Charlie Biton, former Hadash member of Knesset for more than 15 years
and one of the founders of the Mizrachi protest movement Black Panthers,
died on Saturday evening, February 24, aged 76. He was the first Israeli MP who met the historic leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, in 1980.
Biton founded the Israeli Black Panthers in 1971 in response to class and ethnic discrimination faced by Israelis of Middle Eastern and North African descent.