Black Panther Palestine

Throughout the 1970s Arab (Mizrahi) Jews built a social movement within Israel to confront their racial exclusion from the promises of Israeli citizenship. The movement crystalized in the formation of the Israeli Black Panther Party, a group that formed solidarity with the U.S. Black Panther Party as well as with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In this essay I examine the history of the Israeli Black Panthers and identify the global conjunctures that enabled the movement. Of particular focus is the solidarity formed between the U.S. Black freedom movement and the PLO’s “global offensive.” In addition to describing the linked movements of the Black Panthers and s consider what this example of internationalism reveals about the possibilities of Diasporic Jewish identities and politics.