The Black Panthers (in Israel) Speak (2003)

The Black Panthers in Israel are the social movement of second generation Mizrahim in Israel - Jews originating from Arab and Muslim countries. The uprising of the Black Panthers in the early 1970s had a radical effect on Israeli society. It signaled an awakening of Mizrahi cultural consciousness that continues to this day. The movement took the Mizrahi/class struggle out of its local and nationalist Jewish framework, linking it to the civil rights struggle in the United States, Third World Marxism, and, for the first time, to the Palestinian struggle in Israel. In this film, key leaders in the movement speak of the Mizrahi struggle in the 1970s and now, of the tragic role played by Shas in quelling that struggle, of the relationship between the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, and the social and cultural oppression of the Mizrahim.