[News] Israel’s Anti-Black Pogrom

[Anti-Imperialist News]

***Israel’s Anti-Black Pogrom*

Posted By _Justin Raimondo_ On January 6, 2013 @ 10:00 pm In 
_Uncategorized_ | _57 Comments 
<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/01/06/israels-anti-black-pogrom/print/#comments_controls>_

A screaming mob of whites gathers in a public square, their placards 
proclaiming their hatred of blacks, their shouts of "N—-r!" 
reverberating and bouncing off the walls of nearby shops and homes like 
the ominous thunder of a coming storm. They loot shops that cater to 
blacks, and a prominent elected official is at the head of the mob, 
declaring that blacks are "a cancer" that must be eradicated.

Mississippi in the Sixties? A neo-Nazi rally? A Klan conclave?

No, it’s a recent scene <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGJVX6jYjI0> in 
southern Tel Aviv, Israel, where Likud member of the Knesset Miri Regev 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/miri-regev-sudan_n_1543079.html> 
– a former IDF spokesperson and prominent political figure – led a 
well-organized march of ultra-nationalists demanding the expulsion of 
all blacks from Israel. Just look at the ugliness 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOGSBHqRDuw> of these people – listen to 
them screaming "White Power"! And here are the Jewish Hitlers 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2AmJlFGnA>, proclaiming their desire 
to set up a "Jewish monarchy." A few extremists? No. Israel’s Interior 
Minister has pledged to ship all blacks back to Africa, and the issue of 
the African refugees has become /the/ major issue in Israel’s election 
campaign.

Rising ultra-nationalist star Naftali Bennett 
<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/12/27/naftali-bennett-the-david-duke-of-israel/>, 
of the religious fundamentalist "Jewish Home" party, is demanding their 
immediate expulsion in order to preserve the "purity" of the Jewish 
state. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has pledged 
<http://mg.co.za/article/2012-05-21-israel-on-african-immigrants> to get 
rid of the Africans in short order, and ordered the construction of a 
"security fence <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGXL4xHy6M4>" bordering 
the Sinai, where most of the refugees turn up seeking asylum from 
Africa’s wars.

They come from Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, for the most part 
<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article45042>, victims of the 
constant conflict that has made East Africa a bloody battlefield for 
many years. As Israel has made a concerted effort 
<http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2009/09/14/Israel-eyes-big-arms-sales-in-Africa/UPI-46891252956171/> 
to boost arms sales to African nations, including Ethiopia, where many 
of the refugees come from, the influx can be seen as blowback – 
otherwise known as karma.

Israel has a longstanding military connection to Ethiopia: ever since 
the 1970s, when the genocidal Derg 
<http://www.ethiopiantreasures.co.uk/pages/derg.htm> took power in Addis 
Ababa, Israel has been intimately involved with the Ethiopian military, 
providing training, weapons, advanced aircraft, and direct subsidies, 
which the government used to battle regional insurgents. The main target 
was the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean_People%27s_Liberation_Front>), 
which fought a bitter 30-year war 
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/eritrea.htm> of 
independence against the Ethiopians. Israel’s main interest in this, 
aside from the arms sales, was to secure control over Eritrea’s 
strategically important Red Sea shoreline. In 1991, Eritrea finally won 
its independence, yet there was but a short breather before the two 
sides started up again 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean%E2%80%93Ethiopian_War>. The 
Israeli arms pipeline has fueled the conflict, along with generous US 
aid to the late Ethiopian tyrant Meles Zenawi, so beloved 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/susan-rice-and-africas-despots.html?_r=0> 
by Susan Rice.

There are 20,000 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2010/05/20105183327716334.html> of these 
"infiltrators," as the anti-African demagogues call them, and that they 
have showed up on Israel’s doorstep is not just karmic, is it also 
geographic: Israel is the closest country with any promise of providing 
them with work, and they are often invited in by Israeli employers, who 
cannot find enough people to do menial jobs. Israel’s growing 
ultra-nationalist movement finds in them a convenient target, and a 
politically promising issue. Violence against the refugees is on the 
upswing: last year, 20-year-old Haim Mula 
<http://972mag.com/suspect-in-arson-of-asylum-seeker-homes-reaches-plea-deal-with-no-jail-time/62561/haim/> 
was arrested 
<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vLnfk35w1iYJ:www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx%3Fid%3D267926+firebomb+african+migrants+suspect&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us> 
for firebombing an orphanage for very young African children: he got off 
practically scot-free with a three-month plea bargained sentence.

Far from being considered a criminal and a pariah, young Haim might well 
run for the Knesset – because he has the Israeli people with him, 
particularly the young people who are flocking 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/05/binyamin-netanyahu-rightwing-poll> 
to the banner of "Jewish Home."

This is what is so disturbing about recent events in Israel, where 
outright anti-Arab racism has long been tolerated 
<http://antonyloewenstein.com/2012/11/14/discrimination-against-arabs-part-of-israels-dna/> 
and even encouraged 
<http://mazinx.wordpress.com/discrimination-against-palestinian-arab-children-in-israels-schools/> 
by the government and religious authorities. Instead of denouncing and 
isolating the anti-black hate-mongers, Israel’s elites are defending and 
succoring them. A recent declaration 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/african-refugees-not-just-israel-s-problem-say-scholars.premium-1.490080> 
initiated by Professor Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman 
Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., and Professor 
Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, calls for "a world 
solution for a world problem."

In other words: it’s not /our/ problem. Medoff says other countries 
"have more room, and they have more resources. Israel has been taking a 
beating in the international press for how it treats the refugees, but 
never has there been any suggestion in these reports that maybe other 
countries should be lending a hand."

Gee, that’s funny, but the US has never asked for help from other 
countries in dealing with the millions of political and economic 
refugees who have sought asylum and work here. Neither have the small 
European countries which today find themselves playing host to numerous 
migrants from less fortunate areas of the world. Perhaps because to do 
so would be in somewhat dubious taste – but apparently such 
considerations don’t come into play where Israel’s professional 
apologists are concerned. And naturally we do not hear one word out of 
their mouths about the orgy of hate the African presence in Israel has 
aroused – not only do they not condemn it, they don’t even mention it.

To top it off, Messrs Medoff and Bauer have named their initiative, 
which takes the form of a petition to the world’s governments, "The 
Evian Declaration," timing it to "coincide with the 75th anniversary of 
the Evian conference, when nations around the world turned their back on 
Europe’s Jewish refugees," as /Ha’aretz /put it 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/african-refugees-not-just-israel-s-problem-say-scholars.premium-1.490080>.

The Evian Conference <http://www.historycentral.com/20th/Part2.html> was 
called in the summer of 1938, as Hitler’s assault on the Jews took on 
horrific dimensions and they tried desperately to flee. While the 
conference did little to provide these refugees with realistic options, 
US and British immigration quotas were somewhat relaxed, with some 
others following suit (the Dominican Republic offered 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference> to take 100,000, 
but only 800 actually went). However, the refugee problem was on such a 
large scale that this hardly made a dent.

For Medoff and Bauer to invoke the Evian episode in this context simply 
underscores the tone-deafness of Israel’s apologists: by effectively 
saying it is "everyone’s problem" – and no one’s – they are merely 
replicating the tragedy of that affair.

Israel was itself conceived as a home for the homeless, a refuge for 
those who had been refugees in their own lands 
<http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15895.html> 
and driven into exile 
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005459> by war and 
the world’s animus. How they can now turn around and say "Not our 
problem" defies explanation. That they dare to say it out loud is proof 
– if more were needed – that Israeli society has gone more than a little 
crazy.

After all, these two distinguished professors are /liberals /– they 
aren’t joining the neo-Kahanists in the streets, firebombing orphanages 
and calling for "N—–s Out!" They are merely trying to cover for them, to 
make the world avert its eyes as hate explodes like a ripe boil on the 
Israeli body politic, exuding its poisons into the organs the Jewish state.

It’s /the world’s/ problem? No, it isn’t. The hate that is erupting in 
the Jewish state is a Jewish problem, one that has yet to be 
acknowledged, let alone confronted, by Jewish leaders worldwide. I have 
not heard a single word about this from the so-called "Anti-Defamation 
League <http://www.adl.org/press-center.asp>," and its usually 
vociferous chief honcho, Abe Foxman 
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=Abe+Foxman+Israel+refugees>, 
who seems to have an opinion about anything and everything, but is 
strangely silent on the defamation of Africans in Israel. As blacks in 
Israel find themselves beset by racist mobs, where is the American 
Jewish Committee, and all the other organizations that were important 
allies of the early black civil rights movement in this country – where 
are they now that the Bull Connors and the George Wallaces are Israeli?

They’re too busy 
<http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=hagel+israel> 
trying to scuttle the nomination of Chuck Hagel to head up the 
Department of Defense to bother with speaking to the deepest values of 
the Jewish people and speaking out against a monstrous injustice. 
They’re too busy retailing the most contemptible smears 
<https://twitter.com/Ali_Gharib/status/288065845840732160> against a 
patriotic American, who refuses to kowtow to a powerful lobby, to even 
acknowledge that crimes are being committed in their name and with our 
tax dollars. Even as I write this, detention camps – /camps 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/17/detention-centre-israel-migration>/! 
– are being built with US "foreign aid" taxpayer dollars to house the 
"infiltrators" so they can be shipped back to Africa, often to a certain 
death.

It sickens me to write this. To gaze on an hypocrisy so immense, so 
brazen, so antithetical to everything the Jewish people have stood for 
historically, and to say /nothing/ – the enormity of this kind of 
betrayal is simply breathtaking.

I have just one thing to say to Abe Foxman, and all the self-appointed 
Jewish "leaders" who arrogate to themselves the prerogative of vetting 
US government officials – when are you going to start vetting Israeli 
government officials as they whip up racist hysteria and carry out an 
anti-African pogrom?

I can answer this question for myself, because the answer is: /never/. 
It isn’t considered kosher to air the Jewish state’s dirty laundry in 
public. There is a big problem with this strategy, however: sooner or 
later the stench gets so bad that one can’t help but smell it.

Of course the precedent for all this is the virulent anti-Arab racism 
now pervasive in Israeli society, as a recent survey 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/israeli-poll-majority-apartheid-policies> 
showed. To take just one rather vivid example: the Beitar football team 
has become a rallying point for swarming ultra-nationalist thugs, who 
beat up Israeli Arabs and engage in regular provocations against anyone 
deemed "alien" to the Jewish character of the state. In March of last 
year hundreds of them went on a rampage 
<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hundreds-of-beitar-jerusalem-fans-beat-up-arab-workers-in-mall-no-arrests-1.420270> 
at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, beating Arab men, women, and children, 
and destroying Arab stores. Not a single arrest was made, nor was 
anybody charged. It’s open season on non-Jews in Israel, and no one 
should be surprised that blacks are now the target.

Once the American people wake up to what is going on, the much-touted 
support for Israel claimed by its partisans in this country will 
evaporate. That’s one reason why these same Jewish mis-"leaders" who are 
staying silent about the anti-African campaign are now voicing their 
"concern 
<http://forward.com/articles/168821/al-jazeera-deal-sparks-concern-for-jews/>" 
that Al Jazeera, the Arab-based television network, will take over 
<http://www.npr.org/2013/01/06/168724502/al-jazeera-expands-its-american-purview-with-current-tv> 
the niche once occupied by Al Gore’s "Current TV." The Arab network has 
been regularly 
<http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site:www.aljazeera.com+israel+refugees> 
exposing the rising tide of anti-African hate now at the epicenter of 
Israeli politics, as well as more familiar 
<http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site:www.aljazeera.com+2012+attack+gaza> 
depredations aimed at the Palestinians. The last thing the Israel lobby 
wants is footage of the Israeli equivalent of the KKK on American 
national television.

How will members of the congressional Black Caucus justify voting for 
billions in aid to Israel in the face of live news reports of howling 
Israeli mobs screaming hatred for Africans? Can the country that elected 
Barack Obama continue to have a "special relationship" with a nation 
that has turned into the Middle East equivalent of Klan Kountry? I think 
not.

The fatal blow to the Jewish state, however, will be the rupturing 
<http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/will-2013-be-the-year-american-jews-secede-from-israel.premium-1.491286> 
of its relationship with American Jewry, which, in spite of the 
vociferous dissent of some noisome neoconservatives, has a long 
tradition of liberalism. This noble legacy of tolerance and support for 
the underdog is now coming into open conflict with the newer tradition 
of unconditional support to the Israeli government of the moment – and, 
by their silence, the leaders of major Jewish organizations hope the 
problem will be swept under the rug, and somehow go away.

This is a very big mistake. Israeli society is going over a cliff, and 
the Jewish state’s political class is hastening rather than impeding the 
slide into a moral abyss. There is no way to cover up this crisis, 
because it has very visible political – and human – consequences. We are 
seeing this being played out in the Israeli election campaign, where the 
crazies are gaining momentum 
<http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/02/poll-likud-beiteinu-slips-and-jewish-home-surges-in-israel-vote/> 
and sanity is in very short supply.

How many young American and European Jews will want to make /aliyah/ 
<http://www.gov.il/FirstGov/TopNavEng/EngSituations/ESNewImmigrantsGuide/>/ 
/to a country where blacks are demonized as disease-ridden criminals and 
automatically deported? How many Jews will want to express their 
solidarity with a Jewish state where racism is acceptable and the 
bullied have turned into the bullies? My guess: not many.

**
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Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: *http://original.antiwar.com*

URL to article: 
*http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/01/06/israels-anti-black-pogrom/*

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