Tel Aviv Municipality officials showing an asylum seeker out of his resturant (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

A group of municipal officials led an operation to close African asylum seekers’ illegal businesses in the south Tel Aviv neighborhoods of Neve Sha’anan and Shapira at around 7 p.m. Sunday night. The municipal officers were accompanied by Border Police officers, a photographer and several large moving trucks complete with African workers.

Splitting into groups, the law enforcers went to several bars, restaurants and grocery stores owned by asylum seekers. As their legal status in Israel forbids them from either working or owning a business, most Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers are forced to make a living illegally, which leads authorities to chase them down and either punish their employers or close down their shops.

A policeman and an attack dog watch over African workers emptying an asylum seeker’s store (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Such was the case Sunday evening. All the goods, furniture and other equipment in all the businesses were inventoried and confiscated, and the doors were welded shut. In none of the locations photographer Oren Ziv and I visited was there any resistance by the shop owners and the armed policemen (and one police attack dog) were left without much to do. Several Israeli bystanders cheered the officials for helping pushing foreigners out, while other muttered insults at them for enforcing racist policies.

Workers emptying a bar in south Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Estimates have it that asylum seekers are running hundreds of small businesses in south Tel Aviv, mostly serving their own communities and naturally, authorities cannot possibly close them all down. However, owners often complain about police brutality, as Border Police patrols force people out of bars at midnight, at times using batons and even pepper spray. The municipality, too, is working hard at combating this small world of business and leisure, but operations on today’s scale are not a common sight.

Welding a shop’s door shut (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

It is possible that Mayor Ron Huldai’s administration pushed the operation forward as part of preparations for the upcoming October municipal elections. Many Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv are likely to be supportive of such actions, as the feeling is that asylum seekers are burdening the already weak physical and social infrastructure and poor services provided to the mostly working or lower-middle class population in the neighborhoods. This feeling is strengthened as some asylum seekers are pushed into criminal activities and the press gives extensive coverage to the criminality. Tensions between the communities has already led to several individual and mob attacks on asylum seekers by Israelis.

Municipal officials and private movers take a fridge out of an asylum seeker’s resturant (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

UPDATE, May 13, 10:30 a.m.:

Aladin Abaker, a Sudanese refugee, published pictures from Sunday night’s raid showing municipal Ministry of Health inspectors pouring bleach into pots of food in a restaurant, allegedly because the establishment is “a danger to public health.” He writes the following:

Friends meet in this place, the most delicious restaurant with a smell of home, to eat and remember our families in Darfur. Suddenly health inspectors and police forces swarmed in and destroyed the food we had ordered and the food in the pots, with no sensitivity to the people whose culture sees food as a sacred thing to be treated with respect. We tried to tell them that this place has been open for four years now, it’s where we eat all our meals, and not once has anyone gone ill. Even whites come to eat here…

Everybody present was in tears. The waitress told us: “I’ve seen some horrible things in my life, including torture in Sinai, but this has humiliated me more than torture.” I told her they were doing it to make our lives miserable and try to encourage us to return to Africa “willingly.”

Offical pouring bleach into food as Sudanese restaurant (Photo: Aladin Abaker)

Haim Mula, a resident of the Shapira neighborhood in south Tel Aviv who was arrested last April in connection with the nighttime arson attack of several African asylum seeker homes and one kindergarten in his neighborhood, has signed a plea bargain that exempts him from jail time.

Mula, 20, was originally accused of committing the attacks himself, admitted only to having prepared the firebombs for the actual arsonist, an offense for which he is expected to receive only a few months of community service and no jail time. It will be up to the court whether to approve this fairly light punishment for Mula’s contribution to the creation of what the original indictment called “homes turned furnaces.”

The day after the Molotov cocktail attack on asylum seekers’ houses, an anti-racism demonstration was held in Shapira. Several local youths attacked demonstrators. One of them, seen in this picture in the center, turned out to be Mula, the main suspect in the arson case. The prosecution says the police have not been able to determine the identity of the actual arsonist, and that Mula refuses to cooperate and give the name of his accomplice.

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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)

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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.

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Police distort crime data, inciting violence against refugees

Several Sudanese and Eritrean nationals were recently arrested in two separate cases involving the rape of Israeli women and the murder of an Eritrean woman. The media extensively covered these horrible crimes, followed by a long line of politicians quoting frightening police claims that Africans account for 40 percent of Tel Aviv’s crimes. Those politicians are led by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who dared to say in an interview this week that most “African infiltrators are criminals.”

The press similarly reported in early May that “asylum seekers are involved in 40 percent of crimes,” relying on police figures recently presented to the government. This statistic is shocking, but not as shocking as the fact that senior Israel Police officers are willing to tell lies in an effort to gain a chunk of the huge budget that the government has allotted to the war against African refugees.

Real police data, presented in a meeting held by the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers on March 19, indicate that the crime rate among foreigners in Israel stood at 2.24 percent in 2011 (1,223 criminal cases out of a total of 54,497 foreigners). This figure is slightly higher than the figure that the police reported to the Knesset in 2010 (2.04 percent), but lower that the crime rate reported in 2009 (2.4 percent).

The 2011 data on Israeli crime has not yet been published, but according to police data reported to the Knesset, the crime rate among the general population in Israel stood at 4.99 percent in 2010. This figure demonstrates that the general crime rate in Israel is more than double that of Africans in Israel. A senior police figure claimed in a hearing held by the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers in March 2012 that the African communities in Tel Aviv are a source of a sharp increase in crime. However, the Knesset Research Center notes that based on 2010 crime rate data, a criminal case was opened for one of every 16 residents of Tel Aviv, but only for one of every 96 “infiltrators” – the term government officials use to refer to asylum seekers who enter Israel from the border with Egypt.

There is no doubt that Israel’s police faces major challenges in dealing with criminals. There is no doubt that some refugees commit crimes, and that their crime rates may increase alongside poverty rates, if the state maintains its current policies that violate the rights of asylum seekers. The police should thus invest some of its limited resources to work on reducing existing crime rates, rather than presenting misleading data on crime rate among immigrants.

Not only are data manipulated, but police have also been known to lure the refugees to steal. Officers leave open purses on streets near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, as well as bags on the beach, in an attempt to entice the refugees. Instead of fighting crime, it is creating it, by entrapping refugees to commit crimes and turning its creations into shady statistics and media reports.

For the residents of southern Tel Aviv, where most of the refugees are concentrated, official crime rates undoubtedly do not matter. Their subjective feelings of fear are understandable. The irresponsible statements of senior police chiefs, together with the media coverage of actual incidents and the speeches of ministers and MKs, lead the residents to believe that almost all Africans walking the streets are criminals. This belief, and the fact that the streets of their neighborhoods are indeed filled with African newcomers, leads residents of the neighborhoods to the painful conclusion that the authorities are abandoning them.

An Eritrean refugee who was attacked by two men in Netanya on Independence Day. The men said nothing to him before attacking him. (photo: Sigal Rozen)

But this discourse has dangerous implications. In the last month, the number of hate crimes carried out by Israelis against Africans has risen tremendously. Multiple Molotov cocktails were thrown into houses of Africans in southern Tel Aviv on two separate occasions, a week apart. One Israeli resident of Shapira neighborhood has been arrested and charged. Countless Africans reported to the Hotline for Migrant Workers the violence and abuse they suffer at the hands of Israelis, several requiring hospitalization as a result of the brutal attacks. The government incitement has also targeted human rights organizations assisting the refugee community. As a result, both Messila, a Tel Aviv municipality organization providing welfare services to migrant children, and the Hotline for Migrant Workers have been threatened. This week, the Hotline for Migrant Workers received phone calls from a man who stated to a volunteer who answered the phone: “I want your address so I can burn you, to do to your daughters what they’re doing to ours, you bitch.”

Africans who are involved in crime should be tried and sentenced like all other criminals. Yet these other examples of violence and hate crimes are to be blamed on the police and politicians who are so eager to get rid of the African refugees that they ignore the horrible damage they cause with their lies. If this trend continues, more and more Israeli residents will be pushed to take the law into their own hands, believing that in doing so they are defending their society from an imaginary threat.

Sigal Rozen is the Public Policy Coordinator of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, which she helped found. She has been active on behalf of asylum seekers for the last 13 years. Orna Dickman translated this post. 

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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.

Update, 15:15: A Tel Aviv judge has extended the remand of the young man arrested in relation to the arson attacks. The man is a resident of Shapira neighborhood, has a criminal record, and according to police was recently arrested for throwing eggs at a Sudanese asylum seeker. He is now suspected of committing several acts of arson. The court accepted the request made by police to extend his detention pending further interrogation until Wednesday morning.

Forensic workers take pictures of unused Molotov cocktails (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

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‘What if refugees were to fire bomb Israeli houses?’

Let’s take a moment to imagine what would happen if Eritrean refugees had thrown Molotov cocktails into Jewish houses and a kindergarten, let’s say in Jerusalem, or Haifa.

Molotov cocktail left after arson attack in Shapira (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The police would be there as soon as it happened, certainly before the third and fourth attacks, and so would the media, to whom they would immediately call and issue a statement. They would promise not to rest until they had their hands on those responsible.

Netanyahu would be out and about declaring, “This shall not pass,” and “We’ll make them pay,” and almost all parliament members from the extreme right to the so-called “Zionist left” would stand alongside him, competing for who screams for the bloodiest and most brutal vengeance.

The Israeli media would dub the incident a terrorist attack. They would be speaking about those shameless terrorists who target kids. They would interview the residents of the houses, the parents of the children who go to the kindergarten, random people who happened to be in the street not long after, and many more.

There would be ambulances to make sure nobody was hurt, and probably some of the residents of the house would be proclaimed as suffering from shock and panic.

The mayor would promise to give material aid to the residents and to renovate the houses and kindergarten at the municipality’s expense, and the residents would be invited to a hotel suite until renovations are completed. The kindergarten would have reopened to great fanfare in a matter of a week, with the presence of the mayor, the president and probably a few more, while the innocent faces of the children smile for the camera, as they say that yes, they’re scared, but they’re also brave, and trust our government.

We’d see people everywhere expressing shock and outrage, at this horrible, horrible thing that had just happened. The entire country would unite in collecting food and toys and clotehs and donations to these poor kids and poor people who had the misfortune of being the victims of such an atrocious crime.

African asylum seeker in Shapira with cops on the night of the attacks (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Let’s imagine, for just a moment, what it would have been like. And then let’s go back to the reality – in which the Molotov cocktails were most likely thrown by Jews, the victims are refugees and migrant workers, and Israeli police described it as nothing more than a “minor incident” – so we can all relax.

Leehee Rotschild is an Israeli activist who focuses mainly on the Palestinian struggle against occupation and apartheid, and was also present at the demonstration in Shapira following the attacks on asylum seekers’ homes. She writes about activism and political struggle on her blog, Radically Blonde and other publications.

[Haggai's note: This was a guest post by Leehee Rotschild. Just to make things clear - Tel Aviv police does not yet have any suspects in the case of the attacks on asylum seekers' houses, and these have not been seen by any of the victims. However, many residents of the neighborhood – Israeli and foreign alike – assume the attacks were carried out by Israelis]

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Forensic workers take pictures of unused Molotov cocktails (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

“Somebody is trying to get rid of these damn Sudanese,” said an Israeli resident of Shapira neighborhood in south Tel Aviv this morning. The term “Sudanese” is commonly used by Israelis to describe all African asylum seekers. The house adjacent to the house of this Israeli was hit at around 1:30 a.m. by three Molotov cocktails: two were thrown through the window, and one into the entry hall. No one was hurt, as residents and neighbors quickly awoke and extinguished the fire. Another fire bomb was thrown into a neighboring yard, where five asylum seekers sleep outdoors. Furniture was badly burned, but none of the residents were hurt. All of the cases are probably linked, as Mya has noted.

“Whoever did this is right, but he’s doing it the wrong way,” says the neighbor. “This fire almost burned my car, and also – there is a small girl in that house. He should have waited until nobody was home, and then blown the place up to send them a message”.

Asylum seeker looking at a couch burned in the south Tel Aviv attack (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Shortly after the first two attacks, two more houses were hit in the center of the neighborhood. “My brother and I were sleeping, and we awoke from the sound of the fire – which started right next to my bed,” says Maskala Masgene, an Eritrean asylum seeker. “They opened the window and threw the bottle in through the bars. When I saw it I took the bottle and threw it right out to the street. I couldn’t go back to sleep since. I’m too scared. I understand they were not caught yet, whoever did this. I’ve experienced hate talk on the street before, but nothing like this.”

The apartment next door was the fourth place hit. Here the bottle exploded on the frame of the window. Another Eritrean woman and her four children were sleeping inside, right under the window.

Maskala Masegne speaking about the attack on her home (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The fifth attack, at around 2:30 a.m., targeted a kindergarten that also serves as a home to the Nigerian couple who runs it. The burned playground equipment was still visible in the morning. “We didn’t wake up from of the fire, but actually from the knocks on the door by the firefighters,” says Balsin Baraka. “They told us to stay inside, and now the children are coming and have no games to play with outside. I have no idea who could have done this but it’s terrifying.”

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai condemned the crimes. Acknowledging the hardships suffered by the Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv as a result of the refugee influx, he said in a statement that “the Tel Aviv municipality is investing many resources in order to make life easier for the residents, and I call on the Israel Police to do everything to catch whoever is behind this horrible act.”

All five locations were visited by police forces, who also located unused Molotov cocktails. Police say that they have not yet identified suspects in the attacks.

The burned kindergarten (Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

While refugees are uncertain about the identity of the attackers, Israeli residents of Shapira are all very certain that this was a racial attack. In addition to the neighbor interviewed above, several other neighborhood activists said that this is a culmination of a dangerous process that’s been going on for quite some time. “There is racist propaganda that comes down from the government, through members of the Municipal Council, and to the street – and this is the result,” accuses Nir Nader, a resident who is planning a solidarity vigil later on today. “People preaching violence should be in prison, and if the state doesn’t stop them – we shall.”

Asylum seeker at the site of fire bomb attack in south Tel Aviv (Activestills)

On Friday afternoon, a demonstration against violence and in solidarity with the asylum seekers took place in the impoverished Shapira neighborhood of south Tel Aviv, where much of the refugee population is concentrated. As asylum seeker bystanders looked on from the side, screaming matches erupted between refugee advocates potesting against violent racism, and angry residents blaming the protesters for turning their backs on their fellow citizens.

“These anti-Israeli leftist anarchists came here to make a mess. You don’t even live here!” one woman from Shapira yelled, although many of the demonstrators were locals. “Go demonstrate in north Tel Aviv! Why do we have to accept all of them in Shapira? Why not in north Tel Aviv or Herzliya?” said another, referring to wealthier areas in which refugees are less likely to live.

As the exchanges grew more heated – with some Shapira residents tearing signs from the hands of protesters – police separated the residents and the demonstrators behind barricades, on separate sides of the street. One demonstrator was arrested.

In recent years, conflicts often break out between lower class Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv and activists in refugee rights’ groups. Calls to “send the refugees to north Tel Aviv” are commonly heard, charging the upper class with hypocrisy  for their purported lip service to liberalism while the poorest sectors of society must deal with the difficulties of absorbing refugee communities. Over the years, left wingers and NGO activists have started to incorporate the hardships of those residents into their agendas. Activists now tend to emphasize how better treatment of refugees by the government would also ease the pressure on locals.

Demonstration in Shapira. "Violence, racism, nationalism - not in our neighborhood!" (Oren Ziv / Activstills)

Noa Yachot contributed reporting to this post. 

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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.