Blog Questions for December 4, 2013

Amanda Aussems

Blog Questions

For December 4, 2013 (Wednesday)

Who were the Canaanites and what kind of Israeli culture did they advocate?

The Canaanites were made up of various kinds of artists. They included poets, authors, journalists, sculptors and educators. They had an ideology called “ negation of the Diaspora” which had a critical influence on the formation of modern Israeli culture. The Canaanites veered from Judaism and hoped to return to more of a Middle Eastern sense of identity that did not involve Judaism or Islam. These radicals were lead by the poet Yonatan Ratosh and two sculptors, Binyamin Tammuz and Yitzhak Danziger. The Canaanites longed to free the Jews from Judaism and Arabs from Islam due to the fact that Arabs and Jews came from a shared place and should live in Israel together. Leaning toward a fascist culture, they promoted an idea of Hebrew universalism where there was glorification of the New Hebrew man and woman in addition to an uncompromising rejection to the Diaspora.

Who were the Israeli Black Panthers and what were their demands?

During the 1950-1960s, many Jews immigrated to Israel. These Jews often faced hardships such as difficult living conditions, increased rates of unemployment and lack of education. Thus, in 1971 the Israeli Black Panthers organization was established to protest about the problems faced by these Israelis, from Middle Eastern countries and North Africa, known as Oriental or Mizrahi Jews. The founders of the Black Panthers were young men from the Jerusalem slum neighborhood of Musrara, most of them of North African origin. The Israeli Black Panthers blamed the government and the ruling labor party, which was headed mostly by European Ashkenazi Jews. In March of 1971, the organization held a demonstration in Jerusalem against the oppression faced by the Mizrachi Jews in Jerusalem, despite the government turndown of the proposal. The Panthers conducted multiple demonstrations (which occasionally turned aggressive) in order to gain public awareness of the persecution faced by these Jews. Thus, the Israeli people could not deny or turn a cheek to this growing issue and were pushed to take a step toward adjustments of societal views. The Israeli Black Panthers began a start to changes within the area.