Social Protest Governance and Ethnic Cleavages in Israel: From the Black Panther Movement Onward

Ethnic cleavages have been among the factors contributing to social protest in Israel, and the Black Panther Movement of the early 1970s marked a watershed in Mizrahi mobilisation. Originating among Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, the movement exposed persistent socioeconomic, political, and cultural inequalities and exerted a lasting influence on Israeli society. The Labour government responded through a combination of coercive containment, selective socioeconomic accommodation, and discursive delegitimation. The paper conceptualises these responses as a repertoire of protest governance and traces how its instruments were recalibrated after the movement declined. Although Labour and Likud governments differed in their political constituencies and preferred instruments, both placed political stability at the centre of protest governance. Political alignment shaped the relative weight of coercion, accommodation, and delegitimation, while changing social cleavages and media conditions affected the effectiveness of this repertoire.