This is why Israel is a Racist State – For Murdering an Asylum Seeker - 4 months – For Slapping a Soldier - 8 months

Israeli Who Attacked Asylum Seeker in 2015 Lynch Sentenced to Four Months in Prison

If there was one case which demonstrates why Israel is a racist state and why Zionism is a racist endeavour, then this is it.  You don’t need to have a great understanding of Israel’s laws, policies or regulations. Nowhere in Israeli law is it written down that a lynch mob that brutally murders a defenceless asylum seeker should receive a community sentence or a derisory prison sentence but Israel’s ‘justice’ system doesn’t need to be told what to do.

It comes automatically for Israel’s courts to sentence someone according to their ethnic origin and to make excuses for attacks on Palestinians or non-Jews.  That is, after all, what a racist state is all about. When Palestinians are murdered they are just a statistic.  When a Jewish settler is killed, note I don’t say murdered, then we hear about their family, their children, how wonderful they were, their sense of humour etc.  Palestinians however do not have children or personalities.

Palestinian attacks on Israeli occupiers of their land are acts of ‘terrorism’ for which life sentences of 30 or more years are passed, but the brutal slaying of someone whose only crime was to have escaped repression in his home country of Eritrea, falsely believing Israel’s claims to be a democratic state, is dealt with as if it were a traffic misdemeanour.

However when a year ago, Ahed Tamimi, a 16 year old Palestinian girl, slapped a heavily armed soldier who entered the grounds of her house in Bi’ilin, moments after her 15 year old cousin had nearly had his head blown off by a plastic bullet, she was given 8 months in prison by a military court.

No doubt the Zionists will find some base propaganda reason for the disparity in sentences. Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement will no doubt treat my criticism as ‘anti-Semitism’ as will Jack Mendel of the Jewish News.  

After all it well understood in Israel, because the Rabbis have often given expression to it, that a Jewish and non-Jewish life are not the same.  In thewords of Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi for Kiryat Arab and effectively the Jewish settlers, a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives (for some rabbis it is a million to one ratio).  According to former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu "the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.”

Momentum's racist head Jon Lansman is obsessed by a non-existent anti-semitism whilst ignoring a state based on lynch law and entrenched discrimination

In prioritising ‘anti-Semitism’ which barely exists over the very real situation of Apartheid violence in Israel Lansman is doing no more nor less than what the Labour Party has done historically, which is to give a free pass to the British Empire and colonialism.  The Labour Party’s opposition to Apartheid in South Africa was very recent and its opposition to colonialism was even more recent.  Lansman stands in a rich, racist tradition as do supporters of his in Momentum.

Lansman and the Jewish Labour Movement will dismiss all this as ‘anti-Semitism’ but we all know the smell of Apartheid. The veterans of the Apartheid struggle in South Africa certainly do.

Labour’s National Executive and the 150+ Councils up and down the country, to say nothing of the SNP government in Edinburgh are all accomplices in Israeli Apartheid and that should be our message for the coming year.

Tony Greenstein 

Israeli Who Attacked Asylum Seeker in 2015 Lynch Sentenced to Four Months in Prison

Defendant admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of plea deal reached last month. Nine people assaulted in 2015 an Eritrean asylum seeker they mistook for a terrorist who opened fire at a bus station

An Israeli man convicted of assaulting an Eritrean asylum seeker mistaken for a terrorist in 2015 was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison.

Haftom Zarhum died following a beating at the central bus station in the southern city of Be'er Sheva, but an autopsy of his body showed that he died of gunshots and not of the assault by nine people.

Be'er Shvea District Court sentenced the attacker, Evyatar Damari, who admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of a plea agreement reached last month and approved by the court.

At a hearing in the case last month, Damari told the court that he regretted his actions and would not repeat them.

CCTV footage shows Eritrean national shot and beaten in Be'er Sheva, October 18, 2015.

On October 18, 2015, a gunman later identified as Muhannad al-Okbi, a Bedouin from the Negev town of Hura who is an Israeli citizen, opened fire at the Be'er Sheva central bus station, killing a soldier and wounding 10 other people. Damari and eight others attacked Zarhum, mistakenly thinking he was the terrorist.

Security camera footage showed Damari kicking Zarhum after he had been shot. The prosecution in the case had initially sought to have Damari tried for aggravated intentional infliction of personal injury, which if convicted, could have had him sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. 

Haftom Zarhum, who was killed by a mob wrongly suspecting him of terrorism on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015.

Damari is in a poor emotional state and has deteriorated while his case has been pending. Two months ago, he threatened a member of the prosecution team in his case, prompting additional charges against him and an order that he remain in detention until that case is disposed of. 

His lawyer, Moshe Sorogovich, had asked the court to limit his client's sentence to just over a month at most and cited the case of another of Zarhum's assailants at the bus station, David Moyal, who in July was sentenced in a plea agreement to 100 days of community service. Moyal had hit Zarhum with a bench.

In addition to Damari and Moyal, two others were charged with assaulting Zarhum: A Golani brigade soldier by the name of Ya'akov Shamba and a prison service employee, Ronen Cohen.

The cases against Shamba and Cohen are still pending. At the trial of Shamba's case last month, two former Israeli army major generals testified that under the circumstances, in the midst of a terrorist attack, Shamba had acted in a level-headed manner as would have been expected of a combat soldier.

This is why Israel is a Racist State – For Murdering an Asylum Seeker - 4 months – For Slapping a Soldier - 8 months

Israeli Who Attacked Asylum Seeker in 2015 Lynch Sentenced to Four Months in Prison

If there was one case which demonstrates why Israel is a racist state and why Zionism is a racist endeavour, then this is it.  You don’t need to have a great understanding of Israel’s laws, policies or regulations. Nowhere in Israeli law is it written down that a lynch mob that brutally murders a defenceless asylum seeker should receive a community sentence or a derisory prison sentence but Israel’s ‘justice’ system doesn’t need to be told what to do.

It comes automatically for Israel’s courts to sentence someone according to their ethnic origin and to make excuses for attacks on Palestinians or non-Jews.  That is, after all, what a racist state is all about. When Palestinians are murdered they are just a statistic.  When a Jewish settler is killed, note I don’t say murdered, then we hear about their family, their children, how wonderful they were, their sense of humour etc.  Palestinians however do not have children or personalities.

Palestinian attacks on Israeli occupiers of their land are acts of ‘terrorism’ for which life sentences of 30 or more years are passed, but the brutal slaying of someone whose only crime was to have escaped repression in his home country of Eritrea, falsely believing Israel’s claims to be a democratic state, is dealt with as if it were a traffic misdemeanour.

However when a year ago, Ahed Tamimi, a 16 year old Palestinian girl, slapped a heavily armed soldier who entered the grounds of her house in Bi’ilin, moments after her 15 year old cousin had nearly had his head blown off by a plastic bullet, she was given 8 months in prison by a military court.

No doubt the Zionists will find some base propaganda reason for the disparity in sentences. Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement will no doubt treat my criticism as ‘anti-Semitism’ as will Jack Mendel of the Jewish News. 

After all it well understood in Israel, because the Rabbis have often given expression to it, that a Jewish and non-Jewish life are not the same.  In the words of Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi for Kiryat Arab and effectively the Jewish settlers, a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives (for some rabbis it is a million to one ratio).  According to former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu " the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.”

Momentum's racist head Jon Lansman is obsessed by a non-existent anti-semitism whilst ignoring a state based on lynch law and entrenched discrimination

In prioritising ‘anti-Semitism’ which barely exists over the very real situation of Apartheid violence in Israel Lansman is doing no more nor less than what the Labour Party has done historically, which is to give a free pass to the British Empire and colonialism.  The Labour Party’s opposition to Apartheid in South Africa was very recent and its opposition to colonialism was even more recent.  Lansman stands in a rich, racist tradition as do supporters of his in Momentum.

Lansman and the Jewish Labour Movement will dismiss all this as ‘anti-Semitism’ but we all know the smell of Apartheid. The veterans of the Apartheid struggle in South Africa certainly do.

Labour’s National Executive and the 150+ Councils up and down the country, to say nothing of the SNP government in Edinburgh are all accomplices in Israeli Apartheid and that should be our message for the coming year.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli Who Attacked Asylum Seeker in 2015 Lynch Sentenced to Four Months in Prison

Defendant admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of plea deal reached last month. Nine people assaulted in 2015 an Eritrean asylum seeker they mistook for a terrorist who opened fire at a bus station

An Israeli man convicted of assaulting an Eritrean asylum seeker mistaken for a terrorist in 2015 was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison.

Haftom Zarhum died following a beating at the central bus station in the southern city of Be'er Sheva, but an autopsy of his body showed that he died of gunshots and not of the assault by nine people.

Be'er Shvea District Court sentenced the attacker, Evyatar Damari, who admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of a plea agreement reached last month and approved by the court.

At a hearing in the case last month, Damari told the court that he regretted his actions and would not repeat them.

CCTV footage shows Eritrean national shot and beaten in Be'er Sheva, October 18, 2015.

On October 18, 2015, a gunman later identified as Muhannad al-Okbi, a Bedouin from the Negev town of Hura who is an Israeli citizen, opened fire at the Be'er Sheva central bus station, killing a soldier and wounding 10 other people. Damari and eight others attacked Zarhum, mistakenly thinking he was the terrorist.

Security camera footage showed Damari kicking Zarhum after he had been shot. The prosecution in the case had initially sought to have Damari tried for aggravated intentional infliction of personal injury, which if convicted, could have had him sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Haftom Zarhum, who was killed by a mob wrongly suspecting him of terrorism on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015.

Damari is in a poor emotional state and has deteriorated while his case has been pending. Two months ago, he threatened a member of the prosecution team in his case, prompting additional charges against him and an order that he remain in detention until that case is disposed of. 

His lawyer, Moshe Sorogovich, had asked the court to limit his client's sentence to just over a month at most and cited the case of another of Zarhum's assailants at the bus station, David Moyal, who in July was sentenced in a plea agreement to 100 days of community service. Moyal had hit Zarhum with a bench.

In addition to Damari and Moyal, two others were charged with assaulting Zarhum: A Golani brigade soldier by the name of Ya'akov Shamba and a prison service employee, Ronen Cohen.

The cases against Shamba and Cohen are still pending. At the trial of Shamba's case last month, two former Israeli army major generals testified that under the circumstances, in the midst of a terrorist attack, Shamba had acted in a level-headed manner as would have been expected of a combat soldier.

African Refugees Get No Reprieve from Israel’s Racist Rage

Another brilliant article from the indefatigable Israeli-Canadian campaigner, David Sheen whose videos on Youtube are brilliant. See e.g. War on Africans 

Nothing better demonstrates the vicious racism of the Israeli state and what Zionism has led to than its treatment of the African refugees from Eritrea and Sudan.  Their crime is two fold - they are not Jewish and they are Black - an unforgivable combination.

They are called ‘infiltrators’ in a conscious echo of the term that was used to describe Palestinian refugees trying to return to their lands after 1948.  Thousands were murdered in cold blood as the Israeli Labour founders of Israel sought to ensure that Israel was as Jewish as possible.

Challenging the racist Zionist description of Black African refugees

Why 'infiltrators'?  Because they are non-Jews infiltrating a Jewish state and thereby making it less Jewish.

Today Africans fleeing from the vicious police state in Eritrea and the genocide in Sudan are refused en masse the right to stay in Israel.  Like the Jews of Russia and Poland in the last century they have  been subject to vicious pogroms led by the Israeli government.

Those with illusions in the Israeli Labour Party should note that the ILP has given full support to Netanyahu. 

The fortunes of the African refugee community targeted by the Israeli government for deportation have swung wildly in recent days

April 23, 2018 David Sheen The Electronic Intifada

African asylum seekers protest against Israel’s deportation plan, South Tel Aviv, 25 February. , Oren Ziv ActiveStills

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first announced a United Nations-backed deal to resettle some of them in the West, but then quickly retracted the plan after right-wing Israelis complained that the deal was too generous to asylum seekers.“I listened closely to many comments about the agreement. As a result, after reevaluating the advantages and disadvantages, I decided to cancel the deal,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page.

“Despite the growing legal and international limitations, we will continue to act with determination to exhaust all possibilities at our disposal to remove the infiltrators,” he added.

African refugees walk out of Holot

In November, it was reported that the Netanyahu government secured agreements with unnamed African nations for the latter to take in many of the approximately 40,000 refugees remaining in Israel, ostensibly in exchange for a fee of $5,000 per head.

But Netanyahu’s plans for expedited deportation were quashed after protests by refugee rights activists in Israel and abroad shamed those countries, now known to be Rwanda and Uganda, into disclaiming the scheme.

Unable to deliver on his promise to quickly expel all the Africans, Netanyahu grudgingly agreed to a plan brokered by the UN refugee agency UNHCR which, if carried out, would have seen thousands of the refugees resettled in Western nations in the coming years.

Eritreans mourn the victim of lynch mob 

But Germany and Italy, two of the countries cited by Netanyahu as committed to take in asylum seekers from Israel, quickly denied having ever agreed to accept refugees under the scheme.

Opposition to expulsion

Abandoned on all sides within hours of announcing the agreement, Netanyahu walked back the deal, first in part, then in whole, suspending it, and then canceling it altogether.

Although the deal would have provided political cover for Netanyahu’s planned expulsion of the refugees, his political camp vigorously opposed it because it also committed Israel to allowing around 20,000 Africans – mainly women and children – to remain in Israel for another five years and to help them move to parts of the country other than South Tel Aviv, where most of the community is concentrated.

Although a January poll showed that 66 percent of Israeli Jews support Netanyahu’s efforts to expel the refugees to Africa, a recent survey found that positions are reversed in those very areas where residents were more likely to actually encounter any of them.

A March poll revealed that in the greater Tel Aviv area, opposition to the expulsion reached 68 percent, and in the long-neglected neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv with the largest African populations, it hit 71 percent.

refugees at detention centre Holot

On 24 February and again on 24 March, some 20,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv to demonstrate in solidarity with the refugee community and demand that the Israeli government cancel plans to deport them, and instead work to improve the lives of all residents of the city’s delapidated southern district.

Protesters have criticized the Israeli government for having one of the lowest refugee acceptance rates in the world – less than 0.5 percent.

But Netanyahu has claimed that the non-Jewish refugees – about half Christian and half Muslim – pose a threat to Israel’s “national identity.”

In that sense Israel regards them similarly to how it has viewed indigenous Palestinians since its founding, when it expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and barred them from returning because they are not Jews.

And local racists have long labored to shore up support for Netanyahu’s anti-African policies, and to demand that even crueler measures be taken against them.

“Mortal threat”

Shlomo Maslawi, representing Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party on the Tel Aviv city council, told Israeli TV that he would oppose Netanyahu’s now retracted plan, even though it included promises to invest in the overburdened neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, until “the Eritreans are gone, down to the last Eritrean – only then will there be rehabilitation.”

In recent weeks, as refugee rights advocates across the country and around the world stepped up their protests, forcing the African governments conspiring with Israel to deny their involvement, Netanyahu lashed out at the refugees, smearing them as a mortal threat.

If he had not built a high-tech fence on Israel’s southern border five years ago, Netanyahu told an audience in March, the number of Africans in the country would be significantly higher, a condition he deemed “much worse” than “severe attacks by Sinai terrorists.”

Coming under rare criticism from some of Israel’s staunchest American defenders, other government officials also doubled down to defend the mass deportations to African states.

Interior minister Aryeh Deri told Israeli army radio that to take these asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, and expel them to Rwanda and Uganda, would merely mean returning them “to their natural place.”

Avraham Neguise, currently Israel’s only Black legislator, a Jew of Ethiopian origin, also spoke out in support of the deportation to Rwanda and Uganda, telling Israel’s i24 TV, “Well, they came from Africa, and they’re going back to Africa.”

Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel’s two national chief rabbis, also heaped scorn on the Africans in a sermon last month, in which he called Black people “monkeys” and the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word.

His fellow chief rabbi, Yisrael Lau, had already used that Hebrew version of the N-world to describe Black people, on his very first day in office.

Vigilante violence

These and many other incidents of anti-African incitement have ramped up racism against the refugees. The rage against asylum seekers has grown into a political force capable even of pressuring Netanyahu to cancel Israel’s international agreements.

But the most frightening effects of increased anti-Black sentiment are reserved for the refugees themselves.

Vigilante violence against African refugees has become increasingly common in recent years.

In 2012, an Israeli firebombed a daycare for the young children of African refugees, and in 2014, an Israeli man was indicted for stabbing an Eritrean baby in the head.

Israel's Labour 'Opposition' is as racist as Likud

According to prosecutors, the man later stated: “I attacked Black terrorists, there was a Black baby, they said that a Black baby, Blacks in general, are terrorists.”

The firebomber received only community service, while the stabber was sent for psychiatric treatment.

Since that time, in separate incidents, two refugees – Haftom Zarhum from Eritrea and Babikir Ali Adham-Uvdo from Sudan – were beaten to death in public places by Israeli mobs.

The charges against Adham-Uvdo’s killers were reduced from murder.

One of the killers is a minor whose sentence for “intentional injury” to Adham-Uvdo is yet to be determined. The adult assailant received a maximum jail sentence of 10 years for manslaughter in a plea bargain, although he will probably be released in just a few years.

An Israeli court is currently offering Zarhum’s killers community service.

Coerced to self-deport

This anti-African incitement, coupled with the news that African refugees, including some recently expelled from Israel, have experienced torture, extortion and detention in Libya, where open-air slave markets have been documented, is taking a toll not only on adults, but on Israeli youth, as well.

In February, one refugee confessed that a group of Israeli schoolchildren had approached him on a public bus and asked him, “How much can we sell you for?”

With the Rwanda-Uganda deal shelved in shame, and the UN deal for resettlement in the West now derailed by Netanyahu himself, the fate of the 40,000 African refugees left in Israel is once again unclear.

In lieu of the UN deal, Netanyahu is now reportedly pressuring coalition partners to reopen the Holot internment camp that it closed down only last month in anticipation of the planned expulsions.

Starting in December 2013, Israel rounded up thousands of African men into this detention center, in order to pressure them to self-deport.

By Netanyahu’s count, the government was able to coerce more than 20,000 to leave Israel in this way – a third of the African refugee community.

When the Israeli high court forbade the government from keeping those men incarcerated there for more than a year, the latter banned the refugees who it was compelled to release from moving back to Tel Aviv or Eilat, the two Israeli cities with the largest asylum-seeker communities at the time.

As Israel released Holot’s remaining inmates in March, it informed them that the list of cities they were now forbidden from living or working in had mushroomed from two to seven, adding to the list Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, Netanya and Jerusalem.

Now Netanyahu’s coalition partners say they may now pass an even harsher version of the so-called Anti-Infiltration Law which they have used to criminalize refugees.

The new bill would build in measures to insulate it from being overturned by the high court.

If they follow through on their threat to neuter the court’s powers, there would no longer be any legal impediment to jailing the African refugees indefinitely in Holot until they agree to self-deport to whatever destination Israel coerces them to go to.

David Sheen is an independent writer and filmmaker. Born in Toronto, Canada, Sheen now lives in Dimona. His website is www.davidsheen.com and he can be followed on Twitter: @davidsheen.