The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #149360   Message #3477596
Posted By: Jim Carroll
09-Feb-13 - 01:21 PM
Thread Name: BS: Israel condemned by UN
Subject: RE: BS: Israel condemned by UN
Whoops - sorry about the typos, but I'm sure you get the drift
Jim Carroll

"First arriving in Tel Aviv's Levinsky Park during a freezing January, Jacob was shocked at the uniformly hostile attitude of Israelis towards Africans like him. As genocide survivors, he says, Darfuris headed for Israel "thought that we shared a common interest" with Jewish Israelis raised on the memory of the Holocaust. But a common refrain he heard from Israelis was that all Sudanese refugees came from an "enemy state", and were not to be welcomed.
The worst thing about the racist abuse, Jacob says, is seeing the children of refugees exposed to violence and hatred; for example, when a south Tel Aviv kindergarten was burned down in April of this year. Attacks like these ones on children are a traumatic and painful reminder of the atrocities that many refugees have witnessed at home, says Jacob. In both instances, he says, one sees destruction of property and threats for no reason, with the strong message that "because you're black, you're a kushi [a racist Hebrew name for Africans], you're not a human being; you don't deserve to be in this state.""
..... The Israeli government can and should take measures to contain and discourage racist violence, says Jacob. Anything less amounts, in his words, to "really an underestimation of the dignity of the human being.""
http://ardc-israel.org/en/blog/2012/12/watch-sudanese-refugee-jacob-tells-israeli-abuse-hannukah-south-tel-aviv-marred-racism

The Israeli government ignored the UN's call, and the following month, Israelis firebombed a kindergarten for African children in Tel Aviv, igniting a wave of violence against non-Jewish African people in Israel that is still ongoing. Below are links to the UN reports, in text and video form, social media stories about the recent violence, footage from two years of anti-African rallies, and extended one-on-one interviews about opposition to the presence of Africans in Israel.
http://www.davidsheen.com/racism/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_acfNfFkgw

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/10/23/survey-of-israeli-racism-58-of-jews-label-their-state-apartheid/

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/resources/briefing-papers/1230-israels-discrimination-against-its-arab-citizens

http://electronicintifada.net/content/un-body-appalled-israels-racial-segregation-policies/11065