Mistreatment of refugees in Israel doesn’t stop at border

The National, September 17, 2012 Earlier this month, 21 Eritrean asylum seekers, including a 14-year-old child and two women, spent over a week trapped between fences on the Israeli side of the Israeli-Egyptian border. As the temperatures soared, the group was not provided with any shelter; the “most moral army in the world” gave the refugees only …

South Tel Aviv land grab

Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2, 2012 It was a winter morning in 1982. Shimon Yehoshua, 21, had finished three years’ mandatory military service a week before. He’d arrived at his home—two rooms shared with his parents and nine brothers and sisters—in time to catch the last flames of Hanukkah. Shimon lived in the Kfar Shalem …

Growing tensions between locals and migrants

IRIN, May 17, 2012 Blessing Akachukneu was already looking for a new place to live when her south Tel Aviv apartment, which doubles as a day-care centre, was firebombed in April. Her Israeli neighbours, she explained, had complained to the landlord about the noise from the day-care centre and she had been asked to leave. …

African refugees join Palestinians as a “threat” to Israel

The National, May 10, 2012 On Tuesday Israelis woke up to the surprising news that the early elections Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced on Sunday had been cancelled. In a deal made while the country was asleep, Netanyahu forged a new coalition with Kadima. Now the Knesset will march in lockstep behind the PM, …

Losing faith

The Caravan, February 1, 2012 When I put my silver digital recorder on the table, Kidane Isaac, an Eritrean refugee, eyes it and shifts in his chair. He angles his broken straw fedora downwards, tipping the rim lower, as though to cover his face. The hat, which has a black band and a hole in the …

Israel’s tent protests symptom of larger identity crisis

Foreign Policy, August 19, 2011 The media has been quick to depict the Israeli tent protests as a middle class movement. But there are other groups taking part: Palestinians, low-income Jewish Israelis, migrant workers, and African refugees. While all of these groups face a number of serious problems—as does Israel’s middle class—one was living outdoors …

Israeli town rallies against African refugees

Al Jazeera English, April 13, 2011 James Anei was a 16-year-old boy when he witnessed a massacre, carried out by militias loyal to the government in Khartoum. Terrified, he fled his village in South Sudan. “You see someone dying in front of you and you know this guy and you know his parents and so …

Israel: The ugly truth

Al Jazeera English, January 22, 2011 There was that jarring week in December—a protest against Arab-Jewish couples, a South Tel Aviv march and demonstration against migrant workers and African asylum seekers, the arrest of Jewish teenagers accused of beating Palestinians, and the expulsion of five Arab men from their home in South Tel Aviv. It …