Charlie Biton

Charlie Biton
Date of birth	11 April 1947 (1947-04-11) (age 64)
Place of birth	Casablanca, Morocco
Year of aliyah	1949
Knessets	9, 10, 11, 12
Party	Black Panthers (1990-1992)
Former parties	Hadash (1977-1990)

Charlie-Shalom Biton (Hebrew: צ'רלי-שלום ביטון‎, born 11 April 1947) is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Hadash and the Black Panthers between 1977 and 1992.

Biography

Born in Casablanca in Morocco, Biton made aliyah to Israel in 1949 at the age of two. He grew up in Musrara neighbourhood of Jerusalem and attended an ORT vocational school.

In 1971 he was amongst the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers movement, and was one of its leaders. The party narrowly missed out on a seat in the 1973 elections, finishing 2,336 votes short of crossing the electoral threshold. In 1974, after violent protests, he was sentenced to seven months in prison for assaulting a police officer. Biton went into hiding to avoid his sentence, and was later pardoned.

As the Black Panthers became aligned with Hadash, he was elected to the Knesset on the party's list in 1977. He was re-elected in 1981, 1984 and 1988. On 25 December 1990 he left Hadash to establish his own faction. The faction's name was not initially approved by the House Committee, but on 1 January 1991 it was named Black Panthers.^[1]

In the 1992 Knesset elections he headed a list named Hatikva, but it won only 2,053 votes (0.1%), well below the 1.5% electoral threshold, and Biton lost his seat. The list ran again in the 1999 elections, but again failed to cross the threshold.

References

1. ^ Mergers and Splits Among Parliamentary Groups Knesset website

External links

• Charlie Biton Knesset website

Persondata
Name	Biton, Charlie
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	11 April 1947
Place of birth	Casablanca, Morocco
Date of death
Place of death