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June 1, 1971

If We Immigrate to Israel, We Are Bound to Incite the Panthers' Bitterness

For many centuries Jews not only from Europe but also from across all of what we now call the Middle East trickled to Eretz Israel/Palestine, most importantly to Jerusalem. Moreover, in the mid-nineteenth century, the leading proto-Zionist thinker Rabbi Judah Alkalai (1798 [Sarajevo]-1878 [Jerusalem]) was a Sephardi, i.e. a Jew whose family was originally from Sepharad, Spain, and ended up in the Ottoman Empire after being expulsed in the fifteenth century. And when in the later nineteenth century Zionism arose, it found some followers in the Middle East, too.

Despite all the above, Zionism’s political-ideological epicenter was the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Whether left- or right-wing or liberal, Zionist parties were led by European-born Jews (who were quite diverse, though). And while Jews from Middle Eastern countries continued to arrive in Palestine in the very late Ottoman period (1516/17-1917/18) and the British Mandate (1917/22-1948), most Jewish immigrants were from Europe. This changed only after and due to the Holocaust, in which about two out of three European Jews were killed. In the early postwar Americas and Western Europe, relatively few Jews wished to emigrate, and the Soviet Union, which after World War II replaced Poland as the European country with the largest Jewish population, forbade emigration.

Hence, the government of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion (1886-1968; r. 1948-1954/1955-1963) expanded initiatives—in some cases “helped” by Arab nationalist pressures on domestic Jews—to bring to Israel the ‘edot ha-mizrah, the (Middle) Eastern communities, a plural that would morph into the collective mizrahim. After all, Israel in 1948 counted “only” about 700,000 Jews. While many middle- and upper-class Jews e.g. from Morocco and Egypt left for Europe, a large majority—but far from all—of those Israel-bound emigrants were poor. As if this did not make starting a new life hard enough, the relatively poor newly-found State of Israel was overwhelmed by the ensuing population explosion. Worst, however, was systemic institutional and individual discrimination, analyzed e.g. in Ella Shohat’s classic article “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims” (1988). Yes: the Palestinians who had remained in Israel after the nakba had it worse, for the Jewish State did not treat them as full citizens, even subjecting them to military rule until 1966. But in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants, this was cold comfort.

Protests occurred from the 1950s. They took a new turn in February 1971, when poor Jerusalemites, many with a petty criminal record and most from Morocco, founded the Black Panthers (BP), organizing demonstrations and asserting that their communities had “enough of deprivation [and] enough of discrimination.” Although the Panthers would have a limited long-term effect politically—only one, Charlie Bitton (born 1947), would go on to have a lasting political career, as a communist member of parliament—socially, they did. The government reacted not only with repression but also by increasing social services; besides, the Panthers helped bring different Middle Eastern Jewish communities closer. For our purposes most crucial, though, is the Panthers’ choice of name. While they did not too often refer to their US namesakes and never to leaders like Huey Newton (1942-1989), their name reflected the influence on Israel of US developments, as Oz Frankel’s “The Black Panthers of Israel and the Politics of Radical Analogy” (2012) argues. And although the Israeli Panthers shared neither the Americans’ separatist nationalism—they wanted fully in, not out—nor their use of arms nor their support for Palestine, calling themselves Panthers shocked Israel’s Ashkenazi (European) establishment. It presumably harmed Israel’s reputation, also by the hand of Arabs. Moreover, by the late 1960s Israelis and some US Jews believed that most African Americans had become anti-Semitic.

The text featured here, an English translation of a Hebrew article published in the leading daily Yediot Aharonot, reflects some of these intricate international dimensions of the rise of Israel’s Panthers.

June 11, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Evron-the President'

The Israelis were concerned and disappointed by the administration’s initial response to the raid, which consisted of a freeze on the shipment of F-16 jets to Israel until a legal review was conducted. The Israeli ambassador to Washington conveyed this sentiment to President Reagan in a meeting on 11 June 1980 in this telegram.

June 10, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassy to Foreign Office

The Israeli embassy in Washington learned from Haig as well as from another contact that Secretary of Defense Weinberger supports a tough approach to Israel, including a a UNSC resolution that would demand Israel to open the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona for inspection and a call for Israel to join the NPT.

June 10, 1981

Telegram from Washington embassy to Foreign Office, Subject: Evron-Haig

The Israeli embassy in Washington learned from Haig as well as from another contact that Secretary of Defense Weinberger supports a tough approach to Israel, including a UNSC resolution that would demand Israel to open the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona for inspection and a call for Israel to join the NPT.

June 9, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassay to Foreign Office, Subject: administration response

Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who maintained close ties with the Israeli diplomats, told the Israeli ambassador in a phone conversation on 9 June 1981 that Israel’s action in Baghdad caused a serious complication for the U.S., reiterating that “President Reagan thinks the same”.

May 26, 1967

Minutes of an Extended Meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Security Issues

Faced with a growing Egyptian military buildup in Sinai the Cabinet tried to determine if the time had come for military action, or if additional diplomacy would strengthen America's support of Israel. No consensus was reached and the decision was postponed.

May 26, 1967

Protocol number 62 of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Friday, May 26, 1967 at 4 pm, in The Kirya, Tel Aviv

June 7, 1961

Ambassador Harman’s Record of Ben-Gurion/Kennedy Meeting, with attachment on the 'Atomic Reactor' (and transcript), sent with cover letter by Mordechai Gazit to Israeli Foreign Ministry

Israeli record of conversation between Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and President Kennedy in New York.

October 7, 1973

Minutes of Prime Minister Meir's Cabinet Meeting, 7 October 1973

September 2, 1992

Summary of Interview with Avraham Hermoni by Avner Cohen

Avraham Hermoni served as senior technical director of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. This summary reflects the combined content of two long interviews Avner Cohen conducted with Hermoni in August and September 1992. This transcript is not the taped interview’s raw minutes; rather, it is Hermoni’s own edited and approved account of the interview, restructured by him in the form of twelve questions and answers, based upon the raw transcript of the original taped interview. Hermoni recounts the relationship between the Israeli government, the IDF, and the Weapons Development Authority (RAFAEL) during the development of Israel's nuclear capability.

Pagination