Introduction

The musical Al Tikra Li Shachor (“don’t call me black”), written by playwright and songwriter Dan Almagor, premiered in 1972 and soon became a hit on the local stages in Israel. Almagor, Israeli-born, spent the tumultuous 1960s in the United States where he was inspired by the African Americans’ struggle for equality and the musical trends of the period. This inspiration led him to write a compilation of Hebrew songs referring to the American “black experience,” as he viewed it. The composition and musical arrangements, provided by Benny Nagari, who made a name for himself through his work with local military ensembles, drew mainly on black American spirituals and “soul music” so as to retain their “negro elements” (Harsonsky 1972). Finally, on stage, the musical’s cultural sensibility was brought to life by complementary colorful dashikis and large Afro wigs. After one year and no fewer than 700 shows, it was the breaking of the Yom Kippur War in September 1973 that put an end to the successful tour. At the very same time when Almagor envisioned his “black Israeli” spectacle, another group of young Israelis drew inspiration from the African American struggle, though in a totally different setting and for different goals. The Israeli Black Panthers Movement was formed in 1971 in Musrara, a rundown neighborhood in Jerusalem, by the second generation of Mizrahim, Jews from Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The movement’s goal was to bring to light the reality of “pigmentocracy” in Israeli society, where ethnic origin had become strongly correlated with one’s socioeconomic position, and where Mizrahim were systematically discriminated against in comparison to Ashkenazi (European) Jews (see Frankel, this volume).Labeling themselves as the “blacks” of Israel added a racial dimension to the segregation and challenged the dominant Zionist narrative by framing it in terms of an internal colonial endeavor (Shohat 1997a). In their struggle for material and political gains, the movement undermined symbolic assets of the Israeli establishment and questioned the state’s formal objective of providing independence for all Israeli Jews. After two years of internal upheavals within Jewish society, during which the Panthers managed to mobilize thousands on the streets, the movement was put to rest by the Yom Kippur War. Nevertheless, the miserable war only intensified the public’s dissatisfaction with its leadership; along with the growing awareness of social inequalities it eventually brought about the dramatic political turn of 1977.