Carmen Elmakiyes Amos (in Hebrew: כרמן אלמקייס עמוס; born February 17, 1979) is a social and political activist, a medical clown, and a filmmaker. She is a founder of the "Not Nice" social movement, of the Tor Hazahav (Golden Age) Mizrahi political movement. In April 2019, she ran in the national elections for the Knesset as a candidate for the Gesher party, led by Orly Levy-Abekasis.
Early life and family
Elmakiyes was born in Ashkelon, to Michael Elmakiyes and Rina Amos. Her father was a Moroccan Mizrahi social activist, who participated in the Wadi Salib riots and was a founder of the 1992 Gesher political party, and former candidate for the Knesset. Her mother is a seamstress. Both are immigrants to Israel from Morocco. Elmakiyes is one of their eight biological children, and they adopted another child as well. Elmakiyes grew up in the distressed "Shikunim" Neighborhood of Ashkelon, which was nicknamed "Harlem" by its residents. In elementary school, she attended local, religious, Rambam Elementary, but in middle school she was transferred to Ronson, a regional integration project, where she felt out of place. When it was time for high school, it was decided to send her to Ort Negev, a trade high school, where she was intended to learn to be a child caregiver. Even at her young age, she realized that all the Mizrahi youngsters were being sent to trade schools to learn to be hairdressers or electricians, while the Ashkenazi teens were sent to college preparatory schools. She decided not to cooperate, and dropped out of school at age 16. She eventually competed the matriculation exams on her own, and went on to higher education in the arts, her desired field. Elmakiyes completed her undergraduate degree in film at the Kinneret Academic College.
When she was 17, Elmakiyes moved to Tel Aviv, to live with her older sister, and began working in a shop near Dizengoff Center. One day in 1994, while waiting in line at the ATM, a bomb went off, and Elmakiyes was thrown back several meters. It was the Dizengoff Center suicide bombing, a suicide terrorist attack, in which 14 people were killed and over 120 wounded. Elmakiyes was lightly wounded, but suffered extreme trauma from the experience and what she witnessed. Her rehabilitation took several years, also releasing her from mandatory military service. She says, "It was a complicated time, which took me far off the normal path. I wasn't severely wounded, but seeing children explode before your eyes is an indescribable horror. I will never forget it, these are things that stay with you for life." It was only after she completed rehabilitation that she was able to pursue her education. In addition to her degree in filmmaking, Elmakiyes completed several other courses in the arts, including learning to be a medical clown.
Social activism
Elmakiyes began her activism in the Mizrahi feminist movement, Ahoti – for Women in Israel. After two years of volunteering, she was appointed project manager for the Libi BaMizrach Coalition (My Heart Is in the East), an umbrella group for over thirty Mizrahi cultural organizations. As part of this multi-cultural project, the "Black Night of Culture" are held every year as a protest against the municipality of Tel Aviv's "White Night of Culture", which takes place in the wealthier, largely white Ashkenazi neighborhoods, and which seeks to shine a spotlight on the neglect, crime, pollution, drug trade and other issues relegated to the mostly Mizrahi and African neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv. She is a producer together with Shula Keshet, and on the steering committee of Libi BaMizrah's annual culture festival.
In 2011, Elmakiyes was one of the founder of the "Not Nice" movement, a group of activists from Mizrahi neighborhoods who organized to get Mizrahi issues on the public agenda. The group's goals are to reduce class social and class gaps, improve public housing and deal with the housing shortage in Israel, and to eliminate poverty. Elmakiyes and other group members are highly visible in demonstrations, guerrilla street action (such as changing street names to Mizrahi names), and other forms of protest. The name of the movement is a reclamation of a famous quote by then-prime minister Golda Meir about the Black Panther Mizrahi social justice movement of the 1970s, who dismissed them out of hand, saying, "They’re not nice."
Elmakiyes is often referred to in the press as "The Black Panther[ess]", because of her vocal, non-compromising protest style, her refusal to back down, and her own identification with the Israeli Black Panther movement.