This is Avigdor Lieberman:

Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beitenu party (photo: Yotam Ronen / activestills.org)

This is your Tikva on Avigdor Lieberman:

And these are some funny renditions of that evening from 2011, conveniently being posted ahead of the elections.

Let’s begin with the never-ending, pre-symphony tuning version:

And then move on to the inspiring jazz rendition:

And a great cover to the already famous jazz rendition:

And top it off with some young, hip bass thumping:

I was reminded of the above when reviewing Oren Ziv’s images of the mother and daughter being arrested at a kindergarten in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Naturally, no human can deny the human emotions as evident in the photos. Some will say that the Left is exploiting such images to make those who are for deportation feel and look bad. The Left will use these photos as evidence that people who have done nothing illegal are being treated as criminals.

Hence, you need the facts.

Entering a country without legal documentation is not a crime if you have legitimate reasons for doing so. In most cases, those reasons are based on the notion of having escaped persecution.

African refugees in Levinsky Park (Activestills)

Few would argue that the Syrians who have crossed into Turkey are not refugees, except, ironically, the Turkish government (which labels the camps which house them as “recovery centers” rather than “refugee camps”). Yet many would argue that the Africans currently in Israel, and those arriving, are not legitimate refugees. They are, their argument goes, jobseekers.

Whether it is the former or the latter, there is only one way to find out: processing those that are in Israel.

The Israeli government has refused to do so, fearing that the majority of those from Sudan and Eritrea, who make up the majority of the asylum-seeking Africans in Israel, are, according to international law, legitimate refugees. If they are confirmed as such, Israel would be required to provide them with temporary housing (a refugee camp being an acceptable standard), freedom of movement, and the ability to work. Ironically, the guidelines are in place thanks to Israel of the 1950s.

By not processing them, the Israeli government of 2012 – and thus the Israeli people – get to absolve themselves of any responsibility. The result is that these people live in a state of limbo, exploited by a right-of-center bloc seeking reelection based on, among others, instilling fear in the minds of the general public.

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who:

…owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.

(Gender and sexual orientation are not explicitly included within the initial UNHCR definition, and their absence has been the source of some controversy. However, for many countries – not including Israel – gender and sexual orientation-based persecution fall under the “membership of a particular social group” ground.)

The UN’s Refugee Agency was initially created in response to the displacement in Europe after World War II. The idea was to ensure that there would never be a repeat of the atrocities of the 1940s when an entire people (legitimate refugees) were turned away by countries that found it domestically inconvenient to accept them.

(As a side note, the UN’s agency for dealing with Palestinians, and thus Palestinian refugees, was set up in 1949, before UNHCR. It is for this reason, among others, that Palestinian refugees maintain a different status than UNHCR refugees. That agency, UNHCR, does not for the most part deal with the protection of Palestinians. UNRWA, however, does call for the right of return of refugees to their homes. Danny Ayalon, the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, has repeatedly called for UNRWA to be dismantled and for Palestinians to fall under UNHCR’s classification, which, ironically, could be worse from Israel’s perspective.)

UNHCR’s mandate requires member countries to process individuals claiming refugee status. It also requires those who are found to be legitimate refugees through such processing to be granted specific rights, as part of a short-term solution. The agency then sometimes helps resettle to third-party countries those who are given such status.

Asylum seeker child, Sept 5, 2012 (photo: Haggai Matar)

Emotions aside, this is the legal framework for dealing with the Africans coming into Israel.

The other half, if Israel wishes, is to strengthen border defenses to ensure less individuals are able to enter the country without documentation. There is a moral argument to be made, but one that Israel, as a sovereign country, has the right to make. But the issue of deciding how to keep people out has nothing to do with the legal obligations of the country to those who are already here.

Those things should not be mixed by one group of people who are too eager to dismiss another group of people. Among them could be, and likely are, people who will die if sent home. That’s not an emotional statement.  That’s a fact.

Click here for more coverage on seeking asylum in Israel

A firecracker was hurled into an Eritrean bar in south Tel Aviv late Saturday night, the latest incident in mounting violence against the African asylum seeker community in Israel.

On Eritrean customer was injured in Saturday night’s incident. The bar, located in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv, has been the target of several attacks in recent months, most notoriously on May 23, when a demonstration against the growing African population in Israel turned violent. The bar was one of several refugee-owned properties that were damaged, its windows smashed and contents looted. Read more on that night’s events here.

Amin, the owner of an Eritrean bar in south Tel Aviv, speaks to police on Saturday night (photo: Activestills)

Sigal Rozen, the public policy coordinator of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, recounted on her Facebook wall what she told the police in the aftermath of Saturday night’s attack:

I tried to explain to the policeman that Aminey suffers abuses and physical damages to his pub on a daily basis since the demonstration… the policeman answered: “It is not only him, it is all the Eritreans around here”… Aminey begs us to get him out of Israel, truly believing that it is only a matter of time before he will be murdered.

Amin, an owner of an Eritrean bar in south Tel Aviv, points to the marks left by a stun grenade thrown into his bar (photo: Activestills)

Related:
Authorities round up South Sudanese ahead of mass deportation
Eritrean apartment set on fire in Jerusalem; four injured
Kadima MK: Send leftists to camps; MKs attack African refugees
Mob against migrants: How far can the violence go?

Eritrean refugees react less then a minute after their shop was attacked by a mob following protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012.

For a moment, at around 11 p.m., it seemed that things were really getting out of control: Each report from the Hatikva neighborhood in south Tel Aviv was worse than previous ones: A couple of journalists – Haggai Matar from +972 and a reporter from Haaretz – were attacked and rescued by police; a mob of roughly 100 people tried to storm the Central Bus Station, considered a meeting place for African asylum seekers; a car was stormed by protesters, its windows smashed; at least two shops were looted; a woman holding a baby was struck in the head with a bottle, the baby to fell and both were rushed to a hospital; a man from Eritrea was chased by dozens of rioters and rescued by police.

Here is a short video of the attack on a car carrying African refugees:

After midnight, things calmed down a bit, and the night ended with several injured and 17 people arrested. It could have been much worse, if activists hadn’t warned African families to stay out of the streets, fearing violence. In daycares, notices like the one below were posted, urging parents to take their kids home early. If anything positive that can be said about last night, it’s the fact that no one was killed.

Note advising African asylum seekers to avoid the streets on May 23, 2012 (photo: Rotem Ilan)

According to most estimates, there are between 50,000 and 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel, most of them from Sudan and Eritrea. There are around 100,000 illegal aliens in Israel with expired tourist and work permits, but this has not kept populist sentiment against the African refugees from gaining momentum in the last few weeks.

In recent years, the refugees – who crossed Israel’s southern borders, mostly from war-torn Sudan and dictatorial Eritrea – settled in the poorest neighborhoods of Jewish Israel – in south Tel Aviv, Eilat, and Ashdod. The residents of the southern town of Arad have elected a new mayor from Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu party, after she ran a campaign solely based around the promise to remove the aliens from town.

In south Tel Aviv, refugees – like the work immigrants who preceded them – moved into the area of the Central Bus Station (Shapira neighborhood), a poor area that was slowly going through early stages of gentrification. Later, Africans also settled in neighboring Hatikva, east of Shapira. Last night, the mob was stopped on the bridge over the Ayalon highway, which links the two neighborhoods.

The Jewish population in this area is very poor, and all of those neighborhoods have been neglected for years by the municipality and Israeli governments. The area around the bus station in particular has long been known as a center for drug trafficking, abuse and prostitution. In Kfar Shalem (near Hatikva), families of Sephardic Jews were evacuated from their homes recently to make way for new construction projects. The “Argazim” (boxes, in Hebrew) area nearby is one of the only places in Israel where Jews live in shacks and improvised homes, also under constant threat of evacuation. This socioeconomic foundation to the refugee problem is far more important than the statistics regarding their relatively small numbers or the actual crime rate.

Rioters smashing the window of an Ethiopian bar during a riot in Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)

Regarding crime, it’s important to note that refugees are not allowed to work in Israel. Hundreds of refugees, most of them men, are homeless, and can be seen roaming the streets at nights, and not only in the south. On several occasions when I was out late at night in the last couple of months I was approached by Africans asking for food, money or cigarettes. There is no denying that desperation among the refugees is on the rise, and so are the reports in the media on violent crimes committed by them. The emphasis is on “reports,” because numbers from the last few months are unavailable, and according to previous statistics, the crime rate among asylum seekers was much lower than among the Jewish population.

I should also say that my personal feeling is that the media hype regarding the situation in south Tel Aviv was much stronger than what I have actually felt there. I don’t live in Shapira, but both my brother and sister do, and I spend quite a bit of time there. I never felt threatened and I thought that the headlines in the Israeli media – both Haaretz and Maariv wrote last week that the atmosphere in the area is “on the verge of explosion” – were an exaggeration. The media certainly played its part in promoting xenophobia and fear of the Africans (the common term in Israel is not “asylum seekers” or refugees, but rather “infiltrators,” the same term used to describe Palestinians who tried to return their lands and homes in the 1950s, and were regarded by the government as potential terrorists).

MK Michael Ben-Ari giving a speech at a protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)

More than the media, politicians are to blame for last night. According to most reports, the protest was initially very quiet, and local residents who spoke at the event weren’t as harsh on the Africans as the Knesset members – none of them live in south Tel Aviv, by the way – who took the stage right after them.

MK Miri Regev from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party called the Africans “a cancer.” MK Danny Danon (Likud) said that they had established an enemy state, with Tel Aviv as its capital. MK Ben-Ari (Ichud Leumi, a national-religious party) called for every one of them to be imprisoned and deported. Ben-Ari used to be a member of Meir Kahane’s organization, which was banned in Israel and placed on the U.S.  State Department’s terror list. He is now serving in the Israeli parliament. There was even a representative of the so-called moderate Kadima party – MK Ronit Tirosh – who also said that all of the African infiltrators need to be deported.

All of those MKs know all too well that deporting the refugees is forbidden according to international commitments Israel has taken upon itself. Coalition members speak out against their own policy: after all, the government could deport the refugees and pay the diplomatic price for it. But it effectively chooses to leave them here while inciting the public against them.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who wasn’t present at the protest himself, said that if he were authorized to use “the right measures, not one African infiltrator would be here within a year.” The Shas leader didn’t say what measures he was referring to.  And above all, there is the deafening silence of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who spoke against the demographic danger posed by the “infiltrators,” but didn’t say a word about last night’s violence.

Israel has seen race riots before: In 1992, following the murder of a teenage girl by a Palestinian, local Israeli Jews stormed construction sites in Bat Yam, beating up Arab workers there. They were later joined by dozens of hooligans who wanted to help avenge the spilled Jewish blood. The police ended up completely blocking the city and the riots continued for five days. Since 2000, mobs have attacked Palestinians at least twice in the mixed cities of Nazareth Ilit and Akko, also cities with relatively poor Jewish populations. Both the mayors of Nazereth Ilit and of Akko were known for their violent rhetoric against Palestinians.

Untimely, this is what’s troubling the most about the current riot: the incitement is coming from the mainstream. Israel will soon enter a very long elections season – primaries will be held in the Likud and other parties within a year or so, and it seemed that many backbenchers have found in the refugees issue a populist theme that can promote their brand. Interior Minister Yishai, who has been losing support to Likud in all recent polls, was probably happy too last night, when he saw the signs with his name carried by the protesters in Hatikva, and heard the chants against Netanyahu (as I write this, Knesset Speaker Rivlin and Police Minister Aharonovitz ask MKs to show “restraint.” Netanyahu is still silent UPDATE: PM Netanyahu had since stated that “he feels the pain of the people of south Tel Aviv [...] but there is no room for the actions and statements we have seen yesterday”).

It’s less the size of the flames that have me worried today, than the identity of those who are supposed to put them out.

The blood of an African which was attacked during a riot in Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)

Read also:
Africans attacked in Tel Aviv protest; MKs: ‘infiltrators’ are cancer
How I survived a Tel Aviv mob attack
Using rape to justify racism

A crowd starting a fire on the main road of Hatikva (Activestills)

It started out as a fairly quiet demonstration – or demonstrations, to be precise. One small demonstration took place in Shapira, my neighborhood, where several weeks ago an Israeli young man threw Molotov cocktails into asylum seekers’ homes. The dominant discourse here was, as is typical of the neighborhood, more moderate, and focused on blaming the government (and not the asylum seekers) for local hardships in south Tel Aviv.

On my way to the central right-wing demonstration in Hatikva neighborhood, a five minute bike ride to the east, I ran into several dozen demonstrators walking in the opposite direction. It turns out that these were J14 activists from all over the city, who wanted to make a point of the importance of finding solutions to benefit both veteran Israeli communities, struggling to make a living and fearing a rise in crime, and the masses of African asylum seekers who have no jobs and nowhere to go but these parts of the city. They felt unwelcome at the central demonstration and decided to split and form this march.

The central demonstration was organized mostly by Likud activists, which was somewhat strange to begin with, as the protest was officially aimed at the Likud led government. It started out quite peacefully, and a group of us journalists and photographers was standing on the side, somewhat bored and discussing plans for the weekend. On the stage, local residents told stories of attacks they experienced by African asylum seekers, while MKs from the Likud and parties further to the right were placing the blame for all the neighborhoods’ hardships on the asylum seekers and “the left.” The crowd was growing uneasy, but none of us thought that this would turn into anything big.

Clashes with police in Hatikva. 17 people were arrested (Activestills)

And then it happened

It all started with one woman who came at me out of nowhere, and started screaming: “You throw stones at soldiers! Shame on you! Get the hell out of here!” I tried to say that I have never thrown stones at anybody in my life, but she was not exactly in the mood for dialogue. “You lie! I see you every week on television throwing stones at soldiers and calling them Nazis!”

From this point on everything happened extremely fast. The one woman turned into two, then a group of ten people, which kept on growing. I tried to explain that this was a misunderstanding, that I never attacked any soldier, that I am a resident of Shapira and a journalist covering the protest. But I was talking to myself. Nobody was listening.

Only four seconds or so must have passed before similar charges were leveled at my colleague, Ilan Lior of Ha’aretz, who was standing next to me. “You too throw stones at soldiers! I drive a bus and every week I see you attacking checkpoints!”  someone yelled. A hand from the crowd grabbed Ilan’s notepad and threw it in the air. Ilan was trying to say that he was never in the occupied territories and that it’s all a misunderstanding, but he too was talking to himself. Nobody was listening.

At this point, about six Border Police officers showed up and tried to stand between the growing mob and the two of us. I hoped this would help, but soon enough an older woman broke through and leaped towards me, beating my chest, back and hands. I started retreating, knowing that I wouldn’t stand a fighting chance against the masses if I tried to stop her. I lost sight of Ilan. He was sucked into the crowd. I had an open road behind me, I could escape. I feared for Ilan. I feared for myself.

I knew no one would come to my aid. Faced with the angry mob and seeing more people coming from behind me and looking for action – I chose flight. A speaker on the central stage was saying how Daphni Leef and her J14 friends were actually the cause of all “our” problems. I was standing near a police car, wondering how I would get my bike back from the demonstration area, when I heard the loudspeakers announcing that “Haggai Matar is here, and he and his mother are traitors who should be kicked out of the country.” This was really time to split and go home.

The mob charging the bridge (Activestills)

And then the mob began to charge forward

I was walking back towards my part of town when I heard a massive cry, looked back, and was horrified to see the mass – about 1,000 people strong – racing forward in my direction, screaming “Sudanese to Sudan!” Later, I would find out that Ilan managed to escape the crowd around him, that 20 people started to chase him, and that the 20 soon turned into this horde I was seeing. Ilan was grabbed by policemen who possibly saved his life when they tossed him into a police car and got out of there.

I kept on running and reached the Hagana Bridge, separating the greater part of Tel Aviv from its eastern neighborhoods. It is also the bridge separating Hatikva from Shapira, Neve Sha’anan and LevinskyPark, where dozens and hundreds of asylum seekers sleep at nights. Right now this bridge was – like in old times – the last line of defense between the mob and the area most densely populated by foreigners.

Fortunately, the police realized this, and was successful in stopping the human flow on the bridge. Unfortunately, this was not the end. A car packed with Africans was caught in the crowd, its windows shattered, its riders threatened and saved by police. Seeing this from afar I decided it was time to go home, but reports kept flowing in: the mob turned back into Hatikva and attacked asylum seekers’ businesses and homes, looted at least one store, and attacked random black people on the streets. Seventeen were arrested, but the attacks went on for hours. An Activestills photographer present on the scene later told me that the pictures he took tell only a small portion of the story. He was threatened not to take pictures of looters, and saw so many stones thrown at houses and people beaten (mostly quite lightly) on the streets – that he couldn’t possibly take pictures of it all.

Morning is now up, broken windows of shops and houses need mending, and the peace is somewhat restored. At the end of the day, we must remember that most of the people in our southern neighborhoods largely live together in peace. Many try to bridge gaps and find solutions. Many on both sides know that their enemy is not the asylum seekers or the local Israeli population but the government – which is both creating this impossibly flammable situation and throwing burning matches into it. But this is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning.

African woman and her child in Hatikva after the riot (Activestills)

Read also:
How mainstream Israeli politicians sparked the Tel Aviv race riot
Africans attacked in Tel Aviv protest; MKs: ‘infiltrators’ are cancer
African kids in Tel Aviv: They’ll do to us what they did to Jews in Germany
Using rape to justify racism

An African man who was attacked following a rightwing rally in Tel Aviv, May 23, 2012 (photo: Oren Ziv/activestills)

More than 1,000 Israelis protested this evening (Wednesday) against the African refugees and asylum seekers who have settled in South Tel Aviv in recent years. According to eyewitnesses’ reports, the crowd grew angry and ultimately violent, following speeches from Knesset members, including members of the government coalition.

It was one of the most violent protests Tel Aviv has known in recent years. Confrontations were continuing between police and Jewish citizens at around 10:30 p.m. local time.

Dozens of protesters tried to move from the Hatikva neighborhood, where the rally was held, towards Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, where most African asylum seekers and migrants live. They were stopped by police. Protesters attacked a car passing by carrying African passengers, smashing its windows. Shops associated with the African community were vandalized. [UPDATE: As of midnight, activists in Hatikva are still reporting looting and occasional attacks on immigrants.]

In light of increasing violence and harassment in recent days, activists walked refugee children in Tel Aviv home from school on Wednesday in order to prevent them from potential attacks.

According to Maariv’s website, the mob chased a man from Eritrea, who took shelter in a storefront and was rescued by police. At least two journalists were attacked. One fled the area and the other, whose notepad was snatched by protesters, was sheltered by the cops.

Earlier, Knesset members spoke at the event. Some blamed government inaction for the “infiltration problem,” while others heaped accusations on human rights organizations helping the refugees. Knesset Member Miri Regev called the refugees “a cancer in our body.” Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that “leftists” are preventing the state from deporting the refugees back to Africa. Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), who also spoke at the event, wrote in a Facebook status tonight that “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.”

According to one of the eyewitnesses, the most inflammatory speaker was MK Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of Meir Kahane’s racist Kach party, who was a resident of south Tel Aviv himself before moving to a settlement. “The police commissioner wants to give the African jobs,” said Ben-Ari, referring to a statement by Chief of Police Yochanan Danino, who recently urged the government to allow the refugees to work in Israel, in order to prevent the crime rate from rising. “This will bring another 50,000 people here,” said Ben Ari.

Asylum seekers in Israel are given temporary residence permits but are not permitted to work in Israel. The government has stated before the High Court that will not enforce the ban on employment, but calls are regularly heard from the right to crack down on employers to prevent the refugees from working.

A shop considered a meeting place for African refugees, vandalized following a Tel Aviv rally (photo: Oren Ziv/activestills.org)

Several local residents also spoke at the rally. Most of them mentioned their fears of a “rising crime rate.” “We are afraid to walk the streets at nights,” said one of the speakers. “The infiltrators are taking over our neighborhood and over our jobs,” said another speaker.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there are presently some 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. Most entered the country by foot through its southern border. While they are termed “infiltrators” by the government, some 85 percent are from Eritrea and Sudan, to which Israel has agreed until now not to return them in light of the situations in those countries. They fall under a form of group protection from deportation, but their individual refugee claims are not processed.

A few recent crimes against Israelis that were linked to the African community have recently received considerable attention in the local media. They led to a wave of protest and declarations by politicians against the refugees and asylum seekers. MK Ofir Akunis, a member of Likud and a Netanyahu proxy, is set to promote a Knesset bill which will criminalize Israelis who employ, drive or give shelter to refugees.

UPDATE: The Israel Police tweeted that in the last week, 11 suspects, most of them minors, were arrested for attacking African refugees in Tel Aviv on several occasions. They used clubs and pepper spray against their victims.

——————————-
Haggai Matar contributed to this report.

Related:
Myths, facts and suggestions: Asylum seekers in Israel
African kids in Tel Aviv: They’ll do to us what they did to Jews in Germany
The tragedy and threat of African refugees in Israel
Using rape to justify racism
Police distort crime data, inciting violence against refugees

Two Molotov cocktails were hurled at the home of Nigerian immigrants in the HaTikva neighborhood in South Tel Aviv on Saturday night, according to Maariv (Hebrew). The firebombs did not penetrate the structure, which is located near the HaTikva market. No injuries were reported and no arrests have been made in connection with the incident.

The 20-year-old Israeli who was arrested in connection with last week’s attacks on the African community is expected to appear in court today. Police believe that the attacks were racially motivated and that the suspect intended to drive Africans from the neighborhood; the suspect has been arrested in the past for throwing eggs at a Sudanese refugee.

The past several years have seen Jewish Israelis in impoverished south Tel Aviv neighborhoods growing increasingly angry about the presence of foreigners. Locals have held a number of protests calling for the deportation of Africans; migrants and their children have been targeted in a number of violent attacks. Several south Tel Aviv schools have barred non-Israeli children from enrolling.

Jewish Israeli residents of South Tel Aviv say that the government is dumping the problem of refugees on their neighborhoods and that the area lacks the resources to cope.

While Africans are frightened by recent events, they have also expressed compassion for Jewish Israelis and agree with locals’ statements that the government must address the areas’ issues. African residents of South Tel Aviv have called on their Israeli neighbors to meet and discuss the problems and to come up with a solution together.

Haggai Matar contributed to this report.

A political storm broke out last week, when it turned out Supreme Justice Salim Joubran declines to sing the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah” (The Hope). Many Jewish Brotherhood MKs suffered from an unusually farcical attack of national erection. This was indeed another occasion to note that there is no practical (or even ideological) difference between Kahane’s representative in the Knesset, Michael Ben Ari, or Yisrael Beitenu’s David Rotem, or the Likud’s Danny Danon and Moshe Feiglin. But that is not the main issue; neither is the fact that the Jewish Brotherhood’s attack on Joubran means they think that most of the Jewish population agrees with them on this point.

The issue is the single demand made by Netanyahu to the Palestinians recently: that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Joubran brouhaha is precisely the reasons they cannot accept this demand. A Jewish state is a state, which – inherently by its very existence and by its very declaration as such – discriminates against its non-Jewish citizens. It is a state, which, by its very definition, says they do not belong, that they are unequal and never will be equal, that they are nothing but temporary guests who exist at the sufferance of the Jewish majority. A Jewish state is one that proclaims itself to contain two types of populations, separate and not at all equal.

It would be herrenvolk state, where the will of the majority wouldn’t be just that the minority make it tea (as a famous Israeli song notes ironically) but that it should kowtow as it serves it. This would be a state where people would be ordered to sing, in a broken voice and a trampled soul, “The Jewish soul is moved,” so that day by day and hour by hour, they would be forced to remember their home is not their home. As of now, the Jewish Brotherhood targets justices; soon enough it will target school principals, physicians, advocates – anyone whose head is held too high. Therefore, it is clear that Abbas or any other self-respecting Palestinian leader cannot acquiesce to Netanyahu’s demand: doing so would be selling the rights of Israeli Palestinians down the river, something no one has authorized him to do. This, of course, is precisely why he presses for that demand.

This has happened before. Most Israelis have forgotten 1949-1966, when Israeli Palestinians were under military rule; most American Jews were never aware of it. Under this rule, Zionist Israel carried out a huge land grab – legal, of course; there is no villainy which state attorneys will not commit – which deprived the Nakba-surviving Palestinians of most of their lands. Policemen and secret policemen were on the hunt for any hostile utterance, any unpleasant wedding song, and Palestinian leaders had to learn “Hatikvah” by heart to maintain their position. We are no longer in the 1950s and 1960s, thankfully, but there are people who would like to take us back there.

As usual, one should be thankful for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin for trying to save the dignity of the Knesset and of the Likud party. One should also thank, through gritted teeth, Bogie “Moshe” Ya’alon, who defended Joubran against his own home crowd, which takes courage anytime, but particularly these days. Both of them went on record saying that Israeli non-Jews cannot be expected to sing Israel’s anthem.

This unfortunately is not enough. In this way, they accept the concept of Israeli Palestinians as a tolerated minority, since we can’t demand it pretend to be Jewish. But that should not be the case: a country with a large minority should learn to accommodate it. Former state comptroller and supreme court justice Miryam Ben Porat, who came from a Revisionist home, had no qualms about suggesting some 20 years ago that “Hatikvah” be amended and a new stanza added, and that a new symbol be added to the flag so that non-Jews could also relate to an anthem and flag that, after all, are supposed to represent them as well. There have been other suggestions, like replacing “Hatikvah” with Shaul Tchernichovsky “Ani Ma’amin” (“I Believe”):

Mock me, mock my dreams of glory
It is I who dreams, still bowed,
Mock my faith in all things human
As in you my faith stands, proud.

Yet my spirit still craves freedom
Not sold out to calves of gold
I still believe in all things human,
Human spirit, spirit bold.

(Translated by Dena Shunra)

This did not happen and is not likely to happen soon. This is where we see the importance of civics lessons in schools: the right wing has been sabotaging them for a generation now, claiming they neglect the Jewish aspect of the state. But that, after all, is precisely the point of lessons in civics: to build the supra-religious, supra-ethnic, supra-tribal infrastructure that will create a civic consciousness, for Jews and non-Jews alone. The sabotage was not incidental.

The right wing does not want a civil state: it is looking for an ethnocratic theocracy. And not just the right wing: Yair Lapid, the most accurate barometer of the precise center of Israeli politics, recently wrote he opposes the separation of synagogue and state. Even he understands such a move will undermine the ethnocracy – and he chooses it over a liberal Israel.

There will be no reconciliation in this tortured land, if the country is considered first and foremost Jewish. This would mean a total victory for the Jewish nationalists and would significantly damage (and justly so) Israel Palestinians’ ability to identify with Israel. This ability is surprisingly strong, given the country’s history.

One is led to thinking that the mass hysteria of the past 20 years, the overpowering urge to emphasis Israel’s Jewishness, is the result of a deep fear among central parts of the Jewish population that if this is not achieved, then there will be no escape from living aside Israeli Palestinians. This, in turn, leads to the worst of Jewish fears: the loss of blood purity (AKA “assimilation”). This shouted insistence on Israel’s Jewishness is in some ways tactical: it says to Israeli Palestinians “go away, no matter how hard you try to be Israelis, Israel will never be yours. Keep away from us: you’re getting too close and it’s making us scared.”

 And how do you treat a whole population driving itself into post traumatic stress disorder? This is not a question I’m sure I can answer.

What began as an outcry over high housing prices is taking on ever-larger dimensions, and Israelis of all stripes have rallied to the cause of economic injustice surrounding a range of issues. In the past, wars and security issues have always been the greatest unifying factor of Israeli identity, but there is a powerful bond forming around the protests that could perhaps even transcend left and right. At the 20,000-or more  demonstration last Saturday night, illustrated in Eyal Warshavsky’s sound and slideshow, Israeli flags were prominent, the ubiquitous and repeated rallying cry was “The people want social justice!” and the crowd sang a rousing Hatikva.

Proof of emerging unity was evident this morning in numbers: in a Haaretz survey, when asked if the protest was about genuine distress, or a political stunt to topple the government, 81% said the protests are about real economic woes – and a near-consensus of 87% support the efforts. Is Israel witnessing a shift in the defining national identity that unites its people? Could the economic and social vision of the people become a more inclusive national narrative than the military/security dimension ever was?

After the anti-immigrant demonstration in South Tel Aviv ended, I decided to hang around. I went to the market, walked down Etzel Street, watched the people on the Hagana Road, turned to Yigal Alon, and kept walking as far as Hilhel Avenue. Evening came and the avenue was calm and silent, its sights and smells familiar and soothing. Nowhere in the world can you feel like this; nowhere but home. I sat on a bench.

About an hour ago, MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) roared from the podium: “I am not a guest here, in this neighborhood. I grew up here! I used to play here, in Hatikva Park. I attended the Yod-Gimel High School. I had my bike fixed at Avshalom’s.”

Damn that Kahanist. He has the memories. How did he remember Avshalom? Avshalom who gave me some glue and pieces of rubber and taught me how to fix a flat, alone, with a pump and a bowl of water. Avshalom, who fixed my bike with new, wide and ugly wheels after that time that I made a mistake and, instead of taking my bike into the schoolyard, I left them tied outside, in Hatikva Park. They tried to steal them, and when they failed, they twisted the wheels. “The new wheels are not that nice,” Avshalom comforted me, “but they are strong and the way they look, no one will want to twist them.”

“They steal bikes, mainly the new and good ones!” Yisrael, a junior high student who was invited to speak at the rally, said angrily. “Is there anyone here whose bike was not stolen?” the speakers repeatedly asked. One of them summed it up saying: “Every day, there is murder. Every day, there is rape. Every day, they steal bikes.”

In 1992, Headmistress Ronit Tirosh ruled over the high school empire that stretched from Holon in the south to Givatayim in the east. The children of the Yad Eliyahu, Hatikva, and Kfar Shalem neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv were her subjects, one and all. They were the bricks of the wall of Israel’s largest educational institution at a time when a new generation emerged with 23 seventh grade classes.

I was in eleventh grade then, active on the school newspaper. Sharon, one of our English teachers, addressed us. That year, she taught a class of eighth graders that included four new immigrants from the former USSR. For quite some time, she felt, there was tension between the veterans and the immigrants. More than tension. They fought and yelled, and not only during breaks. They were at each others’ throats all the time. When things became intolerable, Sharon decided to dedicate an hour to the issue. The pupils were asked to write how they felt about the situation. “I hate the new immigrants, don’t know why,” one of the native-born Israelis wrote. An immigrant kid wrote: “That’s the way it is: They hate us for the color of our skin.”

We decided to run a questionnaire among the pupils, randomly selecting 15 classes with immigrants. Some 300 students responded: 50 percent felt immigration should be curbed; 14 percent said it should be terminated altogether. Why? Dozens replied, one way or another, that it was because they took our jobs and apartments, and ruined our economy. They added: “Everywhere you go, you see them and hear their nasty language. Enough!” “In Israel, Hebrew has become the second official language.” “In the end, we will be a land of Russians, not Israelis.” “They are already more than we are.” “They are taking over.” Of course, there were a few who made sure to mention that “they stink!”

Some 18 years later, men and women my age stood on the podium, saying: “They say we are racist; we are not. This is not racism.” “Take those niggers out and throw them away!” Yoel Hasson, a member of Ronit Tirosh’s party, Kadima, also explained it was not racism. I took a picture of right-wing Ma’ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini, leaning against a lamppost, looking smug. I wanted a souvenir.

I know, I agree: It is the government, the injustice, the negligence, and the Ashkenazim. At the rally, someone said this cannot be viewed as racism because this is a warm neighborhood of warm people. No one will ever go hungry here. There will always be someone to offer a slice of bread and a bowl of soup. But to whom?

It was getting cold on the bench. I badly needed a bowl of soup.

The author is head of Migration and Civil Status at ACRI; this post was originally published on the Laissez Passer blog.