“We are facing a time bomb, a threat that is bigger than the one from Iran. Filipino women are going to bed with Israeli men and staying here. I’m familiar with this. It’s no less a danger than the infiltrators. The women have learned the system. It’s a demographic catastrophe. I would prefer a million drug addicts to one infiltrator, because the infiltrators have come to swallow us up.”
Above: file photo
In South Tel Aviv, Locals Who Interact With African Asylum Seekers Tend To Like Them While Those Who Do Not View Them As Rapists And Criminals Who Seek To Destroy Israel’s Jewish Ethnic 'Purity'
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Torah says Jews should be welcoming to strangers and should help them because Jews once were strangers in Egypt and were enslaved and mistreated there.
But in everyday practice, Zionist Orthodox and haredi rabbis, right-wing and centrist Members of Knesset, and average Israelis (most of whom are right-wing or centrist) have been nothing short of awful to the African asylum seekers. Primarily from Southern Sudan, the Darfur region and Eritrea, they entered Israel without visas seeking safety and the opportunity to live in freedom. African asylum seekers have been beaten by mobs of Israelis, had their apartments and day care centers firebombed, and have faced a non-ending spree of hatred and bigotry that is truly shocking.
However, the Israelis who are the closest to these African asylum seekers often have a much different view of them than do the Knesset members who use racial slurs to describe them or the Orthodox rabbis who call them rapists and thieves. Ha’aretz discovered this when it went on a tour of the very poor south Tel Aviv Hatikva neighborhood Tuesday evening. The neighborhood, near the Old Central Bus Station, has a very high concentration of African asylum seekers – much like Manhattan’s Lower East Side had a high concentration of Jewish refugees and migrants 120 years ago.
The Ha’aretz visit began before the newest High Court of Justice ruling on detention of asylum seekers was released – it ordered the government to release over 1,200 African asylum seekers held in detention in a desert facility near Gaza and made other changes in the government’s non-ending fight to force the asylum seeks to leave Israel – and concluded several hours after it.
Almost all of the Africans are now fully employed, and because of that crime has dropped. They work hard, often for long hours, and spend money in the neighborhood buying food, clothing and other necessities. They actually appear to have increased the money spent in the neighborhood and have become favorites of many local merchants as a result.
“They’re great people. It would be great if there were another 100,000 like them. They should build buildings for themselves and live here. They’re fabulous workers,” a greengrocer named Yossi told Ha’aretz.
One of Yossi’s customers, a woman named Efrat, vehemently disagrees.
“I’m against them. I want Israel to have a Jewish character. The Hatikva quarter has turned into a Little Africa. They are violent and dirty, and they multiply here like street cats,” Efrat said.
Yossi’s neighbor, another greengrocer named Arbash, also supports the African asylum seekers.
“I’m employing six Eritreans and I wish them only well. They are reliable workers – not like the Jews,” he said.
A customer at the Arbash store named jumps in to disagree.
“When I heard that they raped Jewish women, I just went and hit every Eritrean I met on the street. They have 200 stores here. Imagine Jews opening up all kinds of stores in one area in the United States,” Shimon said, apparently unaware that the same slurs he was using against the African asylum seekers were used against Jewish immigrants in the US, and that there were in fact manny neighborhoods in cities like New York where immigrant Jews did in fact open 200, or even more, stores.
At a towel and sock store, a worker who supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party told Ha’aretz he opposes detaining the African asylum seekers at the Holot detention center in the Negev Desert not far from the border with Gaza.
“It’s the same as with us. One does something crappy and they accuse all of them. People who don’t know them like I do think bad things about them, but I am with them a lot. Some of them are good people. Why should they suffer? They are tough customers on price, but it’s hard for them. I also don’t see any difference between them and Jews when it comes to shoplifting. Listen, their bad image comes from the news. The people writing in the media are not from here and don’t experience them at all. And if I weren’t from here, I would have said they should be kicked out of here. But there are a lot of very nice people. Six months ago a lot left for Europe, regular customers who came to say goodbye,” the Likud supporter said.
Several women opposed the asylum seekers because of their fear of being raped. Several high profile rape cases over the past four years involved African asylum seeker rapists, but there are other less high profile rapes committed every year in the area by Israeli Jews, and the women’s fear is much more akin to selection bias than anything else, although it is likely that rape is more prevalent in areas anywhere in the world where there is a high concentration of single unattached transient men, just as prostitution and sex trafficking would likely also be more common in those areas.
A woman, Kalifa Ohayon, who lives in the area wants the African asylum seekers to be expelled from Israel for a different reason. Her opposition to the asylum seekers is based on her desire for Jewish ethnic purity, and what she says sounds a lot like the talk from southern whites at the time of the African-American civil rights struggle in the 1950s and 60s.
“We are facing a time bomb, a threat that is bigger than the one from Iran. Filipino women are going to bed with Israeli men and staying here. I’m familiar with this. It’s no less a danger than the infiltrators. The women have learned the system. It’s a demographic catastrophe. I would prefer a million drug addicts to one infiltrator, because the infiltrators have come to swallow us up,” Ohayon said.