Israel's New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the Holy Land

I find this utterly horrifying.


And it continues: http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-expels-8000-african-immigrants-because-they-threaten-jewish-identity/196405/

Clearly fabricated:


The number and status of African refugees in Israel is disputed and controversial but it is estimated that at least 70,000 refugees mainly from Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast reside and work in Israel. A recent check (late 2011) published in Ynet pointed out the Number only in Tel Aviv is 40,000 which represents 10 percent of the city's population. The vast majority is living at the southern parts of the city. There is a significant population in the southern Israeli cities of Eilat, Arad and BeerSheva

Israeli teenagers: Racist and proud of it
Ethnic hatred has become a basic element in the everyday life of Israeli youth, a forthcoming book finds.

“For me, personally, Arabs are something I can’t look at and can’t stand,” a 10th-grade girl from a high school in the central part of the country says in abominable Hebrew. “I am tremendously racist. I come from a racist home. If I get the chance in the army to shoot one of them, I won’t think twice. I’m ready to kill someone with my hands, and it’s an Arab. In my education I learned that ... their education is to be terrorists, and there is no belief in them. I live in an area of Arabs, and every day I see these Ishmaelites, who pass by the [bus] station and whistle. I wish them death.”


The student’s comments appear in a chapter devoted to ethnicity and racism among youth from a forthcoming book, “Scenes from School Life” (in Hebrew) by Idan Yaron and Yoram Harpaz. The book is based on anthropological observations made by Dr. Yaron, a sociologist, over the course of three years in a six-year, secular high school in the Israeli heartland – “the most average school we could find,” says Harpaz, a professor of education.

The book is nothing short of a page-turner, especially now, following the overt displays of racism and hatred of the Other that have been revealed in the country in the past month or so. Maybe “revealed” isn’t the right word, as it suggests surprise at the intensity of the phenomenon. But Yaron’s descriptions of what he saw at the school show that such hatred is a basic everyday element among youth, and a key component of their identity. Yaron portrays the hatred without rose-colored glasses or any attempt to present it as a sign of social “unity.” What he observed is unfiltered hatred. One conclusion that arises from the text is how little the education system is able – or wants – to deal with the racism problem.

Not all educators are indifferent or ineffective. There are, of course, teachers and others in the realm of education who adopt a different approach, who dare to try and take on the system. But they are a minority. The system’s internal logic operates differently.

Much of the chapter on racism revolves around the Bible lessons in a ninth-grade class, whose theme was revenge. “The class starts, and the students’ suggestions of examples of revenge are written on the blackboard,” the teacher told Yaron. A student named Yoav “insists that revenge is an important emotion. He utilizes the material being studied to hammer home his semi-covert message: All the Arabs should be killed. The class goes into an uproar. Five students agree with Yoav and say openly: The Arabs should be killed.”

One student relates that he heard in the synagogue on Shabbat that “Aravim zeh erev rav” [“Arabs are a rabble,” in a play on words], and also Amalek, and there is a commandment to kill them all,” a reference to the prototypical biblical enemy of the Children of Israel. Another student says he would take revenge on anyone who murdered his family, but would not kill them all.

“Some of the other students are outraged by this [softer stance],” the teacher reported. “The student then makes it clear that he has no love for Arabs and that he is not a leftist.”

Another student, Michal, says she is shocked by what she is hearing. She believes that the desire for revenge will only foment a cycle of blood; not all Arabs are bad, she adds, and certainly they don’t all deserve to die. “People who decree the fate of others so easily are not worthy of life,” she says.

Yoav himself claims to have heard Michal say: “Too bad you weren’t killed in a terrorist attack.”

“The students all start shouting,” the teacher says, according to Yaron. “Some are personally insulted, others are up in arms, and Michal finds herself alone and absorbing all the fire – ‘Arab lover,’ ‘leftist.’ I try to calm things down. The class is too distraught to move on to the biblical story. The bell rings. I let them out and suggest that they be more tolerant of one another.”

In the corridor during the break, the teacher notices that a crowd has gathered from all the ninth-grade classes. They have formed a human chain and are taunting Michal: “Fie, fie, fie, the Arabs will die.” The teacher: “I contemplated for five seconds whether to respond or keep going down the corridor. Finally I dispersed the gathering and insisted that Michal accompany me to the teachers’ room. She was in a state of shock, reeling under the insult, with tears to come instantly.”

Six students are suspended for two days. The teacher reports on his conversation with Michal: “She continues to be laconic. This is what always happens, she says. The opinions are racist, and her only regret is speaking out. I just want to hug her and say I’m sorry I put her through this trauma. I envy her courage to say aloud things that I sometimes am incapable of saying.”

Leftists as ‘Israel-haters’

In his research, Yaron spoke with Michal and Yoav, with other students in the class and with the homeroom teacher and the principal. The multiplicity of versions of the goings-on that emerge suggest a deep conflict and a lack of trust between the educators and the pupils. Each world functions separately, with the adults exercising little if any influence on the youngsters. It’s hard to believe that the suspension, or the punishment inflicted on some of the students – for example, to prepare a presentation for the ninth-grade classes on the subject of racism – changed anyone’s opinion.

The same goes for the principal’s unequivocal declaration that, “There will be no racist comments in our school.” Even the essay Michal was asked to write on the subject was soon forgotten. “The intention was to launch an educational program, but in the meantime it was postponed,” the homeroom teacher admits.

A year later, however, the incident itself was still remembered in the school. The same student who told Yaron that she won’t think twice if she gets the opportunity “to shoot one of them” when she serves in the army, also said, “As soon as I heard about the quarrel with that leftist girl [Michal], I was ready to throw a brick at her head and kill her. In my opinion, all the leftists are Israel-haters. I personally find it very painful. Those people have no place in our country – both the Arabs and the leftists.”

Anyone who imagines this as a local, passing outburst is wrong. As was the case with the girl from the ORT network vocational school who alleged earlier this year that her teacher had expressed “left-wing views” in the classroom – in this case too a student related that he cursed and shouted at a teacher who “justified the Arabs.” The students say that workshops to combat racism, which are run by an outside organization, leave little impression. “Racism is part of our life, no matter how much people say it’s bad,” a student said.

In the concluding discussion in just one such workshop, the moderator asked the students how they thought racism might eradicated. “Thin out the Arabs,” was the immediate reply. “I want you to leave here with the knowledge that the phenomenon exists, for you to be self-critical, and then maybe you will prevent it,” the moderator said. To which one student shot back, “If we’re not racist, that makes us leftists.”

The moderator, in a tone of despair: “I’d like it if you took at least something small from this workshop.” A student responds to the challenge: “That everyone should live the way he wants, that if he thinks he’s racist, let him think what he wants, and that’s all.”

As an adjunct of racism and hatred, ethnic identities – Mizrahi (Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries) and Ashkenazi – are also flourishing. Yoav believes that there is “discrimination between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. We were severely punished for the incident [with Michal], but if it were the other way around, that wouldn’t have happened.” Yoav later told Yaron that he found the common saying, “What’s this, an [open-air] market?” offensive, because his whole family works in the local produce market.

“Our business has existed since the state was established,” he said. “I am proud of my father, who is a man of the market. What are they trying to say, that my father isn’t cultured? When people say something about ‘Arabs,’ it’s considered a generalization, but when they say ‘market,’ that’s alright. When people say ‘market,’ they are actually talking about Mizrahim. We need to change the prejudices about the market and about the Mizrahim. People say I am a racist, but it’s just the opposite.”

“There is no discussion about the topic of racism in the school and there probably will not be,” the principal admits. “We are not prepared for the deep, long-term process that’s necessary. Even though I am constantly aware of the problem, it is far from being dealt with. It stems in the first place from the home, the community and the society, and it’s hard for us to cope with it. You have to remember that another reason it’s hard to deal with the problem is that it also exists among the teachers. Issues such as ‘human dignity’ or ‘humanism’ are in any case considered left-wing, and anyone who addresses them is considered tainted.”

Threat of noise

Prof. Yoram Harpaz is a senior lecturer at Beit Berl Teachers College and the editor of Hed Hahinuch, a major educational journal. Recalling the recent promise of Education Minister Shay Piron that classes in the first two weeks of the coming school year will be devoted to “emotional and social aspects of the summer’s events,” including “manifestations of racism and incitement,” Harpaz observes that schools in their present format “are incapable of dealing with the racist personality and identity.”

He adds: “The schools are not geared for this. They can only impart basic knowledge and skills, hold examinations on them and grade the students. In fact, they have a hard time doing even that. In classes of 40 students, with a strict curriculum and exams that have to be held, it is impossible to engage in values-based education.”

Yaron, a senior lecturer in sociology at Ashkelon Academic College, emphasizes how important teachers and the principal (and the education system in general) feel it is to stick to the curriculum and the lessons schedule – two islands of quiet amid a risk-laden reality.

“Doing this makes it possible for the teachers not to enter a dynamic sphere, which obligates openness and is liable to open a Pandora’s box, too,” he notes. “The greatest threat to the teacher is that there will be noise – that someone will complain, that an argument will break out, etc. That danger looms especially large in subjects that interest young people, such as sexuality, ethnicity, violence and racism. Teachers lack the tools to cope with these issues, so they are outsourced, which only emasculates educational personnel even more.”

The demand for quiet in the schools is not only an instrumental matter, deriving from the difficulty of keeping order in the classroom. There is also an ideological aspect involved. In general, there is a whole series of subjects that are not recommended for discussion in schools, such as the Nakba (or “catastrophe,” the term used by Palestinians to denote the establishment of the State of Israel), human rights and the morality of Israeli army operations. This was one of the reasons for the warnings issued by Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev during the fighting in the Gaza Strip about “extreme and offensive remarks.”

Harpaz: “In Israel, the most political country there is, political education has not been developed as a discipline in which high-school students are taught how to think critically about political attitudes, or the fact that those attitudes are always dependent on a particular viewpoint and on vested interests.”

What, then, can be done? According to Harpaz, the solution will not be found in discussions between the homeroom teacher and the students. Nor is a condemnation, however late, by the education minister sufficient. A more radical change is needed.

“Values and outlooks are acquired in a lengthy process of identification with ‘significant others,’ such as teachers,” Harpaz explains. “This means that every aspect of the schools – patterns of teaching, evaluation methods, curricula, the physical structure and the cultural climate – has to change in the direction of becoming far more dialogical and democratic.”

And he has one more recommendation: not to flee from political and moral dilemmas, or from possible criticism. “Our leaders are so fearful of criticism, but they don’t understand that critical education is what generates close ties and caring. We get angry at those we love.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.611822

Racism in Israel

Here is a shocking fact from a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and reported by the Times of Israel: fully one-third of Israelis say that unlawful, vigilante violence against non-Jewish African immigrants is fine with them.

Equally, 86 percent of Israelis who voted for the right-wing Shas party and 66 percent of Likud voters agree with the statements of far-right Israeli politician Miri Regev that African immigrants, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, are a “cancer” in the Israeli body politic.

The IDI poll analysis says :

A “cancer” in the body of the nation? More than half (52%) of the Jews agree with the statement of Member of Knesset Miri Regev that the unauthorized Africans living in Israel are a cancer in the body of Israel. Only 19% of the Arab respondents agreed with the statement. 


It adds:

How much support is there for the demonstrations against the presence of Africans by residents of south Tel Aviv? Here we practically found a “national consensus”: an overwhelming majority of 83% of the Jews expressed support for the demonstrations; among the Arabs, the number came to only 25%.

Israel is building refugee camps—let’s not use the loaded term “concentration camps”—for many of the estimated 55,000 Eritrean, Sudanese and other African refugees from civil wars and conflicts who’ve entered Israel, mostly undocumented, over the last decade or so. Reports The Washington Post, “Between 2005 and 2012, African migrants came in a trickle, then a flood, pouring across Israel’s border with Egypt, with a peak of 17,258 in 2011.” The paper adds:

The newly constructed “open facility” is designed to hold up to 3,300 illegal immigrants. It is not a prison, but not exactly a shelter, either. Residents will be required to answer roll call three times a day. They are not allowed to seek work. The facility is surrounded by a fence topped with spools of razor wire, and the migrants will be locked down at night.

Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar bluntly links his concerns to the fear of losing the “Jewish” nature of Israel:

“There are currently around 30 million people moving around Africa, people who have left their home countries and are looking for a place to be. We can all understand that pressure, but if we are too liberal, then we will lose the country. We will lose the only Jewish country that exists.”

Israel is seeking to deport the African migrants to Uganda, an ironic notion, since in the early days of Zionism Uganda was once held out as a long-shot possibility to host the creation of a Jewish state for European Jewish refugees.

Tensions and protests by the migrants, along with anti-African violence by vigilante citizens of Israel, has been on the rise. Reports Al Jazeera:

Tensions began on Dec. 10, when the Knesset passed an amendment to the Anti-Infiltration Law, which authorized the detention without trial of approximately 55,000 Africans currently living in Israel. On Dec. 12, Israeli prison officials began transferring Africans from the Saharonim prison to the brand-new Holot facility, which is still under construction only a few hundred meters away in southern Israel. Once the first 1,000 beds are filled with Africans from Saharonim, the government plans to move another 2,000 Africans now in Tel Aviv to the detention center.


Needless to say, Israel exists because millions of Jewish refugees, many of whom entered Israel illegally during and after the Holocaust and World War II, built it. Says Al Jazeera:

Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned. But over the decades, successive waves of Jewish immigrants also encountered hostility from native Israelis because of the same prejudices. The asylum seekers from Africa constitute the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews. That is the real reason the government is trying to drive them out.

Israeli liberals, such as Gideon Levy of Haaretz, the Israeli daily, are aghast at the open racism being exhibited by rightist politicians and much (most?) of the public. He writes:

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Israeli public opinion is being shaped by a grotesque Knesset member who has become a joke and a former MK whose party didn’t get enough votes to make it into the legislature. If it weren’t so sad, we’d be laughing until we cried. But now our tears should be over the unbelievable fact that these two marginal characters, these clowns, MK Miri Regev (Likud) and Michael Ben Ari, have, with their hateful incitement, succeeded in dictating the national agenda on the issue of African migrants and asylum seekers. From now on we’ll have to choose: Either you support the refugees, or you support the state (and the longtime residents of south Tel Aviv). Who decided that? Regev and Ben Ari.

In a strong conclusion, Levy says:

It’s Israel that made the African migrants a problem. That’s what incitement does. Since the border is closed and international conventions bar their deportation, the state should allow those already here to work, to rebuild their lives, and offer them the prospect of becoming citizens through a gradual, careful process. That’s how it’s done in normal countries. Israel is too small, too weak to do this? Nonsense, merely too racist

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177697/racism-israel

Israel will deport Eritrean, Sudanese refugees to Africa under new policy
Authorities believe there is no legal barrier to forcing Eritrean and Sudanese citizens to leave Israel for a third country that is not their native country – even if this is done against their will.

Israel will begin to deport Eritrean and Sudanese citizens to countries in Africa – even without their consent – under a new policy in the works at the initiative of the Israel Population and Immigration Authority.

Until now the state would impose considerable pressure on Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to leave on their own accord, either to their native countries or to other African countries, but refrained from deporting them. Those who have left Israel have done so only after signing a document declaring that their departure is voluntary. This is because Israel grants group protection to asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, as it is bound to by the Refugee Convention the state has signed. Group protection means that Israel cannot deport people whose lives would be in danger in their own country.

However, in the last few months the Population and Immigration Authority – a branch of the Interior Ministry – along with Justice Ministry representatives have been discussing a policy change. The authority believes that there is no legal barrier to forcing Eritrean and Sudanese citizens to leave Israel for a third country that is not their native country – even if this is done against their will. The Justice Ministry is expected to permit their deportation to neutral states. In the initial stage, the target countries are Rwanda and Uganda. The policy change will most likely not take place until it has the approval of the new interior minister, a post likely to go to Shas leader Arye Dery.

Two months ago, a representative of the state hinted at such a policy change during a High Court of Justice discussion of the issue. If an asylum seeker in Israel was offered the option of moving to Canada, the person would not have the right to refuse, argued attorney Yochi Gnessin, who heads the State Prosecutor’s Office department that deals with illegal immigrants. “A person who is offered a move to a state that does not constitute a danger to their life or their freedom does not have the right of veto,” she said.

There are currently about 42,000 citizens of Eritrea and Sudan in Israel, of which some 2,000 are being held in the Holot detention facility in the Negev. According to data the state provided the High Court, 5,803 citizens of Sudan and Eritrea left Israel last year, 1,093 of them to third countries. Until now, Israel has not revealed the names of the third countries or the nature of the agreements, if any, reached with them, but it is known that asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda and Uganda.

A Haaretz investigation published last April revealed that those asylum seekers who left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda had no basic rights and no legal status in those countries. This made survival virtually impossible, prompting them to leave Rwanda and Uganda and resume being refugees once again, according to reports by human rights groups.

According to the United Nations refugee convention, asylum seekers cannot be sent to any country unless there is an agreement with that country that ensures safeguarding their rights and welfare, notes Oded Feller, an immigration lawyer with the Association of Civil Rights in Israel.

“The government of Israel has refused to expose any agreements with the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, and it is doubtful if any such agreements exist in writing. Those countries deny there are agreements at all,” added Feller.

The Population and Immigration Authority declined to provide a response.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.649688

Why should Israel care about international law, it flouts it every day building illegal settlements and disposessing Palestinians of their legally owned land.

You see cass this is what I mean an Sassy's attempts at dehumanizing all of israel.
Nobody denies there is some racism there but this and every other countles articles shes posts daily is to entice hate of Israel and by proxy jews.
If you cannot see this hate and agenda she has then you need your eyes tested.
As has she posted about the daily racism in just about every Arab state around Israel?
Of course not, she does not want show balance but to entice hate against Jews.

Race-hate Israelis protest against African asylum seekers

Graphic footage has appeared on social media of violent scenes from anti-African protests which have flared in Israel. Israeli and Middle Eastern news website, Haaretz, reported that around a thousand people turned out in a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv yesterday to show their anger over the numbers of asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea in their area.

I rest my case.

Is sassy concerned about racism?


Or with people hating Israel and by proxy Jews?

10,000 Black Palestinians Struggle with Racism in Gaza
April 21, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield 108 Comments

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She’s uh… native. Really.
Incidentally that means that some 1% of Muslims in Gaza are Africans, in part or in whole, and are fairly recent arrivals, rather than any kind of native residents of the land.

That’s not surprising since the “Palestinians” are mainly Arabs from the region who moved in. That goes triple for the Arab Muslims who usually followed the Christians and then took over places like Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Al-Monitor met with political activist Samah al-Rawagh, 33, at her home and asked her whether she experienced any discrimination due to her skin color. She made light of the matter. Yet, when her father Ahmad al-Rawagh, 80, recounted incidents he had experienced involving racism, Samah was shocked. “That’s the first time I’ve heard such stories from you,” she said.
“I struggled a lot to overcome the difficulties caused by the color of my skin. I always had to doubly prove myself at school, at work and in life, because I’m dark-skinned,” Ahmad said.
He said that they are originally from Sudan. His ancestors came at the beginning of the 20th century and lived in Palestine — in a village called Roubin, neighboring Jaffa — until 1948, when they were forced to migrate to the Gaza Strip. “But I never felt that I did not belong here. Palestine is the homeland I have always known, and is a homeland to about 10,000 other dark-skinned people in the Gaza Strip.”

10,000 is a lot of people proportionately speaking. There are more Afro-Turks and Afro-Iraqis, but 10,000 Arab Africans in Gaza alone suggests that they came as part of a massive emigration.

There are no clear historical sources that speak about the African minority in Gaza, but there is an oral history passed down by families from one generation to the next. Journalist Ali Bakhit, 28, said that he learned from his great-uncle that his family originally comes from Ghana.
“Africans first entered Palestine during the Islamic conquests, specifically when Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab entered Jerusalem, accompanied by a number of Africans. African communities from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan and Senegal came in the late 19th century, either for worship or to participate in the resistance,” Bakhit noted in an interview with Al-Monitor.

So we’re talking about conqueror settlers settling down. The Africans are the most obvious ones. But the rest were foreign settlers of a conquering empire as well displacing the indigenous Jewish inhabitants.

But there’s also slavery and more recent Ottoman empire building and military colonists.

According to Gaza Through History, a book by Ibrahim Sakik, wealthy families in the Gaza Strip participated in the slave trade hundreds of years ago. Another book, Delighting in the Wealth of Gaza’s History, notes that some of the residents of the Palestinian village of Berbera were dark-skinned people who came from Morocco.Al-Monitor asked multiple historians about the African minority, yet most of them noted that there were no books dealing with their history. “The majority of families with dark skin in Gaza originate from Sudan and Egypt, many of them came to work in the Ottoman Empire’s army hundreds of years ago,” noted Palestinian historian Salim Moubayed, speaking to Al-Monitor by phone.The “black neighborhood”


Next to the Rawagh family’s home there is an entire area on Jala Street inhabited by dark-skinned Gazans. The people and taxi drivers refer to it as the “black neighborhood” or the “dark-skinned neighborhood.”

Gaza has its own ghetto.


http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/10000-black-palestinians-struggle-with-racism-in-gaza/


Now ask yourself why Sassy missed this?

Golda Meir Was First Israeli Leader to Expel African-(American) Refugees

The current furor in Israel about the “epidemic” of African refugees “flooding” the country is unfortunately not new. Nor is the plan by the Netanyahu government to throw them into concentration camps or expel them. In 1969, Black Israelites began to arrive in Israel from the U.S. They claimed to be Jewish, but Israel’s rabbinical establishment rejected their claims. This meant they could not become citizens.

Finally, the Golda Meir government in 1971 began the process of expelling them. Over the years hundreds have been. Though there is now an uneasy truce, with 5,000 currently living in Israel. So Bibi learned this trick of turning a cold shoulder to Black refugees from a beloved leader of Israel’s Labor Party. So much for Labor’s liberal Zionism.

Thanks to David Sheen, one of Israel’s foremost activists on behalf of the African refugee community. He’s dug up this racist letter written to Golda Meir, after she’d expelled some of them. There are more examples here.

Though the circumstances then were different than now, when there are 60,000 African refugees in Israel, these sentiments Golda preserved, even at that early period, are reflected precisely in current racist Israeli attitudes. MKs rabble-rouse, calling Africans a cancer among the Israeli nation. Not far at all from this calling them a “5th column.”

The American Jew who wrote this letter to the Israeli prime minister was little better than the Likud when it came to issues like these that threatened Israeli Jewish hegemony. In fact, the racism reflected in this letter would be little different in tone or substance than the views of Meir Kahane.



On a related note, I reported here that Bibi Netanyahu, as late as 1989, demanded the expulsion of Israeli Palestinians for many of the same reasons Golda’s American Jewish interlocutors saw Blacks as “polluting Israel” and “bad” for it.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/10/golda-meir-black-israelites-would-pollute-israel/


It appears the problem goes some way back.

Seems she missed this also:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/black-palestinians-suffer-racism.html

I will continue to show the balance to combat her antisemitism.

IF these people are sure they are doing Gods work, why do they cover their faces?