Just plain shameful racist behavior by the Israeli people…
Demonstrators shouted: “Blacks out!”
http://www.vancouversun.com/...s/6674610/story.html
edit: I have no doubt someone will call me anti-semitic for posting this…
don’t … know… what… to… say
This story gives more context, and a first person narrative:
As a Jewish-American, I wish we would just the entire middle east do their own thing.
People upset about illegal immigration? Never heard of such a thing! Who would get angry and target immigrants from a specific country. Sound very intolerant.
As an Arizonan…
apparently, they’re just like us.
Except we don’t throw them out any more… we put them in jail.
I think this went off the rails because the illegal immigrants are black, and black is easy to identify. It really seems like a failure of govt, in two ways; not handling the illegal immigrant problem, and a couple of conservative/nationalist Knesset members encouraging the anger. Here’s a couple paragraphs from the link I provided (Several Canadian papers ran the same really weak story from the OP)
It started as a legitimate protest. South Tel Aviv residents objected to the government’s policy, or more accurately, the government’s lack of policy. Over the course of a few years, tens of thousands of Africans have made their way into the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv. Residents call them infiltrators, others call them refugees or asylum seekers. The Africans have made life in south Tel Aviv hellish, according to the residents
The Knesset members were not interested. Believe it or not, they fanned the flames. “The Sudanese are a cancer in our body,” said Miri Regev, (Likud). “All the left-wingers that filed petitions in the Supreme court should be embarrassed – they stopped the expulsion,” she added.
Michael Ben Ari joined in on her incitement. “There are rapists and harassers here. The time for talk is over,” said Ben Ari (National Union), exciting the crowd. He also pointed a finger of blame at the left-wingers, and “tzfonbonim” (Israeli slang for affluent, stuck-up residents of north Tel Aviv).
Regev and Ben Ari did their part. The protest went out of control. The masses understood the message: Talk is over, it’s time to act. Now is the time to take the law in to our own hands, to get violent, to release our rage. Some members of the migrant community passed by, scared, while others say they were afraid to leave their houses. The protesters, they believed, are just waiting for the right time to strike.
How about Netanyahoo’s lack of condemnation…
“We will soon begin with the process of returning infiltrators to their countries of origin,” he said. “I’m saying these things to the residents of south Tel Aviv whose pain I understand. We will solve this problem in a responsible manner.”
We are inches away from something exactly like this happening with Mexican immigrants right here in the good old US of A.
How about Netanyahoo’s lack of condemnation…
“We will soon begin with the process of returning infiltrators to their countries of origin,” he said. “I’m saying these things to the residents of south Tel Aviv whose pain I understand. We will solve this problem in a responsible manner.”
What he is trying to say is “We will ethnically cleanse the area”
This reminds me of the time in the early 1900’s, Jews started ‘infiltrating’ Palestine. I guess you can’t have too many infiltrators. Why don’t they just send them to the West Bank? Seems like anyone can move there these days. Maybe a few more broken windows will scare them off. There is just something about broken windows and Jews that seems to ring a bell. On second thought, it might be a better idea to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and send a radioactive plume across the entire world.
Just plain shameful racist behavior by the Israeli people…
Demonstrators shouted: “Blacks out!”
http://www.vancouversun.com/...s/6674610/story.html
edit: I have no doubt someone will call me anti-semitic for posting this…
There’s been a problem among some segments of Israeli society for years with the sub-Saharan Africans that were brought to the country, by the Israelis, because of their Jewish ancestry – though they practice (when they practice at all) a quirky kind of Judaism – and to escape the vicious anti-Semitism they’d been the victims of in their native countries. Still, their brand of Judaism, in my opinion, isn’t any more quirky than some of the Judaism that many supposedly “Jewish” Americans here practice or the Judaism practiced by some of the untra-Orthodox in Israel. Racism is wherever you go. NO country or people is immune to it. Like us, a country with racist people in it (just as in Israel), that doesn’t make the nation as a whole “racist.”
I don’t know if I’d equate Israel to the USA in that sense. I think the closest Western recent comparison is France. Huge pride in their past “culture”, whatever that means, and they don’t want anyone to come in and change it (for better or worse). Israel is just more militant about it. Maybe I’m just ignorantly optimistic, but I think you could work out a unified Israel between the jews and arabs. There are enough young, reasonable people to make it work eventually. It just wouldn’t be a purely Jewish Israel anymore, which too many there currently consider a fate worse than death.
There was a good op-ed in the NYT the other yesterday from an Israeli arab married to a Palestinian arab, talking about this:
Israel has always had an official yet unwritten policy of welcoming the oppressed. The problem is too many people are taking advantage of it. It started with faux Palestinians (aka Palestinians in name only), then the Russians (many criminals claiming to be jews), and now it is anti-semetic africans from every war torn shit hole. You can’t compare their policy to ours as they have different rules, responsibilities and more dangerous neighbors. Like many liberal policies an open door policy can have serious unintended consequenses. So they need to address them, before it is too late. You just simply cannot allow anti-semetic people into Israel for the long term survival of the Jewish state, which is what Israel is and always will be.
I don’t think this is so much about culture as the reality of dealing with a huge influx of unemployed and illegal folks, causing the std of living to drop for all. You or I would have probably been in with the core of the protestors if we saw crime increase and conditions in the neighborhoods where we raise our families suffer. The problem is the “coalition” that pops up around the legitimate concerns. a coalition that includes those who, for racist or nationalistic reasons, want the same thing; expulsion of a bunch of black people.
I have to say that I’m in total agreement with BK once again. (How is that possible?)
You can not find any culture or nation that is immune to bigotry. The protests referred to are not representative of the country as a whole, but that element does exist as it does virtually everywhere else. Truth be told there is even an element of racism among Israelis who have lived together for years identified as Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.
Well, they have already done a fine job of building the worlds largest ever concentration camp/prision. Maybe they can just wall off those pesky black immigrants as well and just bring them out when they need cheap labour
Racism is wherever you go. NO country or people is immune to it. Like us, a country with racist people in it (just as in Israel), that doesn’t make the nation as a whole “racist.”
x2
I’m always careful about putting Israel on a pedestal as so many do but they are no more or less racist than any other country.
**Israel has always had an official yet unwritten policy of welcoming the oppressed. The problem is too many people are taking advantage of it. **
I completely agree.
I’ve also observed (very generalized observation) that the initial immigrants coming into any country (Mexicans in the U.S is another example) are hard working and just want to care for their families and stay out of trouble. The problems come with their kids. They feel out of place because they are citizens but look different than the host country and they don’t have the same work ethic since they were born into relative wealth.
It is often the children of the original immigrants, either the first or second generations, that often seem to be the problems.
“I have to say that I’m in total agreement with BK once again. (How is that possible?)”
X2. I usually don’t agree with BK, but sometimes he hits the nail on the head…
There is an old expression that if the Arabs didn’t have Israel as a common enemy then they’d be fighting among themselves (even more than they already do). I think the same could apply to Israel. It holds itself together because of the conflict with Arab neighbors, but in reality, they are very much a divided society.