The Black Panthers of Israel and Ya’akov Shofar’s Musrara Photographs: Taming and Politicisation (1978–83)

Abstract

AbstractIn 1971, men from Musrara, an impoverished Jerusalem neighbourhood, formed the Black Panthers in protest against institutionalised discrimination against Jews from Muslim countries (Mizrahim). This article examines Born in Israel, a photography project by Ya’akov Shofar that appeared as a photography book in 1984 and as an exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2017, to unpack the differences between these two instances. Shofar’s 1984 project portrayed young Mizrahi Musrara men while being interviewed by a Jerusalem municipality social worker. This collaboration had political potential but only fragments of these interviews are reproduced in the book. Although the men participated in the Black Panthers’ protests, the book underscores their ethnicity and avoids mentioning this movement. My study explores the visual and discursive elements that depoliticised the book due to the Black Panthers’ perceived threat to the hegemonic social order and in relation to local developments in photography as fine art. I show that, unlike the book, the 2017 Israel museum exhibition promotes Born in Israel’s relation to the Black Panthers, but also had limitations and contradictions. Finally, I argue that accounting for the unabridged interviews uncovers hegemonic Israel’s patronising attitude towards the marginalised photographed men, and compensates for lacunas in this project’s presentations.Keywords: Ya’akov Shofar (1947–)Musrarasocial documentarysocially engaged photographyBlack Panthers of Israel (1971–73)Mizrahi protestMizrahi masculinityBorn in Israel (1978–842017) Notes1 – Henriette Dahan Kalev, ‘The Big Missed Opportunity of Israeli Democracy: The Traumatic Memory as Legacy of the Wadi Salib Protests’, Israel Democracy Institute Articles, 7 July 2009 (Hebrew), https://www.idi.org.il/articles/5474.2 – See Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi, ‘Acting Out for the Camera: Performing Mizrahi Masculinity and the Politicisation of the Jerusalem Neighbourhood, Katamon Tet’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (March 2023), 1–27. Katamon Tet, one of the nine sub-neighbourhoods of Katamon, is also known as The Katamonim – tet is the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Among the social workers who worked with Shofar were Zadok Lavan, Doron Nehari and David Meiri. Shofar, interview with the author, 17 June 2019, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Noa Zdaka, Photographic Truth is Natural Truth – Chronicles of a Photography Department (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2018), 238 (Hebrew).3 – Ya’akov Shofar, ‘About the Photographs’, in Born in Israel (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1984) (Hebrew); and The Knesset Channel Broadcast Channel 99, ‘Aharon Barnea interviewing Ya’akov Shofar – Photographer and artist’, 7 June 2017 (Hebrew), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP6g53L_fsk (accessed 14 February 2021).4 – Edith Varga-Biro, ‘The Other Sabras’, Jerusalem Post Magazine, 14 September 1984, N. Some of the photographs in Born in Israel were first published in Ya’akov Shofar, Finding a Way Out (Jerusalem: The Photography Unit Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and the Division for Youth Advancement of the Jerusalem Municipality, 1981) (Hebrew).5 – Born in Israel also includes other themes such as portraits of young men smoking or playing pool at a Musrara Youth Club and of individuals dancing and celebrating at a wedding in Musrara, and images devoid of human presence of the neighbourhood’s disintegrating urban landscape.6 – This approach was shared by Avner Amiel, the head of the Jerusalem municipality’s Social Work Division (1965–73), whose work was based on principles of community social work and residents’ participation. Roni Kaufman, ‘Panthers in the Institution: Engagement of Jerusalem Municipality Social Workers in Public Struggles and Social Protest Movements 1965–1985’, in Justice Instead of Charity: Chapters in the Development of Social Work in Israel, ed. by Johnny Gal and Roni Holler (Beer-Sheva: The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel & Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2019), 373–77, 381–82 (Hebrew).7 – Shofar, ‘About the Photographs’, unpaginated.8 – Gilad Meiri, interview with the author, 30 October 2020, Makom le Shira, Jerusalem; and David Meiri, ‘David Meiri: Curriculum Vita Summary’, in Davidi a Memoir, ed. by Gilad Meiri, independently published, Israel 2019, 127–28 (Hebrew). Playwright Charlie Aboutboul, later the manager of the Musrara Social Theatre, came up with the idea for the theatre which he shared with Sa’adia Marciano who encouraged the project, and soon after, Avner Amiel became a key figure in its foundation and activity. Author’s conversation with Charlie Aboutboul, 3 September 2023.9 – Shofar, Born in Israel.10 – The man was identified as David Shitrit by Reuven Abergel.11 – Ashkenazim are Jews of Eastern European origin who held most of the influential social and political positions. In the late 1960s, ‘Mizrahim’ became the common category for Jews from Muslim countries and for understanding ethnic differences and tensions between them and the Ashkenazim. Since the 1980s, ‘Sepharadim’, the earlier prevalent term for marking Middle Eastern ethnicity, has been increasingly linked with religiosity. Throughout the 1980s, the two terms were used interchangeably. Harvey Goldberg, ‘From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of “Sephardi” in Its Social Environments’, Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society, 15, no. 1 (Fall 2008), 165–88 (179); Deborah Bernstein, ‘The Black Panthers: The Personal and the Collective Story as a Political act and as a Politicization Platform’, in Israel/Palestine: Scholarly Tributes to the Legacy of Baruch Kimmerling (Jerusalem: Magnes: The Hebrew University Press, 2017), 258 (Hebrew); Dahan Kalev, ‘Big Missed Opportunity’; and Black Panther flyer, ‘The Goal of the Organisation’, in The Black Panthers, ed. by Avi Sabag and Roni Edri (Jerusalem: The School for Photography Musraraa, 1999) (Hebrew).12 – Kochavi Shemesh, unlike other North African Black Panthers, was born in Iraq. Deborah Bernstein, ‘The Black Panthers of Israel 1971–1972: Contradictions and Protest in the Process of Nation Building’ (PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1976), 164, 202, 244.13 – Kaufman, ‘Panthers in the Institution’, 380.14 – Tali Lev and Yehuda Shenhav, ‘The Formation of the Enemy on the Inside: The Black Panthers as Objects of Moral Panic’, Israeli Sociology, 12, no. 1 (2010), 135 (Hebrew); Bernstein, ‘Black Panthers of Israel’, 160; Kaufman, ‘Panthers in the Institution’, 381; and Deborah Bernstein, ‘Conflict and Protest in Israeli Society: The Case of the Black Panthers of Israel’, Youth Society, 16 (1984), 141. The Black Panthers challenged the fundamental Zionist aspiration to end the exile of Jews by bringing them to the land of Israel. Their protests thus fractured and exposed the hegemonic and discriminatory ethnically based power relations of this aspiration. Oz Frenkel, ‘What’s in a name? The Black Panthers in Israel’, The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, 1, no. 1 (June 2008), 10.15 – La Merhav was established in 1954 and published until 31 May 1971, when it merged with Davar, a paper owned by the dominant Mapai labour party. Orly Tsarfaty, ‘La-Merchav: The Evolution of a Newspaper between Union and Division’, Kesher, 35 (Winter, 2007), 119 (Hebrew); and author’s correspondence with Debbie Eylon, editor of Kav Adom series of the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 7 July 2020.16 – Sara Bartal, ‘The Black Panthers Will Protest Today’, La Merhav, 2 March 1971, 6 (Hebrew).17 – Sara Bartal, ‘Conversation with Two Named the Black Panthers’, La Merhav, 12 March 1971, 3 (Hebrew).18 – Bernstein, ‘Black Panthers of Israel’, 340–41.19 – In 1973, the Black Panthers entered official politics. Itay Negri, The Mizrahi Protest in Wadi Salib the Events and Their Impact on the Black Panthers (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2018), 185 (Hebrew); and Israel Democracy Institute, ‘The Black Panthers Israeli Democrats’ (Hebrew), https://www.idi.org.il/policy/parties-and-elections/parties/hapanterim-hashorim/.20 – Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 238.21 – Shofar, interview; and Negri, Mizrahi Protest in Wadi Salib, 187.22 – Dahan Kalev, ‘Big Missed Opportunity’.23 – Reuven Abergel, interview with the author, 22 October 2019.24 – Shofar, interview; and Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 238.25 – There is no indication whether the Born in Israel exhibition at the Haifa Museum of Art in 1984 mentioned the Black Panthers.26 – There are three introduction sections in Born in Israel written by Hanan Laskin, David Meiri and Ya’akov Shofar (Hebrew).27 – Yael Guilat, The Lost Generation: The 1980’s generation in Israeli Art (Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2019), 153–154 (Hebrew); and Edna Barromi-Perlman, ‘Visions of Landscape Photography’, Landscape Research, 45 no. 5 (2020), 574–77.28 – Tal-Or K. Ben-Choreen, ‘Emergence of Fine Art Photography in Israel in the 1970s to the 1990s through Pedagogical and Social Links with the United States,’ Contemporary Review of the Middle East 6, no. 3–4 (2019), 263.29 – Guilat, ‘Lost’ Generation, 153–54.30 – Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi, The Visual is Political: Feminist Photography and Countercultural Activity in 1970s Britain (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 95.31 – Jochai Rosen, ‘The End of Consensus: The Crisis of the 1980s and the Turning-Point in Israeli Photography’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 9, no. 3 (November 2010), 327–47.32 – Guilat, ‘Lost’ Generation, 154.33 – Ben Choreen, ‘Emergence of Fine Art Photography’, 257–65 (264 n. 5).34 – Hanan Laskin, interview with author, 19 October 2020.35 – Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 181; and ‘Hanan Laskin’, Hamichlol Jewish Encyclopedia, https://www.hamichlol.org.il/%D7%97%D7%A0%D7%9F_%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%9F. The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem was established in 1906 by Boris Shatz and became hegemonic in the (Jewish Israeli) fine arts field; see Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled, The Religionization of Israeli Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 180–81.36 – Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 181, 184–85, 238. The impact of US attitudes towards photography on Israeli photography can be viewed as part of an Americanisation process that Israeli culture underwent particularly since the late 1960s. Oz Frankel, ‘What’s in a name? The Black Panthers in Israel’, The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, 1, no. 1 (June 2008), 9–10.37 – Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 238; and Shofar, interview.38 – Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Bruce Davidson, Bruce Davidson – Brooklyn Gang (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 1998); and Jim Lewis, ‘Leader of the Pack’, New York Times, 7 September 2010. East 100th Street was exhibited in the 1970s at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Brooklyn Gang was exhibited in 1998 at the International Center of Photography, New York. Lynne Warren, ‘Bruce Davidson’, in Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, vol. 1 A–F (New York: Routledge, 2006), 364.39 – Shofar, interview.40 – Zdaka. Photographic Truth, 238; Shulamith Lev-Aladgem, Theatre in Co-Communities: Articulating Power (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 79–82; and Tobi Arbel, ‘The Israeli Natives are Sad: Ya’akov Shofar Photographs the Musrara Neighborhood in Jerusalem’, Ha’aretz, 24 October 1984 (Hebrew), courtesy of The Israel Museum Jerusalem and Ya’akov Shofar.41 – Shofar, interview; and Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 238.42 – John Tagg, Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 2–5.43 – Shofar, interview.44 – Ibid.; and Hanan Laskin, ‘Introduction’, in Ya’akov Shofar, Born in Israel (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1984) (Hebrew).45 – Shofar, interview.46 – The literature on this image is extensive; see for example James Curtis, ‘Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression’, Winterthur Portfolio, 21, no. 1 (Spring, 1986), 1–20; Sally Stein, Migrant Mother, Migrant Gender: Reconsidering Dorothea Lange’s Iconic Portrait of Maternity (London: Mack, 2020); and David Campany, ‘An Essay on Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”’, Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, 14, no. 2 (2022), 96–103. https://doi.org/10.34632/jsta.2022.11647.47 – Shofar, interview.48 – Emanuel Bar-Kadma, ‘Sabras born with Big Thorns’, 7 Days Yediot Aharonot, 19 October 1984, 16–17, courtesy of the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Ya’akov Shofar.49 – Shofar, interview.50 – Shofar, Born in Israel.51 – Ibid.52 – Motti Gigi, Development Towns – Kibbutzim Relations: Status Identity and Space – The Case of Sderot-Sha’ar ha Negev 1950–2012 (PhD thesis, Ben Gurion of the Negev University, 2016), 34 (Hebrew).53 – Author’s interview with Giora Rosen, founder and chief editor of Kav Adom series, 9 July 2020; and author’s correspondence with Debbie Eylon, editor of Kav Adom series of the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 7 July 2020.54 – Allan Sekula, ‘The Body and the Archive’, October, 39 (Winter, 1986), 3–64; Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 (Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984); Martha Rosler, ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography’ (1981), in Decoys and Disruption Selected Writing, 1975–2001 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Victor Burgin, ed., Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982); John Tagg, ’Power and Photography – Part One: A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in Law’, Screen Education, 36 (Autumn 1980), 17–24; and Abigail Solomon Godeau, Photography Against the Docs: Essays on Photographic History, Institution, and Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).55 – John Tagg, The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 58–59; and John Tagg, ‘The Currency of the Photograph: New Deal Reformism and Documentary Rhetoric’, in Burden of Representation Essays of Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 153–83 (chapter based on a lecture given at the Midland Group Gallery in August 1977).56 – The coupling between documentary images and the evocation of emotion has been prompted by various documentary practitioners. US documentary photographer Edward Steichen suggested that there are two types of documents: one gives factual information, and the other gives human information conveying the feeling of lived experience. Similarly, Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson claimed that the essence of documentary is not information but the power to move; he believed that emotion, properly felt and understood, engenders decent seeing and is intelligent. William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 11–12.57 – Rosler, ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts,’ 176.58 – Ibid., 179.59 – Ibid., 177.60 – Guilat, ‘Lost’ Generation, 154.61 – See Klorman-Eraqi, ‘Acting Out for the Camera’, 2–3; Knesset Channel Broadcast Channel 99, ‘Aharon Barnea Interviewing Ya’akov Shofar’; and Shofar, interview.62 – Since 1968, Shofar has been a Kibbutz member; first, a member of Nir David, then Sdeh Yoav and, finally, En HaShoffet. Shofar biography, personal archive.63 – Gigi, Development Towns, 34.64 – Zdaka, Photographic Truth, 81–87; and Dalia Manor, Art in Zion: The Genesis of Modern National Art in Jewish Palestine (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005).65 – Dahan Kalev, ‘Big Missed Opportunity’; and David Peretz, interviewed by David Meiri, 8 December 1982, Musrara Neighborhood, Jerusalem, courtesy of the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Ya’akov Shofar.66 – Noa Hazan, ‘Display of Institutional Power between Race and Gender’, Israeli Sociology, 2 (2013), 344 (Hebrew). Tova Levi and Rachel Abergel, women associated with the Black Panthers, took part in the group’s meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1971. Tali Lev, ‘“We will Erase the Past of Those who do not have a Past”: The Complete Protocol of the Black Panthers’ Meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel, April 1971,’ Theory and Criticism 32 (Spring 2008), 197 (Hebrew).67 – See the discussion on race gender and post-colonial conflict in Hazan, ‘Display of Institutional Power’, 344.68 – Niza Erel, ‘Without Fear and Prejudice’ Uri Avnery and Ha’olam Ha’ze (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006), 1–10 (Hebrew).69 – Uri Avneri, ‘Black Flag’, Ha Olam Haze, 1 May 1973, 11–13 (Hebrew).70 – Three photographs by Bar-Am were included in an article covering a Black Panther demonstration in Jerusalem’s Menora square. Menahem Talmi, ‘The Panthers’ Roar in Menorah Square’, Ma’ariv, 7 January 1972, 16 (Hebrew).71 – Rosemary N. Nduati, ‘The Post-Colonial Language and Identity Experiences of Transnational Kenyan Teachers in U.S. Universities’ (PhD thesis, Syracuse University, 2016), 36. It should be noted that Bar-Am, an Israeli German-born journalistic photographer, had chronicled social developments in Israel throughout his photographic career. His interest led him to capture an inside view of the Black Panthers during street protests and political group meetings. Micha Bar-Am, interview with the author, 8 July 2020.72 –Wigoder’s photographs can be found in Nissim Musak’s documentary film Have You Heard of the Black Panthers? (2022). Meir Wigodar’s photography exhibition A Look from the Past was at Camera Obscura gallery in Tel Aviv in 2011 curated by Haim Lusky, and in Musrara mon Amor, an exhibition and catalogue produced by The Musrara School of Photography in 1999. Meir Wigoder, interview with the author, 2 August 2020.73 – Yaron Peleg, ‘From Black to White: Changing Images of Mizrahim in Israeli Cinema’, Israel Studies, 13, no. 2 (Summer 2008), 123.74 – Sammy Smooha, ‘Black Panthers: The Ethnic Dilemma: Israel and its Third World Jews’, Society, 9, no. 7 (May 1972), 32–33.75 – Hazan, Photographic Truth, 345–46.76 – Peleg, ‘From Black to White’, 142 n. 25; and Hazan, ‘Display of Institutional Power’, 346.77 – Peleg, ’From Black to White’, 128.78 – Ibid, 123.79 – Raz Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 91.80 – Peleg, ‘From Black to White’, 131.81 – Ibid., 125, 130–32, 134.82 – Uri Ben-Eliezer, War Instead of Peace: One Hundred Years of Nationality and Militarism in Israel (Moshav Ben Shemen: Modan, 2019), 153, 168.83 – Shofar, Born in Israel.84 – Bernstein, ‘Black Panthers: The Personal’, 261–62, 265–66 (Hebrew).85 – Peretz, interviewed by Meiri.86 – Ibid.87 – Ibid.; and Shofar, interview.88 – Eli Dahan, interviewed by David Meiri, 22 December 1982, courtesy of the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Ya’akov Shofar.89 – Meir Amzaleg, interviewed by David Meiri, 8 December 1982, courtesy of the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Ya’akov Shofar.90 – Chiefly Sa’adia Marciano and Charlie Biton cultivated friendships with Matzpen members, which initially began through obtaining and smoking Hashish in downtown hangouts. These meetings led to conversations about politics and society. Maztpen members, among them Shimshon Wigoder, introduced them to ideas of political organisation. See Bernstein, ‘Black Panthers of Israel’, 151–52; and Frankel, ‘What’s in a name?’, 11.91 – Bernstein, ‘Black Panthers of Israel, 157, 258–59, 261.92 – Meiri often involved the media without the authorisation of his superiors, and at times this led to conflicts and the withholding of his salary; see for example Meiri, in Davidi a Memoir, ed. by Meiri, 36–38; and Gilad Meiri, interview with the author, 30 October 2019, Makom le Shira, Jerusalem, Israel.93 – Arbel, ‘Israeli Natives are Sad, 9.94 – Henriette Dahan Kalev, ‘Colorism in Israel: The Construct of a Paradox’, American Behavioral Scientist, 62, no. 14 (2018), 2106.95 – Yoav Peled, ‘Towards a Redefinition of Jewish Nationalism in Israel? The Enigma of Shas’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21, no. 4 (1998), 704.96 – The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow successfully appealed to the High Court of Justice to intervene with decisions of the government to change land-use rights of the agricultural sector. The Rainbow claimed that the decisions unjustly benefited the agricultural (Ashkenazi) sector at the expense of the low-class urban sector and their neighbouring Mizrahi townships. Kalev, ‘Colorism in Israel’, 2108.97 – Haviva Pedaya, ‘The Identity Skretch: The Chronicle and Problematics of the Mizrahi Art’, in Breaking Walls Contemporary Mizrahi Feminist Artists, ed. by Kzia Alon and Shula Keshet (Tel Aviv: Ahoti [Sister] for Women in Israel, 2013), 77–78 (Hebrew).98 – Ibid., 86.99 – Breaking Walls, ed. by Alon and Keshet; and Shula Keshet, Sigal Eshed, Ahuva Mu'alem, Shuli Nachshon, Zmira Poran Zion, Dafna Shalom, Chen Shish, Parvin Shmueli-Buchnik and Orna Zaken, ‘Sister: Mizrahi Women Artists in Israel’, Bridges, 9, no. 1 (Summer 2001), 49–58.100 – The woman cleaner is a recurring theme in the works of Mizrahi artists such as Tal Shochat, Myriam Kabesa and Leor Grady. Kzia Alon, ‘Without Shoes: Contemplating Feminine Mizrahi Art in 2014 Israel’, Bezalel Journal of Visual and Material Culture, 6 (January 2020), 212 (Hebrew); and Leor Grady, Natural Worker (Tel Aviv: Sternthal Books, 2019) (Hebrew and English). The theme of the women cleaner also appears in works by poet and essayist Yonit Na’aman. Yonit Na’aman, ‘Portrait of a Cleaning Worker 1–3’, in Pining for the Tree Tops (Tel Aviv: Gama Publishing House and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2015), 20–25 (Hebrew); and Yonit Na’aman, ’The Woman that Thought a Cleaning Rag was Chasing Her’, in To Dwell in a Word, ed. by Kzia Alon (Tel Aviv: Gama Publishing House, 2015), 119–28 (Hebrew).101 – Shani Litman, ‘The Artist who Moves the Social Margins into the Front of the Israeli Art World’, Ha’aretz, 28 May 2016 (Hebrew), https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/art/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.2953833.102 – Eyal Sagi Bizawi, ‘The Big Empress of Ars Poetica: Adi Kaesar is the most influential and prominent poet today in Israel’, Haaretz, 10 September 2015 (Hebrew), https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/literature/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.2727123.103 – Ines Iliyas, ‘Four Years of Ars Poetica, what is happening with the Revolution’, Haaretz, 19 January 2017 (Hebrew), https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/.premium-1.3265143.104 – The State of Israel, Ministry of Education, ‘The Whole Story – A Program for Empowering the Legacy of Sephardic and Eastern Judaism’ (Hebrew), https://edu.gov.il/special/East_legacy/background/Pages/Report.aspx (accessed 8 September 2020).105 – Shofar, interview.106 – Anat Barzilai, ‘Ya’akov Shofar the Photographer who Photographed the Black Panthers in their House Slippers’, Calcalist, 23 February 2017 (Hebrew), https://www.calcalist.co.il/consumer/articles/0,7340,L-3708349,00.html; and Noam Gal, ‘Ya’akov Shofar Born in Israel’, Museum of Israel exhibition pamphlet 2017, Ya’akov Shofar’s private collection. Born in Israel was exhibited alongside Ron Amir’s photography exhibition Doing Time in Holot that dealt with the African asylum seekers’ Holot Detention Centre in the Negev. Israel Museum Newsletter, ‘Ron Amir: Doing Time in Holot | Ya’akov Shofar: Born in Israel’, 1 January 2017, https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=c17802e2023013491447988eb&id=8daa44bb1f&e=6b565a7e70.107 – Ibid.108 – Barzilai, ‘Ya’akov Shofar’.109 – Zohara Ron, ‘The Absent Present’, Globes, 26 January 2017 (Hebrew), https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001173903.110 – Born in Israel includes a photograph of Reuven Abergel’s father David Abergel and a photograph of his dining table adorned with an oriental carpet and a traditional Moroccan tea tray. Abergel, interview.111 – Leor Grady is another artist that dealt with Mizrahi experience and memory. His 2017 project ‘Natural Worker’ dealt with the expulsion of Yemeni Jewish settlers from Kinneret in 1930 by the Zionist Ashkenazi settlers who desired to take over the agricultural land that was promised to the Yemenis. Grady, Natural Worker; and Uzi Zur, ‘Natural Worker: and Exhibition about the Rejects of the Zionist Consensus’, Ha’aretz, 6 January 2017 (Hebrew), https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/closeoneeye/.premium-1.3197491.112 – Abergel, interview.113 – Liron Zayed ‘They are Nice: A Tribute to the Black Panthers’, N12 Main Newscast, 21 December 2016 (Hebrew), https://www.mako.co.il/news-channel2/Channel-2-Newscast-q4_2016/Article-b4386b964e22951004.htm.114 – Local examples of socio-political activist uses of documentary photography are, for instance, Activestills Collective established in 2005 by Jewish, Arab and international photographers who raise awareness to issues, such as women’s rights, LGTBQI rights, migrant rights and other struggles for freedom and equality; and B’Tselem human rights organisation, founded in 1989, that uses photography and video footage to document violations of Palestinians’ human rights in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Activestills collective, ‘Statement’, https://www.activestills.org/about_us/ (accessed 18 February 2021); and B’Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, ‘About B’Tselem’ https://www.btselem.org/about_btselem (accessed 18 February 2021).