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<p id="BlogTitle"><strong></strong><big><big><b>Israel’s Anti-Black
Pogrom</b></big></big></p>
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<p id="BlogDate">Posted By <u>Justin Raimondo</u> On January 6, 2013 @
10:00 pm In <u>Uncategorized</u> | <u><a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/01/06/israels-anti-black-pogrom/print/#comments_controls">57
Comments</a></u></p>
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<p>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. </p>
<p>Mississippi in the Sixties? A neo-Nazi rally? A Klan conclave? </p>
<p>No, it’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGJVX6jYjI0">a
recent scene</a> in southern Tel Aviv, Israel, where Likud member of
the Knesset <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/miri-regev-sudan_n_1543079.html">Miri
Regev</a> – 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 <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOGSBHqRDuw">look at the ugliness</a>
of these people – listen to them screaming "White Power"! And <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2AmJlFGnA">here are the Jewish
Hitlers</a>, 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
<i>the</i> major issue in Israel’s election campaign.</p>
<p>Rising ultra-nationalist star <a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/12/27/naftali-bennett-the-david-duke-of-israel/">Naftali
Bennett</a>, 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 <a
href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-05-21-israel-on-african-immigrants">pledged</a>
to get rid of the Africans in short order, and ordered the construction
of a "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGXL4xHy6M4">security
fence</a>" bordering the Sinai, where most of the refugees turn up
seeking asylum from Africa’s wars. </p>
<p>They come from Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, for <a
href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article45042">the most part</a>,
victims of the constant conflict that has made East Africa a bloody
battlefield for many years. As Israel has made a <a
href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2009/09/14/Israel-eyes-big-arms-sales-in-Africa/UPI-46891252956171/">concerted
effort</a> 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. </p>
<p>Israel has a longstanding military connection to Ethiopia: ever
since the 1970s, when the genocidal <a
href="http://www.ethiopiantreasures.co.uk/pages/derg.htm">Derg</a>
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 (<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean_People%27s_Liberation_Front">EPLF</a>),
which fought a bitter <a
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/eritrea.htm">30-year
war</a> 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 <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean%E2%80%93Ethiopian_War">started
up again</a>. The Israeli arms pipeline has fueled the conflict, along
with generous US aid to the late Ethiopian tyrant Meles Zenawi, so <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/susan-rice-and-africas-despots.html?_r=0">beloved</a>
by Susan Rice.</p>
<p>There are <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2010/05/20105183327716334.html">20,000</a>
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 <a
href="http://972mag.com/suspect-in-arson-of-asylum-seeker-homes-reaches-plea-deal-with-no-jail-time/62561/haim/">Haim
Mula</a> was <a
href="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">arrested</a>
for firebombing an orphanage for very young African children: he got
off practically scot-free with a three-month plea bargained sentence.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/05/binyamin-netanyahu-rightwing-poll">flocking</a>
to the banner of "Jewish Home." </p>
<p>This is what is so disturbing about recent events in Israel, where
outright anti-Arab racism has long been <a
href="http://antonyloewenstein.com/2012/11/14/discrimination-against-arabs-part-of-israels-dna/">tolerated</a>
and even <a
href="http://mazinx.wordpress.com/discrimination-against-palestinian-arab-children-in-israels-schools/">encouraged</a>
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 <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/african-refugees-not-just-israel-s-problem-say-scholars.premium-1.490080">recent
declaration</a> 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."</p>
<p>In other words: it’s not <i>our</i> problem. Medoff says other
countries<font size="1"> </font>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Ha’aretz </i><a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/african-refugees-not-just-israel-s-problem-say-scholars.premium-1.490080">put
it</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.historycentral.com/20th/Part2.html">Evian
Conference</a> 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 <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference">offered</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Israel was itself conceived as a home for the homeless, a refuge for
those who had been <a
href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15895.html">refugees
in their own lands</a> and <a
href="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005459">driven
into exile</a> 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.</p>
<p>After all, these two distinguished professors are <i>liberals </i>–
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. </p>
<p>It’s <i>the world’s</i> 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 "<a
href="http://www.adl.org/press-center.asp">Anti-Defamation League</a>,"
and its usually vociferous chief honcho, <a
href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=Abe+Foxman+Israel+refugees">Abe
Foxman</a>, 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?</p>
<p>They’re too <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=hagel+israel">busy</a>
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 <a
href="https://twitter.com/Ali_Gharib/status/288065845840732160">contemptible
smears</a> 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 – <i><a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/17/detention-centre-israel-migration">camps</a></i>!
– 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. </p>
<p>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 <i>nothing</i> – the enormity of this kind of
betrayal is simply breathtaking. </p>
<p>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? </p>
<p>I can answer this question for myself, because the answer is: <i>never</i>.
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.</p>
<p>Of course the precedent for all this is the virulent anti-Arab
racism now pervasive in Israeli society, as a <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/israeli-poll-majority-apartheid-policies">recent
survey</a> 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
href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hundreds-of-beitar-jerusalem-fans-beat-up-arab-workers-in-mall-no-arrests-1.420270">a
rampage</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 "<a
href="http://forward.com/articles/168821/al-jazeera-deal-sparks-concern-for-jews/">concern</a>"
that Al Jazeera, the Arab-based television network, will <a
href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/06/168724502/al-jazeera-expands-its-american-purview-with-current-tv">take
over</a> the niche once occupied by Al Gore’s "Current TV." The Arab
network has been <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site:www.aljazeera.com+israel+refugees">regularly</a>
exposing the rising tide of anti-African hate now at the epicenter of
Israeli politics, as well as <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site:www.aljazeera.com+2012+attack+gaza">more
familiar</a> 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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>The fatal blow to the Jewish state, however, will be the <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/will-2013-be-the-year-american-jews-secede-from-israel.premium-1.491286">rupturing</a>
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. </p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/02/poll-likud-beiteinu-slips-and-jewish-home-surges-in-israel-vote/">gaining
momentum</a> and sanity is in very short supply. </p>
<p>How many young American and European Jews will want to <a
href="http://www.gov.il/FirstGov/TopNavEng/EngSituations/ESNewImmigrantsGuide/">make
<i>aliyah</i></a><i> </i>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. </p>
<b></b><br>
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<p>Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: <strong dir="ltr"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://original.antiwar.com">http://original.antiwar.com</a></strong></p>
<p>URL to article: <strong dir="ltr"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/01/06/israels-anti-black-pogrom/">http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/01/06/israels-anti-black-pogrom/</a></strong></p>
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