although I don’t agree with all of it.
In particular it doesn’t draw the connections between the ‘threat to our
identity’ that Netanyahu expresses and the Zionist aim of creating a purely Jewish
state. Where Friedman talks about ‘Israeli racism (which exists, as it does everywhere)’ she
forgets the specificity of Israeli and in particular racism. Zionism aims to exclude those who are not Jewish
, the indigenous population, from Israel in order to create a Jewish state.
It is that which is driving these racist pogroms and, from what Lara
Friedman says, a near lynching in Eilat.
 |
| Racist demonstration in Tel Aviv |
denies that racism against asylum seekers exists everywhere in Europe. However Israel is unique in that its
political system is driving that racism and members of the government, from the
Prime Minister down, are doing their best to support and sympathise with the
mobs whilst doing nothing to tackle their basic assumptions. When the Government’s Interior Minister states that Israel is a white man’s
country and Africans are equated to a ‘cancer’ one knows that one is dealing
with the most primeval and backward biological racism, dressed up in religious
garb. Even the most backward and
reactionary European states, such as the Baltic republics, Croatia and Ukraine
don’t have this active and overt level of encouragement given to naked racist
attacks.
at least one achievement to its credit.
It has transformed the Jewish victims
of pogroms into their perpetrators. What
this demonstrates, yet again, is that racism is not the property of one
particular group and that being a victim is not the sole preserve of a
particular group. When Zionism libels opponents
of Zionist racism as ‘anti-Semitic’ not only do they let off the real
anti-Semites and cynically use the suffering of past generations of Jews, but
they demonstrate that tomorrow’s oppressor can use yesterday’s oppression. There is nothing unique about this. Apartheid apologists in South Africa
regularly used the fact that the first concentration camps in the world were British,
set up to imprison Boer fighters.
Greenstein
 |
| Israelis protesting in south Tel Aviv against anti-foreigner violence on Thursday. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum |
African migrants turns violent and a race riot ensues; the whole thing is repeated a week later. A Jewish-Israeli of Ethiopian descent is “mistaken” for a migrant and
assaulted in Tel Aviv. A group of teenagers in Tel
Aviv is arrested for a series of brutal,
racially-motivated robberies and assaults targeting Africans. A Sudanese man
is viciously beaten in Tel Aviv. A Sudanese hotel worker is nearly lynched in Eilat. An apartment in Jerusalem is torched with 10 Eritreans trapped inside.
paroxysm of racism is an aberrant phenomenon, linked to the socially and
politically fraught challenges posed by illegal immigration. But that’s too
easy. What’s happening is in no small measure a natural outgrowth of the
intolerance that is an inevitable result of an occupation that this week enters
its 46th year.
 |
|
A protestor holds a sign that reads ”Voluntary
Racists” in Hebrew,
as Israeli Jews, mainly of Ethiopian origin, protest
against racism
and discrimination. (Jack Guez / AFP / Getty Images)
|
Israelis have now been born into an Israel that must constantly justify the
denial of rights and freedoms to Palestinians and the ever-growing settlement
enterprise. Those justifications ring ever more hollow with each passing year,
juxtaposed against Israeli policies that only perpetuate and deepen the
occupation. They ring especially hollow at times like this past weekend, when
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that his government’s policy is to “defend and strengthen settlement” and laid out his audacious plan to reward settlers for breaking the law.
Israeli policies has mounted, it has given rise not to Israeli self-examination
and a course-correction, but to a tribalist, circle-the-wagons mentality that
is more pronounced than at any time in Israel’s history. The ongoing assault
against African refugees and migrants in Israel is just the latest symptom of
this phenomenon.
occupation is attacked and dehumanized. Palestinian non-violent protest in all
forms is branded a form of
terrorism. Israelis working for peace, civil rights and human rights are incited
against and terrorized. IDF officers who try to carry out the law against settlers are attacked. Israeli politicians who defend the rule of law and democracy are threatened. The convergence of right-wing nationalist zeal and racial intolerance is
self-evident in what is happening today: The Israeli politicians who are
leading the anti-African campaign are the same ones who are the loudest
defenders of the settlers and the greatest aggressors against democratic values
like free speech. They also hail, for the most part, from Netanyahu’s ruling
coalition.
Regev, who called African migrants “a cancer in our body” and Likud MK Danny
Danon, who declared, “Without delay and without mercy, all the infiltrators
should be taken out of Israel” and “Some call it
expulsion, I call it defending the homeland.”
MK Michael Ben-Ari, who has called for Africans to be deported “for their own safety” and
suggested that African children should not be allowed to sit in the same class
with Israelis because “you don’t know
what diseases they are carrying.” His colleague, National Union
MK Arieh Eldad, suggested this past weekend that anyone
crossing Israel’s borders illegally “should be shot” (he also noted that this wouldn’t be possible because
“bleeding hearts groups will immediately begin to shriek and turn to the
courts”).
Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas), who said that “many women in Tel Aviv were
raped and are now afraid to report so they won’t be seen as AIDS carriers.” He
also said “Most of those people arriving here are
Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.”
they include Prime Minister
Netanyahu, who has stated that the Africans are “threatening the fabric of Israeli
society, its national security and its national identity” and that they could
“lead to the eradication of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” As
violence against them has worsened, Netanyahu has made clear that he understands
“the pain” of Israelis who are lashing out and has
promised to swiftly deport or
imprison the
objects of their anger.
have a clear and compelling message: these people are diseased and unclean;
they will attack us and rape our women; they are an existential threat to our
people and our way of life; they are an enemy that must be shown no mercy, and
anyone who helps or defends them is likewise an enemy (one Kadima MK
suggested that Israeli human rights activists who are aiding the migrants “should be imprisoned and transported
to [prison] camps we are building”). This message is disturbingly reminiscent
of the smears used against Jews in pre-Holocaust Europe and against black
people in America’s pre-civil rights era.
that the emergence of the anti-African mob in Israel is not truly a sign of
Israeli racism (which exists, as it does everywhere). The bad news is that it
is evidence of the poisonous, zero-sum atmosphere in Israel today and the
brutalization and coarsening of growing segments of Israeli society within it.
Failure to recognize this painful reality is self-delusion and denial, and will
only result in Israel sliding deeper down the slippery slope toward
authoritarianism.
East, Israeli settlements policy, and Jerusalem. Formerly a U.S. Foreign
Service Officer serving in the Middle East. Lara is today the Director of
Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now, and she works closely with Jerusalem expert Daniel
Seidemann and his NGO, Terrestrial Jerusalem.
Netanyahu condemns violence against African migrants, promises to solveproblem
PM: We will soon begin sending infiltrators back to their countries of
origin; Peres: Hatred of foreigners contradicts foundations of Judaism; dozens
demonstrate in south Tel Aviv, Jerusalem against anti-foreigner violence.
Yaniv Kubovich and Ophir Bar-Zohar
An
African migrant’s plea for a few basic rights
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on
Thursday that his government would address the issue of African migrants in
Israel, one day after a protest against them by residents of south Tel Aviv turned
violent.
“The infiltrator problem must be solved,
and we will solve it,” Netanyahu said on Thursday afternoon, speaking at
an event in Tel Aviv.
He also refered to the construction of a fence
on the Egypt-Israel border, saying, “We will complete construction of the
fence within two months, and soon we will begin sending infiltrators back to
their countries of origin.”
The prime minister also condemned the actions
of demonstrators and Knesset members on Wednesday, when demonstrators attacked
African migrants in South Tel Aviv.
“I want to make it clear that there is no
place for the statements and actions that we witnessed yesterday. I say these things
to the public figures and to the residents of south Tel Aviv, whose pain I
understand,” he said.
President Shimon Peres said Thursday that
“hatred of foreigners contradicts the foundations of Judaism.”
“I am very much aware of the difficulties
encountered by residents of the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv,” he said.
“The state must deal urgently with the issue of the infiltrators, while
meticulously protecting their honor and rights as human beings… Violence is not
the solution to the problem.”
Meanwhile, dozens of Israelis and Africans
demonstrated in south Tel Aviv against Wednesday’s anti-migrant violence on
Thursday evening.
In Jerusalem, some 150 people demonstrated
outside the Prime Minister’s Residence. An additional protest against incitement
to violence against migrants is planned to take place on Friday.
A number of Likud MKs addressed Wednesday’s
rally in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, including Miri Regev, Danny Danon and
Yariv Levin.
Following the rally, angry demonstrators went
on a rampage, attacking African passers-by and journalists, breaking into and
looting shops associated with the African migrant community and shattering car
windshields.
Seventeen Israelis were arrested during the
protest. Twelve of them were later released to house arrest.
Regev, who said during the rally that
“the Sudanese are a cancer in our body,” told Haaretz, “I
condemn any violence from any side, but I understand the rage and hurt of the
residents, of the families that live there. They tell us: ‘Help us. We are
being humiliated, look how we live, we are afraid to leave the house.'”
Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid also
weighed in on the issue on Thursday, writing on his Facebook page, “I
support arresting and expelling infiltrators, completing the fence and
preventing their entry into Israel, and I think the human rights organizations
need to think first of all about the residents of the neighborhoods, because
charity starts at home. But when I see a pogrom in the State of Israel… I
wonder how these people have the gall to call themselves Jews.”
