Shula Keshet
She founded the Libi BaMizrach (My Heart is in the East) festival of Mizrahi culture, and runs various other initiatives aimed at connecting between women from different oppressed communities, and providing them with the means for empowerment and relief – social, political, and legal.Keshet's artwork centers upon her identity as a Mizrahi-feminist, and in her work as a curator and producer she brings together women of Arab ethnicity (whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian) and helps them tell their stories.Her grandmother, Hannah Kalati, was a community organizer, who established the "Mothers House" in South Tel Aviv, to provide elderly Mashadi women a safe space and social outlet.[9] – created to celebrate the culture of the "White City" (as Tel Aviv is called, and designated by UNESCO)[10] – which Mizrahi activists claim in ironically apt: The designated neighborhoods are in central and northern Tel Aviv (mostly Ashkenazi), while the southern neighborhoods (mostly Mizrahi or immigrant) are not represented, included and in fact, act, as the activists call it "as the garbage dump of the White City", to which the prostitution, drug trade, and bus pollution are directed.South Tel Aviv Against Expulsion: Keshet is the driving force behind this movement that objects to the plan by the Israeli government to deport African asylum seekers.According to Keshet, the government's policy is to incite conflict between different oppressed groups, in this case the veteran Mizrahi residents of South Tel Aviv and the African newcomers, thereby reducing the value of real estate in the neighborhood.At the end of the 1980s, Keshet established an action committee of Neve Sha'anan residents, who combated the placement of this health and life quality hazard in their neighborhood through the courts, lobbying the Knesset and the municipal authority, bringing the struggle to public awareness through demonstrations, protests and media activity.The protest was based on non-violence,[20] and both the residents and activists represented a wide swathe of Israel's social groups: Single mothers, transgender sex workers, Ethiopian Jews, children, the elderly, Mizrahi, Asian, European and so on.The meetings let to the establishment of the organization "Koach LaKehila", or "Power to the Community", a multicultural and inclusive movement to stop the deterioration of the neighborhood and increase its safety.The group conducted safety patrols, engaged in dialog, offered relief services to individuals, and held community cultural and protest events.Based on the belief that women's voices, and especially those from marginalized communities, are important to Israeli society, Keshet has built various systems to ensure that this knowledge is made widely available.For example, the anthology To My Sister – Mizrahi Feminism in Israel (2007) combines poetry, essays, research, speeches and prose written by a wide variety of women from marginalized communities, academia, from distressed neighborhoods, from the geographic periphery, social activists, and more;[26] The report "Racism and Sexism in the Media – The Test Case of the Elections for the 19th Knesset" (2013) documented racist and sexist coverage of the elections from a feminist perspective.