47 years to the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights!
1930 Days to the Israeli Blockade of Gaza:
End Israeli Apartheid Now!
Support Palestinian universities – it is what people under the Israeli jackboot ask you to do
Any army fighting against children, has already lost the war!
Israeli War Criminals and Pirates – to the International Criminal Court, NOW!
Make Zionism History!
Demand the destruction of Israeli WMDs NOW!
EDITOR: London gets an Israeli film festival
One of the results of the boycott seems to be a much larger Israeli investment in London and the UK, in order to counter BDS. This is just one such example – in a way it is clear evidence of the power and success of the boycott.
By Chay Allen Seret is the first Israeli film festival to launch in London
Otto Preminger’s 1960 epic film Exodus was charged by some with presenting an inaccurate picture of the regional conflict but, none the less, it played a significant role in popularising Israel’s view of events leading to its foundation. That year, the Knesset passed the controversial Lands Law, prohibiting the sale of Israeli land to non-Israeli buyers, and wanted the support of the international community. It was a good moment for a bit of pro-Israeli soft diplomacy.
Exodus demonstrates the power of film to help construct a positive national identity overseas, and its influence has rippled on: New York, Miami and Los Angeles have all held annual Israeli film festivals since 1982. Although London has staged an annual Palestinian film festival since 1999, it has yet to hold an Israeli film festival. But June 14 sees the launch of Seret, a festival of Israeli film and television. The festival’s sponsors include the Israeli Embassy, the British Council and Bi-Arts, a joint initiative of the Israeli and British governments.
Seret has been jointly organised by Tel Aviv-based Patti Hochmann, a member of the Israeli Film Academy; London-based marketing manager Odelia Haroush; and Anat Koren, editor of Alondon, London’s main Hebrew-language magazine. According to Haroush the festival aims “to show the social and cultural diversity, and everyday life in Israel, through the medium of film”.
Screening 14 recent Israeli films and two episodes of current Israeli television series, Seret follows a highly successful year for both industries: Joseph Cedar’s Footnote (2011), included in the festival, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards, while Gideon Raff’s Homeland (2011), an adaptation of his Israeli television series Prisoners of War (2009), won two Golden Globes and has been seen in more than 40 countries. Adir Miller’s sitcom Ramzor (2008), also on show at the festival, won the award for best comedy at the 2010 International Emmy Awards and has been adapted in the US as Traffic Light.
The festival line-up features documentaries by Tomer Heymann and Liora Amir Barmatz, Roi Werner’s romantic comedy 2 Night (2011), and psychological, historical and political dramas such as Jonathan Sagall’s Lipstikka (2011) and Ami Levine’s Sharqiya (2012). Explaining the criteria for selection, Koren said “the films had to be recent and have artistic merit. The only film not to have been made in either 2011 or 2012 is The Gift to Stalin, a 2008 co-production between Israel, Kazakhstan, Russia and Poland.”
The Gift to Stalin follows the story of Sashka, a Kazakhstani Jewish boy deported to the Kazakh steppes in 1949. Displacement and migration are recurring themes in much of the work, especially in Werner’s 2 Night and Heymann’s documentaries. In Maya Kenig’s Off White Lies an estranged father and daughter are thrown together, after being made homeless through the father’s fecklessness.
Seret comes in the wake of increasing pressure for a cultural boycott of Israel from campaigners against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Last month protesters denounced the decision to let Habima, Israel’s national theatre company criticised for performing in the West Bank, stage The Merchant of Venice at London’s Globe. The historian Simon Schama suggests that “the Habima row shows just how ignorant much opinion is in the UK of the complications of cultural politics in Israel. I suspect the same sanctimoniousness will hit the film festival.”
Yosefa Loshitzky, author of Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (2001), maintains that Seret is politically motivated: “The launch of the first Israeli film festival in London, the heart of what Israel likes to see as the new anti-semitic Europe, is part of a strategy of using ‘soft power’ to combat the deteriorating image of Israel in the international, and particularly British, arena.”
This is a notion co-organiser Koren is keen to refute: “I don’t see any political aspect to a film festival; we are talking about a cultural exchange between two countries.”
Many of the films selected are, though, overtly political. Michal Aviad, whose Invisible (2011) is part of the festival, emphasises that “my films are always political and often refer to the Palestinian occupation; my stand against the occupation has been clear and loud for many years.”
Sagall’s Lipstikka and Levine’s Sharqiya also address the suffering of the inhabitants of occupied Palestine, while Dina Zvi-Riklis’s The Fifth Heaven (2011), set in a Jewish Palestinian orphanage in 1944 under British occupation, uses the story of 13-year-old Maya, placed in the orphanage by her father, as an allegory of the struggle and perceived abandonment of the stateless Jewish people.
EDITOR: The Boycott is spreading, as is the consciousness
Israel is no longer the object of love and admiration it has been for so long amongst those who were unaware of its brutal activities – the terrifying attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 in which more than 1500 Lebanese civilians were killed, the bloody attack on Gaza starting on December 28th, 2008, and continuing for almost a month, with over 1440 civilians murdered, the Flotilla attack in which 9 Turkish volunteers were butchered in cold blood, the many race riots against black refugees which have started last months and are still continuing – all these have brought to public view the brutality, lawlessness and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation regime. To have replaced apartheid South Africa in the public’s mind is indeed an achievement…
After Madonna began her world tour there last week, campaigners urge cutting of cultural ties
JONATHAN OWEN SUNDAY 03 JUNE 2012
Some of the world’s biggest stars – from Madonna to the Red Hot Chili Peppers – are being accused of putting profit before principle in a growing backlash against artists performing in Israel.
Campaigners angry at human rights abuses against the Palestinian people – symbolised by Israel’s policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinians and allowing Israeli settlers to take over their land – are demanding a boycott of Israeli venues in a campaign that echoes the 1980s protests against South Africa and the infamous venue Sun City.
Last week Madonna came under fire for her decision to perform in Israel to kick off her world tour last Thursday. “By performing in Israel, Madonna has consciously and shamefully lent her name to fig-leafing Israel’s occupation and apartheid and showed her obliviousness to human rights,” said Omar Barghouti of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Attempts by Madonna to deflect criticism by offering free tickets to local campaigners backfired, with a number rejecting the offer. Boycott from Within, an Israeli campaign group, accused the singer of “a blatant attempt at whitewashing Israeli crimes”. Mr Barghouti added: “As we’ve learned from the South African struggle for freedom, entertaining Israeli apartheid should never be mislabelled as singing for peace.” The star’s publicist did not respond to requests for comment.
Acts such as alleged war crimes during Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza and the 2010 killing of peace activists by Israeli commandos on an aid ship are fuelling the return of an anti-apartheid campaign on a scale not seen in a generation. Saeed Amireh, 21, a peace activist from Nilin in the West Bank, said: “We don’t have freedom of movement. They don’t want peace; they just want us to disappear. They are suppressing our very existence.”
Calls for a boycott are supported by hundreds of artists around the world, from the film director Ken Loach to former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and the author Alice Walker. Artists such as Carlos Santana and Elvis Costello have cancelled shows after pressure from campaigners in recent years; Coldplay, U2 and Bruce Springsteen have declined invitations to play in Israel without supporting the boycott publicly. Paul McCartney, Elton John, Rihanna and Leonard Cohen are among those to have ignored calls not to appear there.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz and Guns N’ Roses plan to play in Israel this year, prompting the campaign group Artists Against Apartheid to appeal: “As was done in the case of South African apartheid, please join us now in the cultural boycott of Israel, and help stop entertaining apartheid.” The campaign has rattled the music industry, prompting a group of US-Israel entertainment executives to set up the Creative Community for Peace last year in an effort to counter the cultural boycott.
It is also troubling senior Israeli politicians: a law passed by the Knesset last year means that people who call for a boycott could be sued in court. The Israeli government has also set up a committee to look at how to compensate Israeli promoters in the cases of “politically motivated cancellations”.
Controversy over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has provoked protests among actors, too. Emma Thompson is among more than 30 actors, directors and playwrights who condemned the Globe Theatre for including Israel’s national theatre company in its Shakespeare festival last week.
The Israeli embassy this weekend dismissed criticisms of Israel as “an anti-Israeli movement” and the Board of Deputies of British Jews claimed comparisons with apartheid-era South Africa were “a specious and desperate effort by a failing boycott campaign”. Nevertheless, Israel’s President Shimon Peres admitted earlier this year: “If Israel’s image gets worse, it will begin to suffer boycotts. There is already an artistic boycott against us and signs of an undeclared financial boycott are beginning to emerge.”
The Co-op announced a boycott of goods from West Bank settlements last month.
Migrants everywhere need to be wary when European fascists and far-right Israeli nationalists use the same racist rhetoric
Rachel Shabi
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 June 2012
A Sudanese refugee reflected in a shattered mirror at temporary housing in Kadesh Barnea, southern Israel, after crossing from Egypt. Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty
Last month, demonstrations against African refugees in Tel Aviv turned violent. Protesters looted shops, broke windows and firebombed buildings, including a nursery. Days ago, arsonists torched the home of 10 African migrants in Jerusalem, injuring four, and leaving the unequivocal graffiti: “Get out of the neighbourhood.”
On Monday, Israeli TV reported that Haifa’s council had warned local businesses that they risked losing their licences if they employed African refugees, and that shopkeepers in the southern town of Sderot were refusing to serve migrants. Israeli statistics show some 60,000 African migrants have entered the country in the past seven years through the Egyptian Sinai desert – many of them asylum seekers fleeing repression or war in Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. Israel, much like Europe, seems consumed with worry about being “swamped” by developing-world refugees – although, perhaps in part because of its location, the fears in Israel sound more visceral. So far, Israel’s approach has been to build a steel fence on the Egyptian border and a giant detention centre in the south, and to pass a law that allows the detention of migrants for up to three years. Since its creation, fewer than 150 people have been recognised as refugees in Israel.
The crude response from politicians has been as disturbing as the scenes on the streets. Last week, the interior minister, Eli Yishai, said: “Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” He has also described the refugees as rapists and criminals. Weeks ago, Miri Regev, a Likud member of the Knesset, referred to Sudanese people in Israel as a cancer. Former TV presenter and emerging politician Yair Lapid last month lambasted some Knesset members as “inciters” leading a pogrom, and wrote: “I wonder how they have the nerve to call themselves Jews.”
The sight of Jewish Israelis – sons and daughters of refugees – echoing, pretty much window-smashing act by act and racist line by line, scenes from historic anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe, isn’t an easy one. Nor is the uncomfortable reality that hatred of refugees is so easily stoked in Israel. Having for years practised a policy of separation between Jews and subjugated Palestinians both in the occupied territories and within Israel, the country has incubated a form of casual racism and puritanical appraisal of the “other”, in which anti-migrant sentiments can flourish. Last month, the Israeli historian and commentator Tom Segev told AP: “What disturbs me most is the racist atmosphere. For several years now, Israel society has been moving in that direction.” At one protest against migrants last year, an Israeli demonstrator explained her hostility: “They aren’t Jews. Why should they be here with us?” The language itself is a giveaway: protesters, politicians and reporters alike have labelled African refugees as infiltrators – the same fear-inducing, security-conscious term used to describe Palestinians. No wonder, then, that the Prevention of Infiltration Law, introduced during the 1950s to stop Palestinian refugees returning, has just been amended to apply to Africans.
Meanwhile, gut-level anxiety over demographics are everywhere – rabbis and ministers are warning that migrants, just like Palestinians, will use a sort of birth-rate-bombing tactic in Israel, outnumbering the Jewish population and thereby sinking the nation.
The rhetoric may be ramped up, but far-right Israeli ministers are basically repeating the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiments of rising far-right parties in Europe. That isn’t a coincidence because, perversely, the two have recently found common cause. In the past few years, Israeli ministers have played host to far-right European leaders and made clear the shared values on the supposed menace of Islam and (especially Muslim) migrants. Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, is one of several far-right figures to have visited Israel and met hard-right ministers there. During one trip, Wilders met the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and spoke of Israel as a front line in the fight to counter Islam. “If Jerusalem falls,” he warned, “Amsterdam and New York will be next.”
This affiliation is great news for Europe’s far-right parties, who seek to sanitise their image, and whose history of antisemitism has been a block to gaining mainstream acceptability. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research group, has warned that far-right parties in Europe are on the rise in part because they’ve opportunistically buried antisemitism in favour of an apparently more palatable stance against Islam and Muslim migrants. How lucky for them that Jewish Israeli politicians are helping them with that.
No doubt it’s comforting for Israel’s far right to find allies that lip-synch claims of a frontier battle. But when the people who perfectly understand you are also the ones with a history of violently hating you, it’s time to worry about what exactly is in this relationship. Israel’s current attacks on African refugees are bad enough, but if this outbreak even partly signals a dovetailing agenda between European fascists and far-right Israeli nationalists, that’s a toxic arrangement – and trouble for migrants, Muslims and Jews everywhere.
Some 1,000 South Sudanese are believed to be in Israel, part of a larger influx of African migrants who have poured into the country in recent years; Yishai says court ruling is first of many such steps.
By Oz Rosenberg and Dana Weiler-Polak Jun.07, 2012
South Sudanese refugees in Tel Aviv. Photo by Nir Kafri
The Jerusalem’s District Court ruled on Thursday that Israel could deport South Sudanese nationals back to their county, thus rejecting an appeal by migrant worker NGOs against a decision by Interior Minister Eli Yishai to halt Israel’s collective defense of citizens form the war-torn country.
Yishai said in response to the ruling that he “congratulates the court’s decision, one allowing the deportation of about 1,500 infiltrators who had arrived from South Sudan,” adding he “hopes this is the first step in a series of measures allowing us to deport [migrants] from Eritrea and North Sudan.
Some 1,000 South Sudanese are believed to be in Israel, part of a larger influx of African migrants who have poured into the country in recent years. Some are refugees, while others are seeking employment.
Major violence between Sudan and South Sudan has flared recently, pushing the region to the edge of all-out war, according to news reports.
Speaking in response to the court’s ruling, Khaled, a South Sudanese national who has been residing in Israel with two of his children since 2007, said: “I really don’t know what to do.”
“It’s sending people and families to a dangerous place. I’m afraid to go back there with the kids, will they have a future in such place?” he added, saying that he didn’t think he would to hide from authorities. “It isn’t practical, I have two underage kids, I don’t want to do that to them.”
The NGOs who had submitted the court appeal also responded to the decision, saying they “regret the ruling” and “fear for the safety and wellbeing of the deportees, especially the children due to be send to a dangerous place.”
The Jerusalem court’s decision came after, late last month, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein told the court that there is no reason to prevent the deportation of South Sudanese citizens to their country of origin, as South Sudan is safe enough for them to return home.
Weinstein based the remarks on a foreign ministry report on the economic and security conditions in South Sudan, and on the possibility of deporting migrants to the country.
According to Weinstein’s remarks, the situation in South Sudan does not provide grounds to fear for the lives and physical safety of migrants who are returned to the country.
The attorney general also said that asylum applications of South Sudanese citizens will be examined individually, based on the Refugee Convention.
Weinstein’s announcements came amid mounting tensions over the issue of African migrants in Israel.
Last week an anti-migrant protest turned violent, with some 1,000 protesters in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood calling for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel. Demonstrators attacked African passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.
A further anti-migrant rally is planned in south Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
At last weeks demonstration, the crowd cried “The people want the Sudanese deported” and “Infiltrators get out of our home,” and a number of MKs addressed the crowd. Likud MK Miri Regev told protesters that “the Sudanese are a cancer in our body.” Regev apologized over the remarks on Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the actions of demonstrators, and MKs who were present at the rally, and promised that his government would address the issue of African migrants in Israel.
Report claims IDF troops order West Bank residents to exit cars and wait, as dogs seek training explosive devices; army spokesman: Soldiers conduct searches to increase Israelis’ safety.
By Amira Hass Jun.07, 2012
Oketz soldiers inspecting a Palestinian cab in a West Bank checkpoint. Photo by Breakin the Silence
Soldiers from an elite IDF canine unit have been confiscating Palestinian vehicles in order to train their explosive-detecting dogs, an activist monitoring the conduct of soldiers in checkpoints told Haaretz.
The unit in question is Oketz, directly subordinate to IDF command, and which, among other duties, trains dogs to locate weapons and explosives. Its training base is located in the Adam base west of Ramallah.
According to Tamar Fleischman, Oketz soldiers have been randomly stopping Palestinian vehicles in the last few weeks as they pass through the Jaba checkpoint, near the city of Ramallah.
The soldiers then reportedly order the passengers to exit and display their identification cards, with one soldier positioned with his weapon aimed at the Palestinians.
At that point, Fleischman said, a dog handler places an object inside the vehicle, which the dog is then sent to find, an receiving a treat upon its retrieval. The passengers then receive their IDs, and are allowed to return to the vehicle. The entire process usually takes around ten minutes.
Earlier this week, Fleischman reported that in one such session the dog was unable to locate the hidden object, prompting a soldier to crawl through the vehicle until it was found, with the passengers looking on as another soldier pointed his rifle at them.
According to Breaking the Silence, an NGO, which collects the testimonies of IDF soldiers serving in the occupied territories, the training of Oketz personnel and dogs using Palestinian vehicles has been performed in the past as well.
One testimony, given by a female dog handler, relates to the period from 2007 to 2009. She said that the soldiers were present at the checkpoints “only to train the dogs.”
“We hide something in the case…like a [rifle] magazine. In the unit we use something called a snapir [fin], a stainless steel canister holding explosives held in a net, that keeps material, but allows scent to filter out,” she said, adding that the container holds the blast in case it’s dropped, “so no one can get hurt.”
The past dog handler said that Oketz soldiers take the vessel with them “to the checkpoints, and hide it in Palestinian vehicles and then the dog looks for it…. The justification for the action is ‘deterrent,’ the passengers don’t know we’re really not inspecting the vehicle.”
“This happens all year, even if it’s raining outside,” she said.
According to testimonials, the training isn’t time-bound, with sessions sometimes lasting for an hour, sometime three.
In one instance, three of four dogs were loaded onto a pickup truck, and driven to a checkpoint near the Adam base. At the Na’alin checkpoint, used by both Israelis and Palestinians, soldiers would stop “every Arab passing by, even if his wife was giving birth.”
“Countless settlers pass through there, but you would never inspect those vehicles, she said, adding that the dog handlers made sure to ask the passengers to remove Korans and prayer rugs from the vehicles, as they they would not be defiled by the dogs.
Speaking to Haaretz, Fleischman said that dog handlers have attempted to prevent her and other activists from filming the process from the other side of the checkpoint. In one instance, they did film, but the soldiers yelled out that they were being put at risk, adding that they had security clearance. They then stopped the training, and put the dog into a special cage, releasing him and resuming the session once Fleischman and the other activists walked away.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in response that “following the appeal, the issue will be thoroughly examined. As a rule, the IDF conducts inspections in West Bank checkpoints as part of its routine activity, in an attempt to ensure the safety of Israel’s citizens.”
EDITOR: Yes, it it 45 years today to the 1967 War…
How time flies… to think that I have spent 45 years of my life demonstrating against this occupation it sobering all right. It is also 45 years to the international lack of action on this occupation, and 45 years of brutal inhumanities by Israel. How long can it go on like this? apparently, for over 3 centuries, like in Northern Ireland. It is a terrible thought.
In the meantime, there are more problems for the Zionist, white and racist entity called Israel, that Jewish democracy for white Jews. As we know, it is difficult to be racist only against the Palestinians, of course. So now the Jewish Ku Klux Klan is all fired up and ready yo go, with Netanyahu preparing to expel 25,000 migrants to Africa any day now, with minister Yisahi saying Israel is for the whites only, with Ethiopian Falashas being attacked ‘by mistake’ as migrants, and with pogroms and arson spreading like wildfire. Hurray to Jewish white democrats in the only democracy in the Middle East.
TUESDAY, 29 MAY 2012 MICHAEL WARSCHAWSKI,
Our elders used to say that if something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck – then it’s a duck. Similarly, it is possible to say that if a state acts like a fascist state, legislates fascist laws, its spokespersons speak using fascist terms and some of the population responds in a fascist manner – then such a state is fascist.
Miri Regev (above), former Israeli army spokeswoman and current Knesset member, called African asylum seekers in Israel "cancer" (Photo: Moshe Milner, Israeli Government Press Office)
For numerous years I warned against use of the word “fascist” in defining the state of Israel. The Israeli regime is first and foremost a colonial regime, moved by colonial considerations of excluding the indigenous population and taking over their country and lands. The use of the term fascism served to soften the colonial character of the Zionist project and of the state of Israel.
There exists no doubt, of course, that the Zionist state did not lose its colonial essence but on the contrary, deepened even further the character traits it shares with states such as Rhodesia, Australia of the 18th and 19th century and the United States in its conquest of the west. However, Israel underwent processes which today justify also defining it as a fascist state. Seemingly, the grandchildren of the victims of German fascism and the project to destroy Jews who lived under its rule were supposed to know how to identify the fascist characteristics which developed as a terminal illness during the last decade.
The use of the word “cancer” in relation to a group of human beings, for example. Knesset Member Miri Regev (Likud) recently used this word to define the African refugees seeking asylum in Israel. Our ancestors were defined as “cancer” by the Nazis, and even today this word stands at the centre of the international fascist discourse when speaking about foreigners…and Jews. Another characteristic is the increase in pogroms: a mob incited by right-wing politicians, but also by the official discourse and the media, which violently attacks a minority group under the slogan “death to…!” So familiar to those who listened to stories of our grandparents! An additional example from the fascist modus operandi: the incitement of one disempowered group against another.
A pogrom always leads to murder and this is just a matter of time. The clock has begun to tick. MK Michael Ben Ari began his path with pogroms in East Jerusalem under the slogan “death to Arabs”, and today he is inciting in south Tel Aviv under the slogan “death to Sudanese”…most of whom, by the way, are not Sudanese but Eritrean.
However, the fascist attack on asylum seekers has an additional aspect related to most of our national and personal histories: the state of Israel was founded as an asylum state for hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled persecution or who survived the genocide of Eastern Europe. This position as asylum state is what led to the 1947 United Nations decision, and it is doubtful whether the international community would have given its support to the establishment of the state of Israel without the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and survivors of the Nazi project of destruction. Who like us, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those same refugees and survivors, is supposed to feel empathy toward the refugees, whether they are escaping persecution or escaping hunger.
However, the asylum state has become a fascist state in which the discourse of power has completely replaced that of rights, and empathy has given way to hatred of foreigners. Here we have additional proof that the experience of persecution does not necessarily lead to empathy toward other persecuted persons. Last Thursday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, we were less than fifty people demonstrating outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, reminding everyone that the Jewish tradition is full of commandments concerning love of the foreigner. Not just to treat someone with dignity, but with actual love! However, for a society built on the dispossession of the indigenous population and its expulsion, it is doubtful whether it possesses the capacity to feel empathy toward a refugee from Africa, and Miri Regev is an example. Regev, more than any other Knesset member, incited against MK Hanin Zoabi and called for her deportation from the country following the May 2010 slaughter conducted by Israel’s navy against the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. Today the same woman stands and incites using fascist language against asylum seekers from Africa. Indeed, the face of a generation is as the face of its leaders, and these days it is best not to look in the mirror.
Tel Aviv residents protesting against the African migrants living in their neighbourhood last week. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters
Firebombing of house containing 10 Eritreans is latest example of growing racism stoked by politicians and media
Harriet Sherwood
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 June 2012
Behind the metal door and up a narrow, blackened stairwell, fear hung in the air along with the smell of smoke. No one wanted to talk. A young woman scrubbing clothes in a plastic basin mutely shook her head. A man sweeping the floor with a toddler clinging to his legs said one word: “No.” Another, bringing bags of food from the nearby market, brushed past without making eye contact.
As for the 10 Eritreans who had been trapped in a ground-floor apartment when the blaze began at 3am, they had gone. Four were in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation; the rest had fled.
The overnight firebombing of a downtown Jerusalem building which houses refugees from sub-Saharan Africa was the latest in a string of attacks set against the backdrop of rising anti-migrant sentiment in Israel, fuelled by inflammatory comments by prominent politicians. Often described as infiltrators by ministers, the media, the army and government officials, migrants have also had labels such as “cancer”, “garbage”, “plague” and “rapists” applied to them by Israeli politicians.
The arsonists who struck the Jerusalem apartment, located in a religious neighbourhood of the city, scrawled “get out of our neighbourhood” on its outside wall. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: “This was a targeted attack which we believe was racially motivated.” The foreign ministry condemned the “heinous crime”.
But on the street outside the building, the official response had little resonance with a man who arrived in Israel from Eritrea 14 years ago but was too scared to give his name. “People look at you, they curse you. They say, ‘Go back to your country.’ We are very afraid,” he said.
Tensions were inevitable, according to Moshe Cohen, the owner of a nearby jeweller’s shop. “They drink, they fight among themselves, they play African music on shabbat [the Jewish sabbath] when people want to pray. What started in Tel Aviv happens here now.”
He was referring to a series of firebombings of apartments and a nursery over the past month in southern Tel Aviv, an area in which African migrants are concentrated. Shops run by or serving migrants were smashed up and looted in a violent demonstration last month in which Africans were attacked. Many Israelis were shocked at the display of aggressive racism in their most liberal city.
Political leaders did not allow the violence to temper their verbal onslaught against the migrants. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel’s national identity was at risk from the flood of “illegal infiltrators”. Interior minister Eli Yishai suggested that Aids-infected migrants were raping Israeli women, and all, “without exception”, should be locked up pending deportation. They do not believe “this country belongs to us, to the white man”, he said in an interview.
And, while touring the fence that Israel is building along its border with Egypt to deter migrants, MP Aryeh Eldad said: “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot – a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border – shot.” He later conceded that such a policy may not be feasible “because bleeding hearts groups will immediately begin to shriek and turn to the courts”.
According to the immigration authority, there are 62,000 migrants in Israel, where the population is 7.8m. Over 2,000 migrants entered Israel via Egypt last month, compared with 637 last May. The construction of the 150-mile (240km) southern border fence, due to be completed later this year, is thought to be increasing in the short term the numbers attempting to cross into Israel .
Nearly all are given temporary permits to stay in Israel which must be renewed every three or four months and specifically exclude permission to work. Many end up being employed on a casual basis for a pittance, living in overcrowded, rundown apartments and confined to the fringes of society. In desperation, some turn to petty crime.
On Sunday, a law came into effect allowing the Israeli authorities to jail migrants for up to three years. People helping or sheltering migrants could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.
Netanyahu also ordered ministers to accelerate efforts to deport 25,000 migrants from countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations, principally South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Ethiopia.
He conceded it was not possible to deport around 35,000 migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia. Eritreans and Sudanese make up more than 90% of those who have illegally crossed the Israel-Egypt border in recent months.
One out of 4,603 applicants was granted asylum status last year.
Although some commentators and community activists have said that Israel, a state founded by and for refugees from persecution, should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing violence and oppression, the prevailing mood is one of intolerance.
“This phenomenon is getting bigger and bigger,” said Poriya Gets of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv. It was being stoked by politicians and rightwing organisations, she added. “We now see hotspots of tension between refugees and local people in many towns.”
Her organisation had also been targeted. “We’ve had phone calls, people cursing and saying ugly things, like, ‘We hope you will be raped and we are coming to burn you.’ The politicians must take responsibility. They are trying to make the fire bigger.”
After the very successful demonstration in front of the Globe theatre, spome tens of videos were placed on YouTube extending the message of the protest. Below I include some of these.
End Israeli Apartheid Now!
