The Israeli government’s decision to deport 25,000 African migrants, dubbed “illegal infiltrators”, and to detain others without trial for as long as three years has come as a shock to many of Israel’s fans in the West.
The firebombing last Monday of a Jerusalem flat occupied by Eritreans has deepened unease, but this incident was only one in a string of attacks on African homes, shops and schools, the majority in south Tel Aviv where many migrants dwell in poor neighbourhoods.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu has warned that “illegal infiltrators flooding the country” are threatening the Jewish identity of the state, as well as its security.
“If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that [would jeopardise] our existence as a Jewish and democratic state,” he asserted.
In spite of the fact that there are no “hundreds of thousands” of Africans in Israel, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said: “The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying.”
To counter the people smuggling, generally effected by Sinai bedouin for payment, Israel is constructing a 250-kilometre fence along the Sinai border with Egypt and building the world’s largest detention centre for migrants and asylum seekers. This facility, with a capacity of 11,000, should be operational by the end of the year.
European countries are also suffering from an influx of African migrants, most looking for employment at a time of global economic crisis, but Israel’s reaction seems excessive, particularly since the number of Africans in the population is less than one per cent.
The problem is, of course, that Israel is not by any means a state like any other. While in “normal” states there is resistance to migrants for economic, political, and even “racist” reasons, in “abnormal” Israel rejection is ideological rather than economic, political, racial and cultural — although these factors also come into the equation.
Both Netanyahu and Yishai summed up Israel’s attitude when they raised the issue of “Zionism”.
Israel is a Zionist state: a state for Jews, allegedly of all backgrounds but essentially for white, European Ashkenazi Jews who founded the Zionist movement and launched the Zionist colonisation enterprise.
The Zionists originally targeted indigenous Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during Israel’s 1948-49 war of establishment from the 78 per cent of Palestine captured by the Israeli underground army. Palestinians who remained and were accorded Israeli citizenship were subjected to martial law for 20 years and faced discrimination in employment, salaries, schooling and healthcare. Palestinian municipalities did not enjoy the same treatment as Israeli municipalities.
Palestinian citizens of Israel, “non-Jews” in a “Jewish state”, complained that they were “second class”. But they were incorrect because there was a class hierarchy that put them at the bottom of a list of Jews who were in the second, third, fourth and fifth classes. The top class was made up — and still is — of Jews of Western Europe, particularly, Polish, German, Russian and Ukrainian origin, men and women of “Zionist” immigrant stock who settled in Israel for ideological reasons.
Israel’s first premier David Ben Gurion, current President Shimon Peres, and former prime minister Ariel Sharon come from this class.
Arab Jews and Jews of colour were — and are — relegated to the lower classes, with Iraqis and Moroccans falling in higher classes and Indians and Ethiopians being towards the bottom.
Although these Jews were brought to or encouraged to settle in Israel to counter the Palestinian “demographic threat”, the growing menace of a Palestinian majority, the “Oriental” Jews or Mizrahim have been shunted off to underdeveloped “development” towns and have suffered discrimination ever since they settled in Israel where their dire experience with absorption could not be compared to the welcome received by Ashkenazim.
Mizrahi children were directed into the vocational educational stream rather than into preparation for universities, while men were pushed into low-paying, menial jobs.
Occidental, or Ashkenazi, Jews also felt imperilled by the Mizrahim who grew to half the Jewish population of Israel until the influx of a million Ashkenazim from Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s reversed the trend.
It is ironic that about 40 per cent of these East bloc immigrants were Christians and compelled Israel, which has not made provision for Christians, to deal with their births, marriages and burials.
Ethiopian Jews from an ancient community were forced to convert to either of the recognised “orthodox” forms of Judaism — Western Ashkenazi or Eastern Sephardi — before being classified as Jews. There was sharp debate over whether Israel should accept, under the “Law of Return”, the “Black Hebrews” Afro-American converts to Judaism.
In reaction to this discrimination, Arab Jews formed the “Black Panther” movement, which raised the political awareness of Mizrahim, notably those from Iraq, Morocco and Yemen.
Unlike the Ashkenazi pioneers, the majority of Mizrahim were not motivated by the Zionist movement which rose in Eastern Europe during the last years of the 19th century. Many Arab Jews went to Israel because of pressure to emigrate from Arab governments angered over the expulsion of the Palestinians and Israel’s attacks on neighbours. Indeed, many Arab Jews were resentful of the Zionists and Israel, which had forced them to leave their ancestral homelands, properties and traditional livelihoods.
These days, Palestinians are one class above the African migrants who are to be first in line for deportation. Expelling Africans is, as far as the international community is concerned, less politically incorrect than driving out Palestinians who, at long last, are recognised as legitimate occupants of, at least, portions of the land that was once Palestine.
