June
07
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Israel Aims Pogroms Against African Migrants
In Israel recently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the acceleration of deportation proceedings of over 25,000 African migrants. This action comes in a wave of violence and hatred directed against African migrants coming into Israel, estimated at more than 60,000. These recent events show the inherent fascist impulses of settler populations, and how these impulses involve a significant part of those populations. The parallels inside the United States are evident also.
On June 3rd Netanyahu ordered his ministers to accelerate deportations of Africans in Israel who did not have official permission to be in the country. The come from countries including Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, among others. Many of these countries are involved in armed internal conflicts, which many of these refugees were fleeing. Many of those they plan to deport are from countries where Israel has diplomatic relations. Others are from countries like Sudan and Eritrea, geopolitical enemies for Israel. For these migrants who cannot be deported easily there is plans to build more holding facilities, including work camps.
These orders for deportation were followed by waves of racist violence by Israeli citizens against Africans. On Monday June 4th Israelis firebombed an apartment in Jerusalem housing 50 migrants from Eritrea, injuring 3 of them, with “Get Out of the Neighborhood” spray painted on a nearby wall. The past month saw a series of riots and firebombings in Tel Aviv targeting houses and businesses of African migrants. This wave of violence has been spurred on by politicians and right wing groups inflaming hatred and scapegoating among the Israeli population. Elected officials, media, army and other groups have called the migrants ‘infiltrators,’ ‘illegals,’ ‘garbage,’ ‘plague, ‘rapists,’ ‘cancers,’ among some of the more publicized labels. They have been blamed for rising crime and lack of jobs and housing, despite the facts against it. Knesset member Aryeh Eldad, a right winger who has long pronounced genocidal Zionist rhetoric against Palestinians, advocated shooting dead anyone who crosses into Israel. This outpouring of fascism is not surprising in a settler state.
Many liberals in Israel point to the country’s founding in the aftermath of the Holocaust as a plea for tolerance. Yet they also engage in masking their history. Israel is a settler state founded by the displacement of the Palestinian people, who had nothing to do with the Holocaust, from their historical land. Built around the imperialist ideology of Zionism, Israel has continued to oppress the Palestinian people on their land with military occupation and settler practices. It goes with this ideology as well that they support other reactionary regimes around the world such as apartheid-era South Africa and El Salvador when it was ruled by death squad generals. Far from being a Jewish state, Israel is one of white supremacy. For example, the Guardian quotes Interior minister Eli Yishai, who suggested AIDS-infected migrants are raping Israeli women, stating migrants do not believe “this country belongs to us, to the white man.”
The anti-migrant sentiment has led to attack in the legal areas. Israel has been denying refugee status to many, even those from countries engaged in civil war, and have been at odds with the UN on it. A law was passed in the Knesset, titled the Infiltration Law, that allows Israeli authorities to detain a migrant up to three years. It also gives 10 to15 years for aiding and abetting a migrant.
This is an example of First World parasitism. The ideology that breeds in populations that benefit from imperialism.
The United States and Israel share a symbiotic relationship, not only due to the billions of dollars the U.S. sends to Israel each year, but because of their statuses as settler states. Like Israel its settler population engages in hate, violence and oppression against darker-skinned migrant populations. And not just at migrants, a term itself with much meaning, as the indigenous peoples of the Americas is included in the migrant populations. As of this day, terror is used against populations considered Latino. Many states of the U.S. have passed or attempted to pass anti-immigrant legislation of some kind. The ACLU even admitted that the internal displacements due to attacks on migrant populations in the U.S. as a result of the Endgame strategy of ICE is similar to the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. The state of Arizona is a hotspot of anti-migrant, white supremacist violence and harassment: SB1070, Joe Arpaio, Jan Brewer, Russell Pierce, neo-nazis parading, armed vigilantes along the militarized border, migrant deaths by the hundreds. The banning of Ethnic Studies, and books themselves, in Tuscon public schools. Just as the politicians in Israel who stroke their citizenry with calls for genocide of Palestinians and Africans, those politicians in the U.S. creating pogroms against non-white peoples are elected by majorities also. Settler occupation always leads to oppression.
The wars and poverty that come from neocolonialism create masses of displaced people. They end up mostly in the countries of the Global North because of the ability to get paid work to survive, in turn due to the availability of capital from the plunder of the Global South. Anti-Imperialists and national liberationists stand to end preventable human suffering caused by an unequal distribution of resources and power. All migrants and refugees should have safety guaranteed to them wherever they are. As long as imperialist countries destabilize peoples homelands, those peoples have a right to refuge. Peoples’ movements need to stand with oppressed peoples everywhere, against latent fascist violence by settler classes. Down with all settler states, I$rael and United Snakes!
Sources:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/africa/israel-deport-african-migrants
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/04/israel-migrant-hate
Very interesting and poignant critique of the zionist regime, and a good piece on how to understand settler societies around the globe. In your previous post, you delved into the political economy of imperialism through unequal exchange. That is a nail that should be hammered once and again into the coffin lid of social-imperialist revisionism. I think the work of Emmanuel, Amin and others should be explained in easily undertandable terms, when possible, to everyone. In this post I think you step into a different territory, that of downright racism, which of course interacts with class and national liberation struggle.
I mean outside of economic exploitation, which in the case of blacks, mexicans and others living inside oppressor nations might be arguable, there are reasons for considering many immigrants as potential allies on the proletarian camp.
Racism more often than not is linked to national oppression, and as J Sakai stated before race is often substituted for class in terms of settler societies. This is obviously linked to imperialism. As for immigrants and migrants many would be allies on the proletarian camp. They flee their homelands due to economic circumstances, they have a self interest in a more just and equitable world. Also the remittances they send back to their home countries aids the economies of those countries in major ways. As the working class in the First World gets more and more bourgeousified the capitalist system at the same time welcomes these migrants to provide necessary labor while creating chauvanistic backlashes among their populations. These contradictions can bring in many openings for revolutionary struggle.