|
 Not in my Name By Maya Paley | May 23, 2012 (Jewish Journal) Yesterday, someone shared a picture of an Israeli woman wearing a shirt that read “Death to the Sudanese” on my Facebook wall. The woman was a Tel Aviv resident taking part in a protest on Tuesday night to encourage the Israeli government to deport African asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea. Asylum seekers were violently attacked and their car and grocery store windows were shattered. According to Haaretz newspaper, the protest was organized by Knesset member Michael Ben Ari, and Miri Regev, another Knesset member, called the Sudanese “a cancer in our body.”The Jerusalem Post recently reported on the Molotov cocktails thrown into a Nigerian woman’s open day care and an Eritrean family’s private apartment in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood. Violence against the African asylum seekers in Israel has been exponentially rising. These incidents reminded me of all the violence and hatred ensuing in Israeli society toward African asylum seekers. This is not the first case of violence against African asylum seekers. There have been many hate crimes perpetrated against Eritrean, Sudanese and other asylum seekers of African descent for the past few years. Whether it’s the government, the media or Israeli society influencing or perpetrating these abominable acts, this racial violence and prejudice must be stopped. |
