Mizrahi protest and inequality

Discontent among Jews from the Middle East, already sharp by the 1970s, produced a protest movement called the Black Panthers, named for the American group.3

In the middle of the twentieth century about 900,000 Mizrahim lived in Arab lands, Iran, and Turkey.4

Yehouda Shenhav, an Israeli sociologist of Iraqi origin, calls the analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews unfounded.5

At its founding Israel was about 80 percent Ashkenazic. Today the Jewish population is roughly evenly split.6

Ben-Gurion said Jews from Morocco had no education and that their customs were those of Arabs.8

In 1949 Arye Gelblum wrote in Haaretz that North African Jews had almost no education and tied their immigration to Begin's Herut.9

Many newcomers from Arab lands were sent to tent cities, the ma'abarot, and later to underdeveloped regions.10

The Wadi Salib protests began after police shot the Moroccan immigrant Ya'akov Elkarif on July 9, 1959.1

On the Night of the Panthers, May 18, 1971, five to seven thousand protesters filled Zion Square in Jerusalem.2

Data from 2011 indicate that 28.8 percent of second-generation Mizrahim held a college degree, against 49.6 percent of Ashkenazim, figures the book notes are partly contested and hard to calculate.12

The Idan Raichel Project and the Ethiopian group Kafeh Shahor Hazak sing in Hebrew and Amharic, recovering roots many immigrants had dropped.14

In its first 50 years Israel's population rose from 600,000 to 6 million. Farm work fell from 16 percent of jobs in the mid-1950s to 3 percent in 1995.15

Moshe Smilansky feared Tel Aviv's shopkeeping mentality would lead to hucksterism, assimilation, and apostasy. The book says he was wrong: Tel Aviv became the world's largest and liveliest Jewish city.16

In 2015 Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man, attacked Jerusalem's pride parade. Shira Banki died of her wounds. He had already served a sentence for a similar 2005 attack.18