“Reality around us has changed in an extreme way; continuing our work requires new tools.”

This is how Sapir Sluzker Amran explained the decision that she and her partner in activism, Carmen Elmakiyes Amos, made late last year to cease the activities of Shovrot Kirot (“Breaking Walls”), the Mizrahi feminist movement they had built together.

Founded in 2019, Shovrot Kirot quickly became known for organizing confrontational protests, awareness campaigns, and direct actions as part of a slew of intersecting justice struggles within Israeli society — ranging from public housing rights, violence against women, police brutality, and pinkwashing, to prisoner reintegration, asylum seeker rights, Mizrahi struggles, fighting poverty, and the growing influence of the right-wing religious think tank Kohelet Policy Forum on Israeli politics. But the breadth of their campaigning was far from the only thing that made the group stand out.

Whereas most Israeli human rights groups have traditionally been led by the country’s Ashkenazi elite (Jews whose ancestry lies in Eastern and Central Europe), Shovrot Kirot was made up of activists from Israel’s Mizrahi underclass (those whose families came to the country from the Middle East and North Africa). Its financial model was also unique: unlike typical Israeli civil society organizations that rely international foundations, foreign governments, or wealthy philanthropists, Shovrot Kirot limited itself to small donations sourced from within the communities in which they were active, in an effort to collapse the distinction between vulnerable “clients” and the professional “experts” who support them.

Yet shifts in Israeli society over the past few years have forced Sluzker Amran, a human rights lawyer by trade, and Elmakiyes Amos, a filmmaker and artist, to rethink their strategy. “We feel we reached the limit of what was possible to do collectively in the current moment,” Elmakiyes Amos told +972. “In the past, going out to the streets or protesting in front of a minister’s house seemed radical and effective,” she added. “Now, since the current government took office [in late 2022], it is happening all the time and every protest looks the same. We need to propose something new.”

Partly, their decision to wrap up Shovrot Kirot’s activities was due to the inherent sensitivityof their financial structure. “Our movement is full of potential for deep change, but we can’t make a real impact on society without sufficient support,” Sluzker Amran explained. “When we started with this model, just before the pandemic,we were one of the only organizations that was community-funded through small donations: we actively decided to be independent. But with the government cutting funding [to public services], such as shelters for women who are victims of domestic violence, these facilities now need to do their own crowdfunding in order to survive. It became a competition, which it shouldn’t be — these services should all be supported by the state. Our model started to collapse.”

Scorn and double standards from left-wing Ashkenazi groups also played a part. “There is a racist stigma about Mizrahim being right wing — when in fact the entire Jewish-Israeli society has shifted to the right — and because of this we were always asked to prove that we were legitimately human rights activists and explain how our struggles are related to the occupation [of the Palestinian territories],” Elmakiyes Amos said. “[My answer is that] everything is connected: this system is sick and oppressive and we are fighting against injustice for the liberation of everyone. That’s the alternative we’re proposing to a left that has failed to be inclusive for 70 years.”

“Those who have the most to win from a change to the [existing] regime are those who had to deal with police brutality, evictions, house demolitions, and systematic racism themselves,” Sluzker Amran continued. “But this potential wasn’t seen: we were often only brought into the conversation [with other left-wing groups] — and I’m quoting here — to ‘bring color’ when they estimated that these spaces were ‘too white.’ There was a lack of real support for us, and I still hold resentment about this.”

Shovrot Kirot’s strategy for political change is simple: bring marginalized communities into solidarity with one another to build an irrepressible political force. “If we succeed in creating alliances between all of the communities we work with, they would constitute a political majority,” Elmakiyes Amos explained. “This is why the establishment is so interested in playing them against each other.”

But in recent years, and particularly in the shadow of October 7 and the ensuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza, this task has become harder than ever. “A community that is in survival mode cannot pay attention and give to another, even if there is an understanding that [each community’s] struggle is completely valid and interconnected,” she continued. “There now needs to be a focus on healing work within the different communities, in order to get to the point where a true and deep alliance is possible against an Israeli government that chooses death over life.”

Returning to the peripheries

Elmakiyes Amos and Sluzker Amran met during the wave of social justice protests that swept through Israel in the summer of 2011, which they spent mainly at protest encampments in  impoverished and predominantly Mizrahi neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv. Since then, they’ve been vocal advocates for the rights of all vulnerable and minority communities, including Israelis of Ethiopian descent, Palestinian citizens of Israel, prisoners, the LGBTQ+ community, and Holocaust survivors.

As activists, the pair have made a name for themselves over the years as central figures in the Mizrahi feminist movement, raising awareness of topics often ignored by not only the right wing but also the predominantly Ashkenazi and upper-class Israeli left — such as the Yemenite children affair andringworm affair of the 1950s, and other instances of abuse and persecution against Mizrahim by the Zionist establishment. For years, they were at the center of efforts to halt the eviction of Givat Amal, a working-class, predominantly Mizrahi neighborhood in Tel Aviv; following 60 years of legal battles, the residents were eventually forced out in 2021 to allow real estate moguls to build high-end apartments.

But in a field in which success stories are few and far between, Elmakiyes Amos and Sluzker Amran tasted victory in their protest campaign to secure the early release of Dalal Daoud, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was serving a 25-year sentence for killing her husband who had repeatedly abused and raped her. Daoud later became active within Shovrot Kirot, epitomizing the movement’s theory of change and alliance: “We see women who we were helping with something only a year or two ago becoming partners in the movement — either as donors or activists — once they manage to get their heads above water,” Elmakiyes Amos told +972 in 2021.

In 2020, Shovrot Kirot attended the Tel Aviv pride parade carrying banners against Israel’s “pinkwashing” of the occupation. During a music performance following the march, Sluzker Amran was physically assaulted by another attendee after she protected a woman with a child who was being harassed for waving a Palestinian flag. The assaulter, a gay man, slammed her head into the ground, causing her injuries that required treatment at the hospital. While the police cut a deal with the man for NIS 500 ($140) to close the case, Sluzker Amran insisted on reopening it and filed private criminal charges. The case remains ongoing.

Since then, Sluzker Amran warned, freedom of expression in Israeli society, even among Jewish citizens, has only been further restricted. “Our right to protest is more imperiled than ever — we are now in a fascist country” she said. “Seeing a police officer at a protest for a hostage deal choke [and later charge on horseback at] the sister of hostage Matan Zangauker is an image I can’t get out of my mind.

“A couple weeks ago, I went to a protest where people chanted slogans in Hebrew and Arabic, and a police officer tried to prohibit only the ones in Arabic,” Sluzker Amran recalled. “I told him, ‘you’re not only repressing the Palestinians here, but also your grandparents’ language and culture: we are Arab Jews.’ He replied, ‘but I don’t understand what they are saying.’ ‘So learn,’ I retorted. He was taken aback.”

For Elmakiyes Amos, meanwhile, the current conditions call for each community to look inward. “This past year, our members have faced increasingly extreme situations politically and personally, making it more difficult for them to support each other across different struggles and communities and creating alliances, which was always our aim.” “Even within the movement,” Sluzker Amran added, “supporters started to say, ‘But this campaign isn’t feminist,’ or, ‘This action isn’t against the occupation,’ or, ‘This isn’t Mizrahi or LGBTQIA+ activism,’ and so on.”

“In this environment, where everything is extremely loud and violent, there’s a need to do deep, long-term community work,” Elmakiyes Amos explained. “Personally, I will continue working with the community I grew up in [Mizrahim in Israel’s “periphery”], because I can identify its needs the best.” 

Elmakiyes Amos’ first post-Shovrot Kirot project is an initiative called “Cinema on the Block,” which aims to make socially impactful films accessible to underprivileged neighborhoods, stimulating critical discourse and offering tools for resistance. “I truly believe in art as a vector for change,” she explained. “Community work is urgent right now in order for there to be a possibility of true coexistence and relationships of mutual care and real solidarity across underprivileged communities, which in turn could transform the reality here.”

‘I want to believe that our voice makes a difference’

Sluzker Amran made international headlines in May 2024 when she and Shovrot Kirot board member Neta Hamami Tabib attempted to safeguard aid trucks delivering food and humanitarian goods to Gaza from being looted by scores of Israeli settlers at the Tarqumiyah checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. Soldiers and police stood by as the settlers physically assaulted the two activists and destroyed aid. Sluzker Amran’s work bringing this incident to light triggered international campaigns that ultimately helped to protect the trucks from being intercepted by settlers.

“I was seeing images of [settlers looting aid trucks] from my home in Tel Aviv, only one hour away, and at some point I just couldn’t bear it anymore and felt I had to do something,” she told +972. “Although it was very scary, we just went — we wanted to understand how to organize to stop it, because no one was. When we arrived, they had already destroyed some goods. They left and came back with more people. Neta was documenting, and I climbed on the truck. We yelled at [the settlers] to stop stomping on the food, that what they are doing goes against the highest commands in Judaism, that people are starving.

“One of the settlers then slapped me really hard on the face, and the soldiers and police that were present did nothing. But another [settler], a young boy, later sent me a message to say that he thought about it and [realized] that what he did was wrong. I don’t know if he forgot about it the following day, but for me it was a starting point.”

For Sluzker Amran, the events of that day highlighted what type of activism is required in Israel-Palestine post October 7. “There needs to be more focus on direct actions and fighting against settler violence and the extreme right wingand more attention on how to lead non-violent struggles in this extremely violent environment, while raising political awareness among people who are less engaged,” she said. “I want to believe that our voice, no matter how small, makes a difference and can affect reality.”

On October 7, Elmakiyes Amos and her daughter were visiting her parents in her hometown of Ashkelon, a working-class, majority Mizrahi city in southern Israel. Decades of systemic neglect toward Mizrahi communities has meant that many houses in Ashkelon, including that of Elmakiyes Amos’ parents, do not have bomb shelters. So with missiles flying overhead and Hamas militants patrolling their neighborhood, she hid her daughter for 24 hours in what seemed like the safest part of the house: the closet. 

For Elmakiyes Amos, housing is a symbol of the ethnic hierarchy in Israeli society. “One aspect is who gets shelters and who doesn’t: our neighborhoods don’t.” she explained. “Our different struggles are of course not equal, but they are part of the same system.”

Like other communities in Israel’s “periphery” that were directly impacted by the October 7 attack like Netivot, Ofakim, and various Bedouin villages in Israel’s south, Ashkelon was excluded from the NIS 18 billion rehabilitation package approved by the Israeli government in December 2023. Sderot, another southern city that experienced substantial missile fire from Gaza on October 7 and for many years beforehand, was included in the package only after a fierce public battle by its mayor.

In response to this neglect, Elmakiyes Amos set up the community-led initiative “Okef Israel” (“Going around Israel”), which aimed to unite the communities excluded from the government’s rehabilitation plan and help them organize politically to promote the issue and raise funds. The initiative’s first project was to collect testimonies from residents about their experiences on October 7, which were then shared on social media to initiate a dialogue and build solidarity between the communities. In parallel, Elmakiyes Amos launched an art project that led to an exhibition, “30 Seconds,” documenting the daily lives of her family and inhabitants of Ashkelon during the first days after October 7.

Shovrot Kirot has also shown consistent support for hostages’ families since just days after October 7, demanding a ceasefire and hostage deal. But in line with their work centering communities that are underrepresented and marginalized in Israeli discourse, they made particular effort to campaign on behalf of foreign workers and Bedouin citizens who were taken hostage, as well as two hostages who were taken captive over 10 years ago yet are largely absent from the public conversation: Avera Mengistu and Hisham Al-Sayed. “At protests, we always try to represent the unseen,” Elmakiyes Amos explained.

For Elmakiyes Amos and Sluzker Amran, moving away from the Shovrot Kirot structure marks the beginning of a new chapter — but they don’t see this as the end of the movement per se, and they intend to keep collaborating. One of the projects that will continue onward under Sluzker Amran’s leadership is the Mizrachion, an independent, digital archive of social and political struggles in Israel-Palestine.

“The archive is intended as a tool of political education and resistance,” Sluzker Amran explained. “[It enables us to fight] against isolation and learn from the past so our work can continue to be more strategic.” The archive now also features the possibility to upload images in real time during protests. “This way,” she added “we can also learn from each other.”