Israelis and African refugees protest the expulsion. Photo: Daniel Cherrin
This past weekend, a couple friends and I helped four Sudanese families move out of Tel Aviv. The families, refugees from conflict zones in Darfur and South Sudan, were grateful to us for our help.
We rented a van (which of course broke down mid-move), loaded up their possessions along with some furniture donated by several kind people, and set off for Nazareth, Hadera and Ashdod - distant cities where they hope to set up new homes.
Leaving Tel Aviv was not their choice - as of the beginning of July, they are no longer allowed to live and work in Israel’s largest urban area.
Refugees everywhere tend to concentrate themselves on the fringes of big cities. Here, too, most of African refugee community, which began arriving here after Egyptian police attacked and killed Sudanese refugees protesting in Cairo in late 2005, took up residence in Tel Aviv’s poorer southern neighborhoods.
A particularly large wave of refugees arrived in Tel Aviv during the winter of 2008. During that time, it became common to see people sleeping outside in public parks or cramped into overcrowded shelters. Noticing the obvious distress of these newcomers to our city, several friends and I set up a voluntary organization to provide them with food, English and Hebrew lessons, children’s activities and whatever other services we could muster on a shoestring budget and with the help of a handful of volunteers.
Around the same time, the Israeli government, which also caught wind of what was going on, decided to restrict African asylum seekers from living inside Greater Tel Aviv(illegally, according to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees). This policy still applies to the vast majority of the almost 20,000 refugees from Sudan, Eritrea and other countries currently living in Israel.
Apparently, the policy stemmed from a combination of NIMBYism on the part of the Tel Aviv Municipality, economic nationalism (“they are taking jobs from Israelis”) and the government’s fear that, if treated well, the refugees would tell all of their friends and family to come to Israel as well. The policy, called Hadera-Gedera after the two cities that delineate the edges of Metropolitan Tel Aviv, recalls (to my mind, anyway) the Pale of Settlement, Imperial Russia’s attempt to physically remove the Jews from the mainstream of Russian society.
While a small minority have been officially recognized as refugees, and thus granted ID cards and the right to work legally, the rest have been labeled by government officials as “refugee work immigrants” and “illegal infiltrators from enemy countries,” and told the leave the center of the country.
Until recently, the Hadera-Gedera policy was only loosely enforced. However, July 1st marked the inauguration of a new unit at the Population Administration, called “Oz,” charged with arresting and expelling all “illegal” foreign workers and asylum seekers. Whether the new unit’s appearance has anything to do with the rise of the nationalist far-right in Israel is unclear.
In any case, since then they have been conducting daily manhunts on the streets of Tel Aviv, targeting anyone with a foreign appearance. After they arrested hundreds of African refugees and ordered them to leave the city, the refugees got the message, and thus began the latest in a long series of displacements that this community has suffered.
The tragedy of it all is that the refugee community was finally beginning to find some stability and normalcy in Tel Aviv. Here, their kids studied in Israeli schools, they found jobs, free health clinics and aid organizations. How they will find jobs to pay their rents outside of the center of the country, where work is scarce, I do not know.
Needless to say, this is a community of sharp, resilient and warm people fleeing unimaginable circumstances. Many, many people in Tel Aviv reacted to their arrival with an outpouring of hospitality and generosity. There are more than a few people in Tel Aviv for whom the decision to expel them from the city represents the crossing of a red line – and it takes a lot for people to really take up such a cause in a country where every week seems to bring some new scandal or political upheaval.
The government, however, has hardened its heart toward these uninvited guests. Passed around like a human hot potato, the African community has not always been made to feel welcome. Almost every refugee that I have met spent the first several months of his or her stay in an Israeli prison, and, for most, the only official document they carry is still their “conditional release” from incarceration.
The government is promoting a new law which would criminalize the refugees, threatening them and those that assist them with long jail terms. According to the bill, my friends and I, by choosing to spend our weekend helping refugee families move, could find ourselves sentenced to 20 years in jail (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/024/2008/en/f418e992-4108-11dd-a280-615aa3eb3c6f/mde150242008eng.pdf).
For the sake of comparison, Avraham Hirshson, Israel’s former Finance Minister who was found guilty of stealing millions from a workers’ federation, got five and a half years in jail.
Like most Israelis, I come from a family that was forced to flee its home more than once. Almost everyone in this land, whether Jew or Palestinian, knows what it is like to be a refugee. If anyone should have compassion for these unfortunate people, it is us.
Jesse Fox is an urban planner, freelance journalist and activist. He runs a volunteer organization called Fugee Fridays, and blogs at www.sustainablecityblog.com.
As it’s been well over a year since the last bombing occurred in Israel, there isn’t much good news to report.
Hopefully, things will improve soon.
Why don’t you stop the nonsense? You do nothing but discredit a reputable site with your anti-semitism.
This is not a reputable site, unless you consider a bad reputation as desirable.
“This is not a reputable site, unless you consider a bad reputation as desirable. ”
Which is why Saxon and others cannot tear themselves away from it. How funny is that?
This is ironic. The neocons promote war in Sudan and Somailia, that result in the predictable refugees and they end up flooding into Israel. This says something good about Israel — it is the most inviting destination in the region for these poor wretches. Also I think this is good for Israel; they need a little more cultural diversity.
@ eitan
“After a certain point it goes beyond being concerned for your fellow Jews.”
God forbid! Such a sin, to think of anyone other than What’s Good 4 The Jews!
Thanks, IDF clone device, for being honest. This is a blog made in the USA. We do appreciate opinions, even un-American ones! Give us more. We wish to share your ideas and thinking!
No you don’t. Unless you are just a phil clone.
Citizen, now we really get to the heart of the matter. I’ve suspected for some time that these Mondo Occupiers don’t actually disagree with Phil. Rather they just think he should have a good healthy prison mentality like they do. Jews stick with Jews. Very sad.
I guess this means that Gaza isn’t the only open air prison. The settlers like Eitan, and the Zionists in general, live in a prison in their own minds.
Jesse Fox kudos to you and thanks for the informative article… it says something positive about the ordinary person in israel and something very different about those who are running its gov’t… perhaps better representation by the gov’t of people like yourself would be a logical step in the right direction to resolve the chasm that seems to exist with the ordinary israel citizens and their own gov’t… i hope it changes in your direction…
I read a recent article in Haaretz that pointed out that the Tel Aviv municipal government was asking the national government to back off its removal policy.
Good Lord, you know how young people are these days! They’re all crazy, what with all the movies and the rock-and-roll music all the time! What if some poor befuddles Israeli girl wanted to marry one of those horrible schwartzes? Can we allow that? Would that contribute to Jewish continuity? It’s no wonder these darkies had to be hustled out of Tel Aviv.
When I was young and in religious school, they told me that Jewish holidays start at sundown. Maybe Tel Aviv is become a Sundown Town!!
But anyway, you know how it is with these young people, they hear things. Who knows what those girls hear. Sooner or later….
No, they had to get them out. The purity of Jewish life must be maintained!
And, I might add, any Israeli girls who would like to help defuse the Palestinian Demographic Time Bomb, you just give me a call. No need to go to “outsiders” when you can have the real National Hebrew salami. Call me, Sabras Look, I may hate myself, but when it comes to lovin you….
“Reported this anti-semetic statement from known anti-semite user”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, any minute now the door is gonna burst open and the Anti-Semitism Police will beat you up and waterboard you with chopped liver.
“Known Anti-Semite User” Can’t you just hear the Anti-Semitism Police Radio?
“Static, crackle, urp, oy, Listen, boys, be careful on this job, some of these known anti-Semites are armed with the facts about Israel. They are dangerous. The one we’re after today is a known disparager and criticiser, a Nazi at heart, just like the Grand Mufti”
I really don’t quite understand what power the Zionist-supporters think accusations of anti-Semitism, have, exactly? What happens when their shirts come back from the laundry with too much starch? Anti-Semitism is everywhere!
Anti-Israel is not anti-semitic.
So….racist Israel wants to dump the black Jews?
These are refugees, they aren’t Jewish.
I think expelling them from TA is stupid, but that isn’t the point. MRW you have your facts wrong as usual.
Those who attack and kill Israelis are actually among the most PRO-Jewish people on earth. They are fighting against the greatest enemy of world Jewry—Israel. They are fighting against the greatest threat to jews—the gangster state which has brought disgrace and global hatred down on the heads of all jews and destroyed the dignity and good name of the Jews: Israel.
Every attack on Israel is a victory for Jews.
Every attack on Israel is a victory for Jews
Sorry, no. The entire thing is a huge tragedy of human folly. Forcing Israel to compromise enough to allow the Palestinians to live will not be a “victory” (no matter, of course that the people who worked for it can claim it as such, and have the right to). It may be a way of avoiding the even worse tragedies which await us if some solution or compromise is not reached.
you are such a shmuck
Not ALL Jews are Nazi sewage and concentrated fecal matter, even if people like Yoni are doing their level best to convince you they are.
Whatever happened to “Save Darfur?” Oh, save them from afar – I get it.
HOME SWEET HOME
Really, what kind of democracy turns away refugees?
I don’t know Tenma – can you say “democracy?” I can say it too, democracy – anyone can say it, but being one is an entirely different matter
Huh? I was agreeing.
Australia turns them away by the boatload. Literally.
I was not disagreeing with you Tenma, just making another comment to the point. Of course, it is no democracy at all – or a democracy only for those of a specific persuasion. We agree fully
Ah! Thanks for clarifying.
OT: Here’s a bit of a breakthough. Thanks to the work of Adalh-NY and Adam Horowitz, readers of this site have long known of American Jewish funding of the West Jerusalem settlements. Now even Bloomberg News is getting into the act–
Obama Presses Israel to Halt Plans Funded by Rennert, Moskowitz
link to bloomberg.com
“Renco Group Inc. founder Ira Rennert and bingo entrepreneur Irving Moskowitz are among U.S. donors who have given $25.4 million in five years to build Jewish homes in Arab parts of Jerusalem — the same areas where President Barack Obama is pressing Israel to stop such construction.
The American contributions, detailed in Internal Revenue Service records, have gone to organizations such as Ateret Cohanim. The group says it bought at least 45 properties, most in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, to advance its goal of settling a Jewish majority in the now predominantly Arab Old City.
The donations have also helped fund plans by the non- governmental Elad Association to build Jewish homes on the Shepherd Hotel site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. State Department two weeks ago asked Israel to halt the project, which has been condemned as a threat to Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects by the French government, the European Union and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.”
(Note that they even properly identify Moskowitz as a “bingo entrepreneur.”)
(There’s a good chance this is the first piece of investigative journalism on the workings of the Israel lobby ever published in the American mainstream media. Hallelujah.)
To suggest all Jews should be rounded up and exterminated is simply idiotic. What needs to be done is remove their Jewish identity through education and assimilation. Already we see Jews reproducing at tiny rates, intermarrying the majority of the time, and slowly but surely casting off the yoke of the racist creed that historically bound them together. It seems that Zionism is naturally going to wither away as this assimilation process continues, leaving Israel as a fading nation of hate, rejected by a lost people who have been weened away over the years from millenniums of bigotry.
Ten lost tribes down, two to go. At this pace, in 100 years Jewish identity will largely become a nearly extinct species, a relic of historic course study, and the world will be finally done with the cancerous virus that’s infected its societies since the bronze age. Education and assimilation will provide the desired extinction, not genocide.
In response to Eitan, Saxon, and the “bad newsers”
It may be that Mondo publishes “bad news” from Israel, but much of the news has to do with causes that come from the US. This is Mondo’s focus, I think, and it’s unfortunate that the US seems to be where the bad news in the region often originates.
What am I talking about?
African refugees in Israel as well as journalists have commented that “made in USA” and “made in Israel” impressions pepper the bullets and guns found from where these refugees fled. Both the US and Israel are part of the suffering in Africa. If reading Mondo opens up some readers’ eyes too much for personal comfort, then I guess they should close them – not blame the visible world for their choice to open up their eyes.
Furthermore, the knee-jerk criticisms of blindly-pro-Israel mouthpiece talkbackers reveal how little they know about the situation in Israel. They ought to take a moment to realize that most of these refugees, especially those from Sudan, are extremely supportive of Israel – some with a desire to join the army.
In any case, the US has been inundated with Jewish-supported “Save Darfur” campaigns on campuses and in major cities for the past few years. Why wouldn’t examining Israels divergence with supposedly liberal American-Jewish concerns for refugees in those campaigns be appropriate?
Don’t blame these refugee problems on the US, as well.
Islamo-Fascist Muslims who rule in the Sudan have slaughtered and expelled over a million people in the past few years. This is neither the fault of the USA nor of Israel.
Of course, suggesting that it might be the fault of the Islamo-Fascists who actually committed these crimes is beyond the Pale at MondoLies…
The facts on the ground in these regions have not changed, as an example Darfur, so the harangue about Islamofascists is just complete simplistic and self-serving horse shit as usual. No need to elaborate regarding Africa with me, my family was involved in certain “industries” there.
WILL THE REAL DARFUR PLEASE STAND UP”
Western Hegemonies writers will continue to “expose” the fighting, or the bare facts of atrocities, but never expose the elements behind the war(s) or the genocide. It is just “old animosities” that suddenly are supposed to explode. Or, as in the case of Darfur, it is merely “Muslims” rather than the power struggle engendered by natural resources and who will control them, or be the benefactor of the foreign investment or the largess for the resources.
Here is an article written by Keith Harmon Snow and Dimitri Oram, originally titled “Keeping Peacekeepers Out Of Darfur at the ALL THINGS PASS WEBSITE. The link was originally posted on the Angry Arab News Service by Randall Jones of the GETTING TRUTH BLOG.
Evey time Israel is criticized in a blog, you can always count on a Zionist wingnut to bring up Sudan/Darfur. Of course, Israel is arming the rebels, but don’t mention that to Jake.
Zionists have never been particularly interested in non-Jewish refugees: Commemoration: Palestinian and Armenian Genocides.
[BTW, I probably would not have used the term Turkish soldier. Even though the ruling party called itself "Young Turks." The state was still the Ottoman Empire, and I have never seen an ethnic breakdown of the soldiers taking part in the Armenian genocide.]
So there is a Pale of Settlement in Israel? Who would have thunk it? Man, my kids here in America have been hammered with that Holocaust stuff, by law, from grade school through high school, and now y’all are doing the nasty right there in Israel?
Y’all really need to understand that this special pleading is one of the things that chaps the @ss of more and more American gentiles. You try to turn my kids into self-hating Christians, then turn around and do the same thing in your own country. What a piece of work!
On the one hand, we have the Zionist Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society taking gentile American tax money to import and dump Muslim Somalis and Animist Darfurians all across the USA. On the other hand, their Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel are doing their best to get rid of their own Darfurians and keep Tel Aviv race pure.
Play it one way or another, boys, but you are playing with fire when you play this two-faced game. Y’all want to be Mr. Race Purity in your homeland? That’s fine. You want a your own personal African-free Pale of Settlement? Go right ahead. You want anti-miscegenation laws to keep Jews from breeding with other folks? That’s just peachy. You want to own Israeli land as a Jewish racial collective for all eternity in order to bar its sale or use by lesser races like Arabs and other Christians? Be my guest!
But y’all really , really, need to understand that the days of having it both ways are rapidly coming to an end. We will not be replaced by Mexicans, Africans or Muslims.
Morally, you have already been replaced.
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There is no point in MondoLies posting positive news. It does not serve their cause. The same reason they so rarely post anything truthful.
Eitan, why don’t YOU share some positive news from Israel? No seriously. I, for one, will not make fun of it.
Then dont come here. Go where you can read what you want to read, like pyjamasmedia.
anti-Semitism?
I just laugh whenever I hear that ludicrous term. Anti-semitism doesn’t exist. Loathing of Israel is common to all people of conscience and reason. It has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
STFU. Go fix something in your neighborhood and stop trying to fix us. We’re all grown up enough to recognize anti-semitism, and most of us dont give a shit about it anymore.
We need to get rid of the Middle East disease of inequity fueled by lies and racism and apartheid because this disease is wasting many of our US treasury dollars in the needless pursuit of ‘terror wars’ etcetera etcetera.
This shit has to stop. So does the US investment in what makes Israel think it can act with abandon with hefty US taxpayer support.
Although, I must say, Eitan, that this is a repulsive statement:
“After a certain point it goes beyond being concerned for your fellow Jews.”
Of course they’re concerned for more than just Jews. They’re concerned for all human beings. Where is your conscience? How do you shut off your compassion for people who don’t happen to look like you, or believe what you believe?