Israel’s Minister of Internal Security has even acknowledged that official police statistics show that the crime rate of African asylum-seekers is significantly lower than that of native Israelis. But other government officials latch onto any crime committed by any asylum-seeker – and then claim that Africans are predisposed to criminality. In any other modern democracy, this would be recognized as incitement to racial hatred of the worst kind. In Israel, it’s just populist politics.
Encouraged by top government officials who have labeled the Africans a “cancer” and a threat to the Israel’s security on par with nuclear bombs, Israeli citizens have formed gangs of vigilantes who patrol the city streets at night, attacking any dark-skinned person they come across. When one Israeli firebombed several African homes and an African kindergarten last year, he got off without any jail time. Even during the day, racists know that they can abuse Africans and suffer no repercussions – and so they do.
Now that pubic opinion against the Africans has been brought to a boiling point, the government is able to pass the most draconian measures against the asylum-seekers, and hardly anybody objects. As long as the government doesn’t deport tens of thousands of Africans in a matter of days, and instead only rounds them into a glorified ghetto a few thousand at a time until they despair of the frying pan and elect to jump back into the fire, Israel’s allies in Washington, D.C. will likely remain silent.
David Sheen is an independent journalist and film maker originally from Toronto, Canada who now lives in Dimona, Israel. Sheen began blogging when he first moved to Israel in 1999 and later went on to work as a reporter and editor at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. His full-length documentary on ecological architecture, “First Earth”, was translated into a dozen languages and published by PM Press in 2010. Sheen gave a TEDx talk on the topic of the film in Johannesburg, South Africa later that year. He is currently writing a book about African immigrants to Israel and the struggles they face. Sheen’s website is www.davidsheen.com and he tweets from @davidsheen
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