WATCH: Racist protest in Tel Aviv targets refugees and migrants

By Joseph Dana April 9, 2011 | Edit

Racism in Israel is nothing new. There is racism against Palestinians, against Arabs, against non-Jews. There is racism between Jews from Europe and Jews from Arab countries. In our racism, we are no different from many other Western countries. However, the past year in Israel has seen an a significant increase in the number of racially motivated attacks on foreign workers and Palestinians by gangs of Jewish nationalists who seek to ‘cleanse Israel of non Jewish and dangerous elements.’ The problem is reaching endemic/epidemic proportions as lawmakers have largely remained silent and the crimes continue unabated.

David Sheen, an Israeli journalist with Haaretz, has been quietly documenting the rise of racism in Tel Aviv. His latest video (below) is a look into the ugly work of nationalism which is the foundation of the current spike in racist attacks. In the video, Sheen attends a rally of Jewish nationalists who seek to expel foreign infiltrators ‘that are taking over the southern part of Tel Aviv.’ The interviews that he conducts on the street show a disturbed society in crisis.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n-y24SzbCY[/youtube]

Joseph Dana is a writer based in Cape Town. Previously he worked across the Middle East.

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We are in an unprecedented and dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The Israeli extreme right government has made its plans crystal clear. It wants carte blanche to shoot-to-kill Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, legalize every settlement outpost, dismantle the independence of the judicial system, deport African asylum seekers, delegitimize human rights activists, and silence the free press.

This is an escalation we all should resist. But it is not an aberration or a bug. For the past 12 years, we at +972 have been warning against the poisonous outcomes of Israeli society’s growing racism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized siege on Gaza.

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