifty years later, the stunts they pulled and actions they staged remain cunning, inspiring and, at times, hilarious. By focusing on the Panthers, Elia-Shalev will discuss Israel beyond the binary of Jew and Arab, arguing that it is impossible to understand Israel without understanding the story of Mizrahi Jews. This prism also helps explain why Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained a stranglehold on power — and why his reign could be coming to an end. The event will feature an author talk, a Q&A session with the audience, and a book signing. More Info below.