http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/27/world/la-fg-israel-africa-refugees-20120527http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jL1hI82ZE2tlyJwK2ooKi7GFeiRQ?docId=692031b7e11e4ec6b88e797d5d9c00b8This is an interesting issue because it has nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Apparently, refugees have been pouring in to Israel from hellholes like Sudan and Eritrea. You may not have heard as much about Eritrea as Sudan but it has borders with Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, so you can imagine what life is like there. Many of them have ended up in South Tel aviv which seems like a rather rough neck of the woods. The local jews there, who are
Sephardic jews and would generally appear arab to most people, are not known for their tolerance and see the refugees as a threat to their jobs and the whole social fabric thing. The refugees aren't jewish. There are tons of Russian, Ethiopian and other non Semetic Jews in Israel but they are Jews.
Of course, we're all very familiar with this scenerios here in the US with illegal immigrants, the majority of whom also tend to do "the work no one else wants to do" yet we haven't quite gotten to this point
Demonstrators have attacked African migrants in Tel Aviv in a protest against refugees and asylum-seekers that indicates an increasingly volatile mood in Israel over what it terms as "infiltrators".
Miri Regev, a member of the Israeli parliament, told the crowd "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body".
The
Jerusalem Post uses "infiltrators" alot in this editorial.
get a load of the comments too. They aren't messing around.
The problem isn't unusual, the "social fabric" blah blah blah stuff is a little uglier and more heated than it would be here or elsewhere but it's their country after all. Orignally they Sudanese came there because they heard there were jobs, again much like here. Why that's gone sour now I have no idea.
Further complicating this is the fact that Israel is the signee to some UN treaty saying they won't send refugees back to a country where they wil be in danger.
If I had to guess: it looks like alot of people are going to be deported.