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DEBORAH STARR: All right. Why don't we get started? Hello, I'm Deborah Starr. I'm the director of the Jewish Studies Program here at Cornell University. And I would like to thank all of you for joining us in person.
And, for those of you who are online, I wanted to let you know just a housekeeping matter, that we will have an opportunity to ask our guest questions after the talk. So those of you in person get to do it the old-fashioned way by raising your hand. Those of you who are on Zoom, please use the Q&A box. And we will be turning to those questions as well as the in-person questions. So please make sure to put your questions in the Q&A box so that we are able to ask those questions.
This event is sponsored by the Cornell University Jewish Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the Migrations Initiative of the Einaudi Center, Africana Studies and Research Center, Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies, and with the generous support of the Hope and Eli Hurowitz Fund.
I'd like to also take this opportunity to invite you to some upcoming hybrid events. Tomorrow the Department of Near Eastern Studies is hosting Kyle Anderson, who will be speaking about his new book, The Egyptian Labor Corps-- Race, Space, and Place in the First World War, which will take place at 5 o'clock tomorrow in Whitehall 106 or via Zoom.
And on April 25, the Jewish Studies Program is hosting a conversation with bestselling Israeli author Etgar Keret in Hollis Cornell Auditorium or via Zoom. And that's on April 25 at 5 o'clock. I hope you can join us for those or some of the other upcoming events.
Before I introduce our speaker, I would like to introduce Itamar Haritan and thank him for his involvement in planning this event. Itamar is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology and Jewish Studies at Cornell. And he will be serving as the simultaneous translator for today's talk.
The Black Panthers in Israel, founded in 1971, was one of the first movements in Israel fighting for social justice for Jews from Arab and Muslim majority countries. Inspired by the United States' Black Panther movement, the Black Panthers in Israel challenged a system of racial and economic privileges that discriminates against Mizrahim.
Today's lecture also celebrates the 50th-- well, 50-plus anniversary of the publication of the Israeli Black Panther Haggadah, written in 1971 by the leaders of the Black Panther movement in Israel. This Haggadah uses the original Haggadah text which recounts the Exodus story and the Israelites' liberation from slavery, the call for the end of discrimination against Mizrahi Jews in Israel.
Reuven Abergel, our guest today, was one of the co-authors of the Haggadah. Itamar Haritan was involved in translating the Haggadah into English and getting it published. I'm happy to share that next month Jewish Currents Press will publish the Israeli Black Panther Haggadah in English. You can pre-order the book on the Jewish Current's website and at www.PanthersHaggadah.com. There's also a clipboard circulating with sign-up information to be notified when the book is available.
Our speaker today, Reuven Abergel, has been a social and human rights activist for over 50 years. Born in Rabat, Morocco, Abergel and his family arrived in Israel in 1950. Mr. Abergel and others were inspired by reports of the Black Panther movement in the United States and had a keen sense of their own Black identity in Israeli Jewish society.
In the face of post-1967 government efforts to gentrify their neighborhoods, the Black Panthers in Israel engaged in a series of direct actions. Mr. Abergel was arrested multiple times. And his citizenship was revoked in 1971 and not restored until 1997.
Mr. Abergel has been a vocal supporter and active participant in social and political struggles in Israel-Palestine for 50 years. For decades, Abergel was an educator working with at-risk youth, co-founding the Zoharim addiction treatment facility. He also co-founded the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow, a Mizrahi social and civil rights organization, the Public Housing Coalition in Israel, and [INAUDIBLE], an Arab-Jewish movement against the occupation and for social and political change.
Mr. Abergel will speak about the Black Panther uprising in Israel and its continuing relevance today, about anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel Palestine, and its relationship to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His talk today is entitled "Darkness in the Holy Land-- The Israeli Black Panthers Struggle for Human Rights and Against Racism." Please join me in welcoming Reuven Abergel to Cornell University.
[APPLAUSE]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Thank you so much, Professor Starr, for welcoming us. Reuven wants to thank you for inviting him, too, and making his visit to the university possible today. And I also want to thank you. I'm really moved to be part of this event.
REUVEN ABERGEL: Thank you. [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW] [LAUGHS] He's saying that when he sits down, he gets tired. So he wants to stand up and speak to you.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for being here. The topic of my struggle I'm not sure is so important here in the United States.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: But since the very beginning, the United States has been what has connected Jews in Israel with Jews all over the world. And it's also been an integral part of the Zionist movement and the establishment of the State of Israel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: It's not because the US was nice and generous.
[LAUGHTER]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: It's just that the interests change. Every new day brings new interests to be pursued.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So my story actually doesn't begin in Rabat. And it doesn't begin in Israel. It begins with the Zionist movement and their dreams of having a home. Begins with Herzl and the Dreyfus trial, where he encountered anti-Semitism for the first time, and he started dreaming about having a home.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So, unlike Herzl, who converted to Christianity at some point and his family converted to Christianity, my family was connected to Judaism or to the Jewish tradition for 2,000 years. And for 2,000 years, we dreamed of returning to Zion and the messianic times.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And now it's important for me to put our story out because now there's a generation of people who are influenced by social media and who have Uncle Google, who can share with them all the information that we didn't have before.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So my story was silenced for a long time. And when I wrote this Haggadah, I had to become an archaeologist of my own ruined life and dig into those ruins to find the story.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: OK. So Herzl-- if his dreams had been fully realized, then my story might have been very different. As some of you know, long before the Holocaust, Herzl would have loved to have a Jewish state in Uganda, would have loved to have a Jewish state in any part of the world. Even on the moon he would have been happy to have a Jewish state without an unnecessary connection to Jerusalem or to Zion.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: But history has its own path and its own wisdom that it goes through.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Herzl, after he has his dream-- seven years after he has his dream-- he passes away. But he establishes a nucleus of activists that became the Zionist Federation, who continued on with his dream, promoting it in different directions.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The reason I'm telling this story is to underscore my own irrelevancy for this vision, both at that time and today-- my own irrelevancy in relation to it.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: In the beginning of the Zionist movement, for example, and throughout, conferences are taking place in Basel. They're taking place in all these different places. And in all of these conferences, Jews from Arab and Muslim countries are totally excluded from these conferences.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: OK. So [INAUDIBLE] this despite the fact that Jews from Arab and Muslim countries donated a lot of money to the Zionist movement, and bought lands and bought property to further the cause, and even said that they would fund their own travel and attendance in these conferences. And still, they were excluded from these conferences. [SPEAKING HEBREW].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: There was one person who even wanted to come to the conference, one Jew. A Mizrahi Jew wanted to come to the conferences just as an observer, just to give up being an attendee and just observe what's going on. And he even asked the Zionist movement to send material so that Jews from Arab and Muslim countries could read what the movement is about. And they didn't do that.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And to this day, this person who petitioned didn't get an answer from his petition.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So this is the beginning of the-- oops. Sorry. OK? OK.
So this is the beginning of the contact between the Zionist movement and the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. And this is the beginning of their relationship. And I can say, even from this early moment, that they did have a dream. Their dream was to establish a Jewish state, but Jews of a particular color, a certain color.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So whoever follows this history sees two things.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: One is that they're imagining, they're including in their vision, they're basing their vision on 14 million Jews who live in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe and Europe-- 14 million Jews at the time.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So there are 800,000 Jews in Arab and Muslim countries that the Zionist movement is not even thinking about in calculating the total number of Jews in the world. They're not thinking about them as people that they want to be part of their vision.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So what happens is, until the 1920s, despite the Zionist movement's efforts, very few European Jews come to Palestine and answer their call, their invitation. And those few that do, many of them are turned away by the British authorities.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Palestine, at the time, had Jews in it. There were Ashkenazi Jews or European Jews there who went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, just like Muslims go on pilgrimages to Mecca. And there were also Sephardi Jews, Jews who had been there for a long time, who were there.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: What does happen instead--
SPEAKER 1: Forgive me.
ITAMAR HARITAN: Oh, sorry.
SPEAKER 1: Your microphone is just around the [INAUDIBLE].
ITAMAR HARITAN: OK, great. [LAUGHS] Thanks.
SPEAKER 1: It was in upside down.
ITAMAR HARITAN: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER 1: There you go.
ITAMAR HARITAN: Great. Reuven said, what does happen is that Jews migrate en masse to the United States. 3 and 1/2 million Jews migrate to the United States and are absorbed by the United States. That's what happens instead of Jews from Europe migrating en masse to Palestine, which is what the Zionist movement wanted.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And then what happens is the Great Disaster.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The Second World War.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And 6 million Jews.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: You know the story of the Holocaust.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And you remember the Zionist movement based its vision on 14 million Jews--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --3 and 1/2 million Jews--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --in the United States--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --6 million in the [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And in 1945, the USSR shuts off its doors to the Western world in what we call the Iron Curtain. So no Jews are able to leave the USSR.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So according to simple mathematics, the original 14 million Jews, there are no European Jews left for this [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So there are a few Jewish--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So the European Jews sitting in Palestine who dreamed-- and in other places-- dreamt that they would have a Jewish state of a particular kind, now see that they don't. They can't establish this state. So the only thing that they have left to do is for each person to go back to their home because they can't realize their vision.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So again, history gets involved in people's plans, mixes up the cards, and creates a new reality.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So, suddenly, the Zionist movement comes up with a plan. Here there are Jews in Arab and Muslim countries that we can bring to the new state.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Then they start to making plans. They think to themselves, OK. Our original plan was to bring people who are similar to us, who listen to Mozart and listen to Bach, who are more Europeans. But now we have to bring Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who are more similar to the Palestinians and to the area that we're in.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This was, it's important to emphasize, an essentially racist conception. And this is a racist conception which was very common at the time. These are educated people. They learned about race, racial theories in university. And this is long before Hitler and the Second World War made such theories to be impossible to talk about. So this was their conception of the white race as being the superior race.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And their conception was also this idea of the villa in the jungle. This is a term that describes their conception. If you imagine a villa in the jungle, outside of the villa there's snakes and wild animals and things like that. But inside the villa, everything is nice and pretty.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So we see on the Discovery Channel, for example, a house in the middle of a jungle. And the animals are scary outside. But inside the house, it's nice and safe.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So what happened is, again, Mother History has its own plans. And after the Second World War, you have all of these European powers, France and Germany and Britain, who, in order to make up for the terrible catastrophe that happened to the Jews in World War II and in the Holocaust, they say, we will help the Jews establish a state. And we will do that through our control of these colonies that many of these powers have in the Middle East and in the Arab world.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So the British decide that they want to leave their colonies. They want to leave Palestine. And they tell everybody, you handle your own problems by yourselves-- the Jews and Arabs.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Ben Gurion agrees to a compromise, that he will get 27% of historic Palestine, which is a very small percentage, which is a quarter of the land.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So there begin to be plans between the Zionist movement and these colonial forces to bring Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel. But they will wait two years from the establishment of the state in 1948-- all the way to 1950-- to actually bring those Jews to the new State of Israel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So if you recall, before 1948, the British would prevent Jews who wanted to go to Palestine from going to Palestine. It would prevent many of them. But here, all of a sudden, there's a Jewish state. And I, for example, and my family left Morocco in 1947. But they didn't let hundreds of thousands of people like me actually come to Israel for two years. So this is an interesting thing that happened.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So in 1950, finally they open the gates. And they bring in 120,000 Iraqi Jews, Jews from Iraq--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --70,000 from Yemen--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --45,000 from Iran--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --and out of them, 5,000 children who were Holocaust survivors, who ended up in Iran.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And from North Africa, there's a lot of selection. There's a selection process. And only 18,000 are allowed to emigrate from North Africa to [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So what is the reason that for two years there's a state and you're not letting these people enter the country, for two years until 1950?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The reason is that they wanted to build a villa for themselves.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So the reason is that they wanted to build a villa for themselves first. In those two years that they didn't let us come to the new state, they absorbed 280,000 Holocaust survivors who came from Europe. And they wanted to build the state for themselves first before letting us in.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So this is the kind of archaeological work that I had to do as I began the Black Panthers' struggle to become, as I said, an archaeologist of my life and to try to understand and reconstruct how my life came to be the way that it ended up being.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: What I found was the reason is that, for those two years, they were dividing up the spoils of the 1948 War. As you know, in the 1948 War, they expelled 700,000 Palestinians, who left behind them property and lands and all those things. And they also needed to build a state, to create a police force, to create a civil service, to create all of these things. They wanted to create those things first, before we came, and to divide up the spoils of the 1948 War.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: As the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries are waiting for two years to come to Israel, they are preparing plans, plans that are intended to harm them when they come to Israel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: There is a guy, one person whose name is Aryeh Gelblum, from this time period.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: He was a journalist, just like all the journalists at that time were state-sponsored journalists, journalists who were affiliated with the government at that time.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The political structure in Israel at that time, and even before the Zionist movement, is that every party, every Zionist party, has its own newspaper.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Mapai, the Israeli Labor Party, had its own newspaper. And he was one of what I'm calling their "court journalists," and who I'm also calling "pseudo journalists." They weren't really journalists.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they walked around in the transit camps where they held us, where they held Jews from Arab and Muslim countries.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they walked around in these camps.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: There's a book called [INAUDIBLE] that tells the whole history of these court journalists visiting the transit camps where Jews from Arab and Muslim countries were held.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And these court journalists disguised themselves as new immigrants to Israel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And after some time, they come out of these camps.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they write inciteful articles. They write hateful articles about us.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So if we compare the kinds of things that they wrote about us in these Zionist Party newspapers, there are parallels between that and Goebbels in the Nazi regime.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: What you see here is innocent children.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Their parents are traditional Jews, observant Jews.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Our rabbis didn't exploit our community. Our rabbis helped the most disempowered Jews in our communities in the countries that they--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --came from because they weren't government employees. They were supported by the community.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, they lived in countries where the government was supposedly hostile. It was like a Muslim government throughout the history. But we know from the history that there was nothing--
In Spain, there was the Inquisition. In Poland, Jews were hurt. And in all these different countries in Europe, Jews were persecuted. And there was never-- there were problems here and there in the Arab world, but there was never anything of the size and scale of the way that Jews were targeted in Europe that happened in the Arab and Muslim world.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Imagine for yourselves people in Israel of 1948, 1949. They get their paper on Friday from their political party. They see an article by Aryeh Gelblum. And they live in an entirely white society, in a completely white society.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So what do the headlines scream across these newspapers? They say in big letters, these Jews who are about to come here are a threat to the Zionist movement.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The article goes on to say, these Jews are not really Jews because they're spiritually disconnected from Judaism.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The articles say things like, they have a tendency towards drunkenness and towards playing card games and gambling.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: They attack each other and they also attack women. This is another thing that they said about us.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they also have a lot of diseases. That's another thing that they said.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they also have infectious diseases that make them such a threat, that if they were to come here to the Zionist society, the new State of Israel, they would pose a threat to us.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Most of these people are waiting in camps in Europe. And these articles that I was talking about, they're being published in 1949.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So if you think that they're such a problem, why don't you leave them in the camps where you--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Why bring them?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Why do you need to bring these people over if you write such things about them?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Just like what the Nazis did, the Nazis didn't begin with physically exterminating the Jews. What they did first is they made it normal to hurt Jews. They portrayed them terribly in films. They made anti-Semitic articles about them. And they portrayed them as a threat. And that kind of made people used to the idea that it's OK to attack them. Then they attacked them more and more and more and more.
And this is similar to what is happening here. This is like a copy/paste of what is happening here, where they are taking all of the hatred that Jews absorbed in Europe, and they are transferring it onto this group of Jews, who all that they-- they were just good people. And they were just happy that Jews have a homeland and that there's a Jewish state.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Oh, OK. I can do it. OK.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So in 1950, as I said, we are allowed finally to emigrate.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: When I talk about the state, what I'm talking about, of course, is the leadership of the state.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This leadership divided the spoils of the 1948 War amongst themselves before we came.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they had two years to think about what are we going to do with these primitives that we're bringing here despite our really wanting to. Well, how do they fit into our vision of a villa in the jungle?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Just to give you a sense, just to count-- to give you a sense of who was coming to Israel at the time, out of the 120,000 Jews from Iraq who came to Israel at the time, they made up 17% of Israel's new physicians.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: But despite that, all the Israeli newspapers, all the Zionist newspapers, were saying, oh, this entire group is primitive, barbaric. They have diseases. And they are given to their instincts. They're not thinking people.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So after two years of putting Holocaust survivors and other Jews from Europe in the center of the new state, when they allowed Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to come in 1950, they put them in the borders of the new state, in the no man's land between the State of Israel and the Arab countries. And this is what is portrayed here.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: At 1949-- this is just another thing that was happening at this time-- there is what's called the Rhodes Agreement, which is an agreement between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Israel, basically to end the 1948 War where Israel was established. And Golda Meir, who would become prime minister later, was part of these negotiations to create this agreement.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Most of the new border between Jordan and the new State of Israel was in places that were not populated. But this border, what you're seeing here, is the border between Jordan and Israel running through Jerusalem. These pictures are pictures of the Musrara neighborhood in Jerusalem, which became a no man's land, a border area between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the new State of Israel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Some of the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries would be put next to the very far away borders, the borders that were far away in the middle of nowhere. And some of them would be put in these borders inside the urban areas, inside Jerusalem and this border area in Jerusalem.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Wherever the State of Israel was afraid that Palestinians would come back and reclaim their property, that's the places where they would put Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. So they put Jews from Arab and Muslim countries in places like Jaffa, in places like Ramallah and Lod, which are Palestinian cities that were depopulated in 1948. And they put Jews from Arab and Muslim countries there. And they put them in a neighborhood like Musrara. That's where they put Reuven's family.
And you see up there is where the Jordanian military position is. And Reuven said this is where he would play as a child, next to these tile fences. And anytime the soldier could-- you could be caught in the crossfire.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So my parents went in. When we came here, my parents and parents of hundreds of thousands of others began to work for the European Jews, for the Ashkenazi Jews, as house cleaners and all kinds of different things. My mother spoke four languages. She went to the Alliance school system and my father also. And here they found themselves in a totally different position.
And what happened over the next 20 years, from 1950 on, is like a grinding down of these people and turning them into-- just like you take big rocks and you grind them into little rocks so you can build something out of them, they turned us into human material that they could shape us into something else than what we were.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So for 20 years, our parents bowed down to the system and gave up their self-respect.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: They did whatever they were told--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --out of a belief that better days lie ahead.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: But those good days never came.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Because I, as a child, left Morocco when I was five years old.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Even at the age of three, I would get up every morning and go to school to the cheder, which was a traditional Jewish school. I would go every morning.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And here, I come here.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: No school.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: No education system.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Kids that were just a little bit older than me, 11 and 12 years old-- I'm talking about my brothers-- they would very quickly after we came here find themselves in juvenile detention centers and in various institutions.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So this is what our reality was like. And it was a terrible reality until the 1967 War, where everything changed and the reality became clear. Something happened that sharpened the reality.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So in 1967, as some of you might know, Israel occupies the West Bank and occupies many, many territories during that war, and takes the border with Jordan far, far away from Jerusalem. And suddenly a million Palestinians find themselves under Israeli rule. And they need to put food on the table.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And a million Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, Mizrahi Jews, also are trying to find their place in the world, also trying to put food on the table for their families.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And there are 200,000 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. And they also need to put food on the table.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So the European Jews living in the center of the country, from Gedera to Hadera, they unwittingly created this reality where, all of a sudden, Jews from Arab and Muslim countries are united with the kinds of people that they left back in their home countries, with Palestinians, with Arabs, and people who laugh like them, who cry like them when they're sad, who listen to the same music as them, speak the same language and have the same culture. And suddenly, after the 1967 War, these two people are reunited.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So we connected with them. And we created businesses together. And we would also meet in prison together. Say we would get caught violating something. Then we would be caught and put in prison. And we would meet Palestinians there. And we'd become fast friends. And the political system all of a sudden realized that this is a connection that could threaten it.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So, suddenly, they begin to try to distance us from each other.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So facing this reality of the political system putting more and more pressure on us, we were young people-- some of us had children, some of us didn't-- who wouldn't be like our parents. We wouldn't take death. Or we wouldn't take this kind of abuse that the system was trying to dole out to us the way that our parents did.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We realized that our ability to change our reality is almost impossible.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: But all the borders that separated me from the Palestinian, me from the Jordanian, and that separated me from the Ashkenazi Jew, they're all of a sudden dissolved. All of a sudden it's easier to cross them.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The borders that I showed you before were well-marked borders between Jordan and Israel, borders that said, "Danger," or "Mines." There are mines here. The borders are well-marked.
But the border between our neighborhood and the Ashkenazi, the European Jews' neighborhoods-- there wasn't a sign that said don't go here. But as soon as I crossed into that neighborhood, the police would pick me up and arrest me.
And actually, the first time that I was arrested was in the age of nine, where I went to the European neighborhood. And I was picked up. And I was arrested for loitering, for criminal loitering.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So we decided in our neighborhood to organize ourselves and to raise our voices in a way that our parents didn't raise their voices.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: You see, this is the headquarters of the Black Panthers. And this is actually my house.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This is me, over there.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This is people from the leadership.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This is my son, who was three years old at the time.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Now he has grandchildren, this young child.
[LAUGHTER]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We decide to take the solution into our own hands.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: When we started to organize, we didn't have youth groups that we could be inspired by about how to organize ourselves. Our only summer camps were in the prisons. Those are the only things that we knew to coalesce as a group.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And our personal lives were very individualized. If I go and rob somebody, I don't divide up the spoils with a neighborhood. I keep it to myself.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And how is it that I suddenly, after 28 years of trying to be a successful criminal, I give all that up, all those 28 years of experience, in order to become something else?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Turns out that nobody dreams of their future as a dream of being poor. And nobody envisions themselves in the future as being a criminal. Nobody wants to envision themselves this way.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So as I told you, at that time, I don't have any true friends at this time. All of my friends are criminals. They're all criminals.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: They're all heads of gangs.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And I call them. Come to a meeting at my place.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: I told them, our parents were silent. Our parents betrayed us. Our parents gave up their self-respect. Let's do something different.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: There are 150 people at that first meeting.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they said yes.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And I asked them, give me one thing that you want.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We want to have a license to be able to drive a taxi, for example.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We want the ability to drive a car, a license to drive a car.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We want a workplace.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: I asked them, how is it that you're willing to give up everything that you have? Because I know their lives. Their lives were like going to bars and having a good time and the criminal life.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And they're willing to give up everything because they really don't want to be in [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And these are the people I'm talking about.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: These are my friends.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: They went to the streets. And they left their old [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And this was their dream.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: To bury discrimination, to bury racism. This is "Discrimination" here. And "Racism" is written on the other coffin.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Of course, we take on the names of the Black Panther movement in the United States.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: This is our best example of finding people that are similar to us.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Or, actually, that we are similar to them--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --because they already waged their war.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Nobody taught us about this war [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: We didn't have a Martin Luther King. We didn't have Malcolm X. We didn't have Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali. We didn't have any of these people.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Any examples--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Yeah.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]?
ITAMAR HARITAN: No.
REUVEN ABERGEL: OK.
ITAMAR HARITAN: Any examples that we had were examples of-- any leaders that we could look up to were actually collaborators with the Israeli government. So we didn't have any of these leaders to look up to.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The regime here that I'm describing to you separated Jews from Arabs, separated Ashkenazi Jews from Mizrahi Jews, and created all these separations in order to be able to control everything the way that they want. And suddenly these people who didn't go to school, who didn't have an education, these gang leaders, these people who were busy just fighting each other as gangsters, all of a sudden they organize. And they begin to challenge the system.
And what is the reason? And they begin to be able to find glue that connects them for the first time. And what is this glue that is connecting them? It's that some of them have children. And they want a better life for themselves and for their children.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So we got together, and we wrote a simple flyer. And the flyer had seven times the word "enough" in Hebrew. Enough of discrimination. Enough of not having the job. Enough of sleeping 10 in one room. Enough, enough, enough.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And no word here against the government.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: No word against the police.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And the police stopped us for daring to distribute this flyer. They arrested us for distributing it.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And then we organized the first protest.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And after the first protest that we organized, we come back here to the headquarters. And I write a letter to Golda Meir, saying the Black Panthers in Israel, we want to meet you.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Golda Meir does not respond, so we do a hunger strike at the Western Wall, which is the holiest site in Judaism. We do a hunger strike there.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: It must be that a lot of the tourists that visited the Western Wall at the time-- American tourists, tourists from Germany-- maybe wrote to her and put pressure on her. And she invites us to a meeting with her.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [LAUGHS] [SPEAKING HEBREW].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW] OK.
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Golda Meir was expecting-- the way that she treated us in the meetings is as a social worker doing intake. She treated us as a social worker. But we came prepared with all of this data that students-- university students helped us gather together all of this data. And we presented this data to her. And she was very upset about that. She's like, who gave you all of this information, all of this data?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So after the meeting with Golda Meir, this is when we wrote the Black Panthers' Haggadah. I walk around with a traditional Haggadah text. And we wrote the Haggadah together. And we had the first Passover after meeting with Golda Meir with this Haggadah that we wrote together.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Of course, after Golda Meir has her meeting with us, she has a press conference. And in the press conference, she's asked about the meeting with us and what does she think about us. And she says, they are not nice young men.
[LAUGHTER]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [LAUGHS] So for three hours in my meeting with her, I didn't agree with anything she said. But that I did agree.
[LAUGHTER]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So I just want to share just a bit about my feelings now, 50 years later. I thought to myself, after 50 years of struggle, that I had liberated myself from the shackles that shackled me to the system. And I'm not anybody's sucker or anything like that. And everybody should just free themselves. But the situation is not so simple.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Just like the book The Alchemist, I realized that I need to go back to the beginning--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: --in order to free my oppressor from their shackles.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And that is a much more difficult labor.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So this is many of the original members of the Black Panthers standing in Musrara recently, in a street that was named after them, Black Panther Way.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: People nowadays are proud to say, I am a Black Panther in Israel today, fighting for social justice.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]. And I go around today from protest to protest, to different groups who are being oppressed by the government in different ways, who are rising or falling apart, who are trying to deal with their situation, who have had the sensitivity in their feelings taken out of them by the oppression and don't want to deal with the situation. And I try to encourage them. I try to encourage them in all the different places that--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So in 1933, for example, when the Nazi movement came to power, when they would put Stars of David on people's stores and attack the Jews, a lot of Germans who had grown up with Jews, who had gone to school with Jews, did this and looked the other way. And we can't look away like that. Anybody who looks away from terrible things that are happening to other people is a partner to the crime. That's it.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Want a chair.
DEBORAH STARR: Thank you very much. I want to open up the floor to questions. I'm happy to take questions. Are there any students who have any questions? [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Thank you. Is it OK if I ask in Hebrew and you translate for me?
ITAMAR HARITAN: I prefer you ask in English, and I'll translate.
AUDIENCE: Sure. OK.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: So first, thank you so much.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: And mostly I agree completely, both in mind and heart.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: My father used to tell me stories about being active in [SPEAKING HEBREW].
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: My father used to be an activist.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
ITAMAR HARITAN: What's his name?
AUDIENCE: Daniel. Daniel Abuel.
ITAMAR HARITAN: Daniel Abuel.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
[LAUGHTER]
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: Katamonim.
REUVEN ABERGEL: Tel Aviv?
DEBORAH STARR: Katamonim.
AUDIENCE: Katamonim.
REUVEN ABERGEL: Ah, Katamonim. [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: OK.
DEBORAH STARR: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: OK.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So they're figuring out who it is. OK.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: But the question that I wanted to ask you--
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: --goes to what you mentioned at the end.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
And I wonder to what extent you are willing to look at the more troubling aspect of your piece. And I want to mention a couple of things.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: I'll try to be as brief as possible.
DEBORAH STARR: A good chance for the next question.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: Now, Herzl was corresponding with leaders of the Zionist movement in Morocco. [INAUDIBLE], for example.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: And he was impressed by Germany. Moreover, we now have correspondence of Herzl with the British Empire, where he casually suggests [INAUDIBLE] the Jewish state-- not just in Uganda, but in Morocco, where the [INAUDIBLE] with the British Empire [INAUDIBLE]. Another aspect-- Hebrew, one of the biggest achievement of the Zionist movement.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW] Maybe finish your entire question, and then I'll translate.
AUDIENCE: OK. So that was about Herzl. Second, the Hebrew language, one of the biggest achievements of the Zionist movement. Ben-Yehuda, who basically led the effort, chose the Sephardic pronunciation as the official one for Hebrew.
REUVEN ABERGEL: OK.
AUDIENCE: That's--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [LAUGHS]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: That's part of the reality--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So there have been scholars that have studied this. And one is Professor [INAUDIBLE]. And he wrote an entire book called The Mask. He was within the Zionist movement. And he researched these topics that you raise specifically. And I encourage you to read that book.
AUDIENCE: Again, I would be the last to deny the discrimination that was, and still is, in Israel today.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] in person.
ITAMAR HARITAN: What's your question? Just get to the bottom of it.
AUDIENCE: But I think that it's important that we grasp the bigger picture, which is far more complicated, I think, than one you presented here, including, by the way, the immigration at the very outset of Israel. There was immigration from Islamic countries, including Yemen--
ITAMAR HARITAN: What's your question?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
ITAMAR HARITAN: What's your question?
AUDIENCE: Basically asking him try and engage the larger, more complicated picture, which includes Jews, including Ashkenazi not just willing to accept the Mizrahi Jew, but embracing them as part of the [INAUDIBLE].
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: First of all--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So, first of all, I don't like this paternalistic language that you're using-- "receive," "accept," "absorb." What are they-- my bosses? That they accept me or don't accept me? You know, this is my homeland for 2,000 years. And I don't need anybody's permission or agree to accept or not accept--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Today, in 2022--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So Reuven is saying that today, in 2022, Jews from Arab and Muslim countries and their descendants are being expelled from their homes in multiple different places in Israel. Part of the same process that he's describing here, of Mizrahi Jews being moved to a border area and then expelled from that border area, still happening today.
DEBORAH STARR: I'd like to turn to one of the online questions.
AUDIENCE: OK. So there is a question from [INAUDIBLE], who asks if there was any relationship between the Black Panthers and anti-colonial movements locally-- example Palestinian [INAUDIBLE]-- and globally, with the Black Panthers in the US.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: As soon as we came to the consciousness that we are oppressed, we've decided that we are in favor of every oppressed group in the world. And that's the decision that we came. And so, of course, we support-- [SPEAKING HEBREW]?
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So you need to understand that the Black Panther movement in Israel was a poor movement.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Like all the social movements in the world, the lives of social movement are very short.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So some people go back to criminality. Some people go into politics and lose their way. And some people do other things. They go in different directions.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The Black Panthers did have a significant impact-- an irreversible impact-- of deposing the Israeli Labor Party rule in Israel for the first time. This is one of the things that they were able to do. [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: There were connections with Palestinian movement. There are connections with the Black Panthers in the United States. And he was talking about me, that we were also active many years later with a Palestinian struggle and with Palestinian and Mizrahi struggle of the street vendors in Jerusalem. And this is a basic situation that we weren't struggling on behalf of those people because they were Palestinian or because they were Mizrahi, but because they were fighting for their rights and for their livelihoods.
DEBORAH STARR: Do we have another question in the audience here? Then we'll take one last question from online.
Oh, I'm sorry. Hold on. There is actually a question here. Please go right ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. I wanted to ask if there was sort of a moment following your conversation with Golda Meir. Did anything change-- notably, politically, socially-- when the movement started getting traction, when you felt that it was becoming more accepted in society or any notable accomplishments that kind of changed the path of the movement?
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Due to our movement, there was a budget in the Israeli government that was passed that was called the Black Panther Budget.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [LAUGHS] So there is a beautiful group of people in Israel called the Yemenite Jews. And they have a beautiful dance, which is taking one step forward and two steps back. That's their special dance that they have.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So, like all the other powerful systems, they give one step forward, but then they bring things two steps back. Like in this country, for example, there was a Black president. And now we're two steps back. And that's the-- and I guess they know the Yemenite-- you here know the Yemenite best.
[LAUGHTER]
DEBORAH STARR: OK, we'll take one last question from online.
AUDIENCE: OK. So the great question from [INAUDIBLE] Samson, who asked about at the time of the immigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel, if you could talk about the scare tactics by [INAUDIBLE] that were in Morocco that encouraged immigration Jewish people.
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Everybody here who has access to Google, put in Aryeh Gelblum in Google. And you will get access to [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: 1949. Aryeh Gelblum, 1949. You'll get access to this historical [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: In the book named [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: In that book, the Zionist movement talks about-- it's recorded that the Zionist movement was trying to get among young people in Morocco.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: The reason for the Zionist movement to come among--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: [SPEAKING HEBREW]-- young Jews in Morocco was to prepare them for the possible reprisals by Muslim Moroccans in response to the war in Palestine, that happened in Palestine.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: And the Mossad--
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Israeli intelligence gave them weapons and conducted trainings for the young [INAUDIBLE].
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: After a little while, the Israeli intelligence realizes that there is nothing to fear in Morocco. There's not going to be a Muslim reprisal or anything like that. Anybody who wants can leave or enter, anything like that. And they drop all of their trainings and their arming of these young Moroccan Jews.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: So the Zionist movement, just like every good juggler, needs to juggle something differently when a certain juggling doesn't work. And so they try to create this particular tension, and it didn't work. So they went to something else.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
ITAMAR HARITAN: Just like in the United States, where after slavery ended there were many Black people whose conditions worsened because of all the anti-Black policies that happened, and even today, 150 years later, there are so many people, maybe the majority of Black people in the United States, who are still dealing with the systemic racism, in the same way this is happening in Israel with Jews from Arab and Muslim countries.
DEBORAH STARR: Reuven, thank you very much for honoring us by joining us here. Thank you for sharing your inspiring words. And I'd like to thank you all for staying.
REUVEN ABERGEL: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
[APPLAUSE]
The Israeli Black Panthers, founded in 1971, was one of the first movements in Israel fighting for social justice for Jews from Arab and Muslim countries (also known as Mizrahi Jews). On March 22 co-founder and former leader of the Israeli Black Panthers, Reuven Abergel, gave a lecture in Hebrew with English translation provided by Itamar Haritan, a Cornell University graduate student in anthropology and Jewish Studies who has worked with Abergel for many years. In his lecture, Abergel discusses the treatment of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries in Israel by referring to a new translation, published by Jewish Currents Press, of one of the most innovative and important documents produced by the Israeli Black Panthers, according to Jewish Studies Director Deborah Starr: “The Israeli Black Panthers’ Haggadah.”
