Netanyahu openly boasts of Israels

war on Africans

Benjamin Netanyahu remains Israels racist ringleader-inchief.Jonathan ErnstReuters

David Sheen-3 January 2017
Donald Trumps election as US president has given closeted
racists the license they have long sought to openly advocate
against Muslims, refugees and people of color.
As progressive Americans strategize on how to defend victims of
bigotry, they would be wise to take stock of how Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already carrying out ethnic
cleansing similar to that which Trump has promised to implement.

Two incidents bookending the year capture the zeitgeist of Israels

war on African refugees in 2016. In January, an African refugee
family, whose 1-year-old baby, Kako, had been stabbed in the
head, departed Israel after the Netanyahu government refused to
help them defer the childs medical bills.
And in December, the Israeli police station responsible for
south Tel Aviv honored May Golan, a leader of anti-African
incitement campaigns that, for all intents and purposes,
encourage attacks such as the one on baby Kako.
For the past five years, I have been compiling annual lists of
the ringleaders in Israels war on Africans. My list for 2016
incorporates almost every branch of the Israeli state.
10. Moshe Kaspi, university dean
In February, the dean of an Israeli university gave his students an
exam that contained a question which implicitly compared African
refugees to rats.
In the test authored and administered by Moshe Kaspi, a dean
at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, engineering students were
asked to calculate the cost of removing rodents from the Tel Aviv
area, transferring them to a holding center in the south of the
country, and then shipping them to Africa, where they would be
experimented on.

An African asylum seeker walks inside the Holot detention center

in southern Israel on 6 February 2016.
Oren ZivActiveStills
While the exercise did not explicitly mention African refugees, the
analogy would have been obvious to many students, since the
scenario it posits closely parallels political developments in Israel.
For the last three years, the Israeli government has been rounding
up African refugees in the Tel Aviv area and transferring them to a
detention center in the south of the country. Following their
detention, many of the refugees have been expelled to Africa, just
like the rats in Kaspis test.
After one woman accused him of racism, Kaspi apologized for the
question, claiming that he had intended to insert an aspect of
humor into the exam.
The incident did not seem to significantly tarnish the reputation of
Ben-Gurion University. A few months months later, the college
received a $400 million gift, the largest college endowment in
Israels history.9. Israel Ziv, security consultant
Israel Zivs prior career as an officer in the Israeli military ended
just before African refugees began arriving to the country in large

numbers a decade ago. But since that time, Ziv has parlayed his
army career into a successful business in the private sector with
the security consulting firm Global CST.
In that capacity, Ziv has provided services to Salva Kiir Mayardit,
president of South Sudan. Kiir is responsible for horrific crimes
against his own citizens.

.
After a long career in the Israeli military, Israel Ziv now heads the
security consulting firm Global CST. (Flickr)
Earlier this month, an Israel Channel 2 video report revealed that
Ziv had advised Kiir in an effort to rehabilitate his international
reputation. Kiir has come into disrepute for allowing his soldiers
to rape women and young girls, in lieu of salary payment, and
to castrate and kill young boys.
Israel is a significant supplier of weapons to South Sudan.
According to the Channel 2 report, Ziv hired Ron Prosor, a former
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, as part of his work. One
idea considered was that Kiir would make a speech at the UN,
flanked by a woman who had been raped by soldiers from South
Sudan.

Is it inherently racist of Ziv to want to profit from whitewashing a

criminal despot like Kiir? Or did Ziv only take advantage of a
global white supremacist system where Black lives matter so little
that their mass rapes and castrations can be covered up, guilt
free?
Either way, Zivs conduct was deplorable.
8. Eliyahu Asulin, rabbi
Hatred for African refugees extends even to their children.
In May, the spouses of foreign ambassadors serving in Israel
volunteered to help clean up the outdoor play area of a Tel Aviv
nursery for African children. Their aid had become necessary
because Israelis had defiled the playground with dead animals,
garbage and feces.
Refugee children playing in public parks are regularly harassed. In
addition to cursing the kids, their harassers make a show
of distributing condoms to African refugees, apparently thinking
this is a clever way of saying Africans should not bear children, as
long as they live in Israel.
But while ordinary Israeli citizens are trying to shame Africans into
foregoing their reproductive rights, leading religious figures have
been actually harming the reproductive organs of newborn
babies.
In November, it emerged that Israeli circumcisers allow trainees
without the necessary experience to practice their cutting
techniques on the genitals of black and brown babies.
An expos by Israels new public broadcaster Kan revealed that
for an $11,000 fee Eliyahu Asulin, a popular rabbi,
would allow novices who had not completed their professionally
mandated studies to perform circumcisions in his stead on infants
from African and Asian families.

Unaware that an undercover journalist was filming him, Asulin

urged his new apprentice to carry out a circumcision ritual on
the son of a Filipino woman. The babys mother had been misled
as she had only consented to a circumcision undertaken by a
professional.
In the video, Asulin describes African babies as cannon fodder.
He says: Even if your cut isnt straight, they wont say anything,
because they dont understand anything.
After Asulins misconduct was publicly exposed, Israels chief
rabbinate punished him lightly. Asulin was forbidden from training
others for three years, but was still permitted to practice
circumcision himself.
7. The Petah Tikva killers
In November, 38-year-old Sudanese asylum-seeker Babikir
Adham-Uvdo was beaten to death by two Israeli youths outside of
the city hall in Petah Tikva, a town near Tel Aviv. Security
camera footage of the incident revealed that the youths beat
Adham-Uvdo for more than an hour. He was brought to hospital
but never recovered, and was disconnected from life-support
systems days later.
Although the killing bore similarities to other attacks on Africans,
an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz stated that people
close to a suspect in the killing believed it was not a racist
incident. Relying on those sources, Haaretz suggested that
Adham-Uvdo may have been killed because he made insulting
comments to girls.
Adham-Uvdo was seen walking and then stopping in front of three
16-year-old girls. The girls shouted at him to leave, and within
seconds of first encountering them, Adham-Uvdo raised his hands
and walked away.

The 16-year-old boy then attacked Adham-Uvdo from behind;

another youth soon joined in, kicking Adham-Uvdo as he lay on
the ground.
The video footage also shows that paramedics arrived on the
scene midway through the beating. In the video, they are seen
tending to Adham-Uvdo but, after a short while, leave him to fend
for himself, seemingly satisfied that he no longer requires their
aid. Within seconds of their departure, the two young men return
and continue the beating.
Two persons have been charged in relation to the incident: one is
Dennis Barshivatz, a Petah Tikva local, now aged 20; the other is
a 16-year-old, whose name has not been published. An Israeli
prosecutor has decided to charge the two with manslaughter,
rather than murder.
Some observers noted the parallels between the deaths of
Adham-Uvdo and Emmett Till. Till was an African-American
teenager who was murdered in Mississippi, beaten until he was
unrecognizable, ostensibly for flirting with a white woman.
Tills killing occurred in 1955, a year after the US Supreme
Court declared segregated schools to be unconstitutional. Yet in
Israel, segregation remains widespread.
Just three months ago, an Israeli court was told that the Petah
Tikvah municipality had hindered African refugees from
registering their children for pre-schools in town.
Since the killing of Adham-Uvdo, dozens of African refugees have
been arrested in Petah Tikva. The local mayor, Yitzhak Braverman,
has approved the arrests.
6. Tal Schwartz, judge
Babikir Adham-Uvdo was the latest, but not the first, African
refugee to be lynched in Israel. In October 2015, after a gunman
shot and killed an Israeli soldier and wounded about 10 other

bystanders in the central bus station complex in Bir alSaba (Beersheba), a mob of Israelis attacked 29-year-old Eritrean
refugee Haftom Zarhum.
Those who took part in the killing included Israeli soldiers, police
officers and a prison warden.

Eritreans mourn in south Tel Aviv in 2015 during a memorial

ceremony for Haftom Zarhum, who was shot and beaten to death
at a bus station in southern Israel after he was mistaken for an
assailant in an attack that left an Israeli soldier dead.
Oren ZivActiveStills
In June this year, an Israeli tribunal ruled that prison warden
Hananiya Shabbat would not be charged for beating Zarhum with
a bench.
Rather than reprimanding Shabbat, Tal Schwartz, a judge in the
tribunal, complimented him. Schwartz stated that Shabbat had

acted in a way that is expected of a prison guard, that which is

needed to contribute to the positive image of the prison service.
5. Zion Amir, lawyer
Zion Amir is a lawyer who has defended the rapist and former
president of Israel Moshe Katsav.
Amir has represented some of the Israelis accused of firebombing
a Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank. Ali Dawabsha, an
18-month-old baby, and his parents were fatally injured in that
attack.
So it should come as no surprise that Amir is also defending some
of the Israelis charged with the lynching of Eritrean refugee
Haftom Zarhum.
In March, Aryeh Deri, Israels interior minister, announced that he
would appoint Amir to head the governments advisory panel on
refugees.
After Amir had been on the job for four
months, Haaretz reported that not even one asylum request had
been approved. In that time, more than 1,000 asylum requests
were rejected.
4. Roni Alsheikh, police chief
In the year he has occupied the post, Roni Alsheikh, head of
Israels police, has advanced the idea that African refugees are
inherently criminal, giving his officers a green light to attack
them.
In August, Alsheikh made his anti-African bias explicit when
he told a conference of the Israeli Bar Association: In all
criminological studies worldwide, it has been proven that
immigrants are more involved in crime than others.

Alsheikhs comments drew strong criticism from Israeli citizens of

Ethiopian descent. With one sentence, the police chief has
summarized and confirmed all of our complaints [about police
racism],
Ethiopian-Israeli activist Inbar Bugala said, according to Haaretz.

Roni Alsheikh, second from right, during a military ceremony near

Tel Aviv in February 2016.
Oren ZivActiveStills
Israeli police seem to be especially bothered by communities of
color finding common cause in the struggle against Israeli racism.
When Haftom Zarhum was killed by a mob of Israelis in 2015,
Bugala wrote on Facebook that a racist lynching had occurred.

Black people have become terrorists there was no mistaken

identification, she wrote.
Minutes after posting the message, the Israeli police contacted
Bugala and demanded that she delete it. The post disappeared
from her Facebook page, and though she re-posted it several
times, it was taken down after each instance.
3. David Amsalem, lawmaker
While some Israeli officials discriminate against all Africans in
equal measure, others advocate opposing policies for Black
people, depending on whether the people in question are Jews.
Such is the case with David Amsalem, a rookie lawmaker
from Likud, the largest party in Israels ruling coalition.
Amsalem labors to bring Black Jews to Israel, while working
simultaneously to expel Africans who are not Jewish.
In March, when Israeli officials reversed a 2015 decision to
facilitate the immigration of 9,000 Falashmura, the extended
family members of Ethiopian-Israelis still living in Ethiopia,
Amsalem accused the government of racism. They dont want to
bring Black people to the country from a troubled place, he said.
In protest, Amsalem refused to vote in favor of governmentsponsored legislation, until the Falashmura were allowed to
immigrate. The government eventually allowed some Ethiopians
to enter Israel. But as punishment for disobeying party discipline,
Amsalem was temporarily blocked from proposing laws or
speaking in Israels parliament, the Knesset.
As chair of the Knessets interior and environment committee,
however, Amsalem worked to make the already precarious lives of
non-Jewish African refugees much more difficult. In November,
Amsalem secured committee approval for an amendment to
Israels Anti-Infiltration Law which would
automatically deposit part of the wages paid to African refugee
workers in a fund. The refugees would only be able to access the
money taken from them when they leave Israel for good.

Refugee advocacy groups have warned Amsalem that the move

would further impoverish African refugees, potentially triggering a
humanitarian crisis. In a complaint, the groups wrote: Asylum
seekers are liable to find themselves on the streets, children will
go hungry, women may turn to prostitution and more.
Amsalem casually dismissed these appeals, asserting that
Africans should be able to survive on their reduced salaries.
2. Aryeh Deri, interior minister

Aryeh Deri (Sapir College/Wikimedia Commons)

Ever since Benjamin Netanyahus re-election as prime minister in
2009, the post of interior minister has been filled by a steady
stream of unabashed racists.
Aryeh Deri, the current incumbent, returned to politics in 2012
after a 13-year absence, two of which were spent in prison for
corruption. He has developed a reputation for defending Israels
downtrodden.
Deris compassion does not extend to Africans, however. In his
first year on the job as interior minister, a post he also held before
his downfall, Deri has campaigned with as much enthusiasm as
his predecessors to expel African refugees.
In March, Deri told the Knessets interior and environment
committee that if Israels high court wont permit him to deport
African refugees against their will, he would order the
construction of an additional facility to imprison them. Since
2013, Israel has held 10,000 African refugees in Holot, a desert
detention center.
In April, Deris ministry launched an advertising campaign
warning Israeli citizens not to hire non-Jewish African refugees,
even though a high court ruling allows them to work in Israel.
A week later, the ministry clarified that it would not issue
temporary residency visas to the teenage children of African
refugees. African teens need these documents because they can

be easily mistaken for adults and detained by immigration police

who patrol Israels cities.
After a migrant rights lawyer appealed against the policy in court,
Deri agreed in principle to issue visas for African teens. The
lawyer who challenged the policy, Osnat Cohen-Lifshitz, has
predicted that it may take a long time before Deris agreement is
implemented.
In September, a Jerusalem tribunal ruled that fleeing forced
service in the Eritrean army can be grounds for refugee status.
Determined to deport all Eritreans, who constitute a majority of
the African refugees in Israel, Deri protested that the tribunals
decision would cause endless trouble and ordered an immediate
appeal.
1. Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister
In 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu held five separate cabinet
portfolios, as well as the prime ministers post. He used the
powers at his disposal to deport thousands of African refugees.
Without question, the worst of these were the powers Netanyahu
continues to wield as Israels foreign minister.
When the first wave of refugees from war-torn Darfur started to
arrive in Israel 10 years ago, the government argued that they
couldnt be trusted to live in the country because they were from
Sudan, a country that does not have diplomatic relations with
Israel.
This argument has never made sense, as Darfuri refugees first
fled to Israel precisely because they and their families were
victims of the Sudanese regime, not supporters of it.

Paradoxically, in September, it emerged that Israels foreign

ministry has been quietly lobbying the US to forge closer ties with
Sudan.
Israel reportedly favored this move because Omar al-Bashirs
government had distanced itself from Iran.
Just two weeks after Netanyahus shilling for al-Bashir made news
headlines, Amnesty International revealed that the Sudanese
leaders long list of war crimes now also includes the use of
chemical weapons in Darfur.
In the past three years, Netanyahus government has spent $260
million to round up African refugees and bring them to desert
detention centers. Israel has the gall to categorize this massive
expenditure as foreign aid.
In late September, Netanyahu marked the Jewish new year of
Rosh Hashanah with a self-congratulatory address to members of
Likud, summarizing his supposed successes from the previous 12
months. Netanyahu boasted of his efforts to deport African
refugees.
Sixty thousand illegals entered, he said. Until today we have
already removed 20,000, and we will remove another 20,000.
Well remove all the illegal aliens because they are illegal, even
the ones in southern Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu has made similar boasts in the past. But what set
2016 apart from previous years was his new willingness to not

only point out his anti-African policies to Israelis in Hebrew, but

also to proudly announce them in English.
Apparently confident that his efforts would be admired abroad,
Netanyahu tweeted in March: A strong Israel prevents the
passage of masses of refugees to Europe. The world would be
different if we were not here.
In a year-end opinion piece, the editorial board
of Haaretz stated that Netanyahu should be ashamed, adding,
Israel can and must accept the 40,000 Africans living here today,
along with the 6,000 children who were born here.
For the eight years that the United States was led by a president
of African descent, Netanyahu felt no need to rein in Israels war
on Africans. Now that Donald Trump, the darling of white
supremacists, has been elected to the Oval Office, we can only
expect Netanyahu to ramp it up into an even higher gear.
David Sheen is an independent writer and filmmaker.
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