Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews

Scholar and activist Sami Shalom Chetrit analyzes the Mizrahi experience in Israel through “oppression relations,” a system that keeps Ashkenazic Jews in political, economic, and cultural power. He argues that Mizrahim were alienated from their roots and pressured to “Ashkenaziate,” or assimilate to Ashkenazic norms. Challenges to this hierarchy, such as those by protest groups like Black Panthers, were dismissed as ethnic unrest, but Chetrit views them as signs of Mizrahi awakening and self-determination. He compares the Mizrahi–Ashkenazi divide in Israel to racial dynamics in America.