Occupied Palestine | فلسطين

Israelis Hold Racist Demonstrations against Migrant Workers, Palestinians

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 16:26 Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Israeli cities were swept up this week with racist demonstrations calling for the deportation of migrant workers and asylum seekers and the non-rental or sale of land and flats to Palestinians and “foreigners”.

In Tel Aviv, hundreds of protesters took to the streets last night (21 December), demanding the deportation of asylum seekers and migrant workers, and petitioning local landlords to refrain from renting flats to “infiltrators”.


And hundreds gathered at a demonstration in the coastal city of Bat Yam (south of Tel Aviv) on Monday evening (20 December) to protest the presence of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the city, and to warn against the “defiling” of Jewish girls by Palestinian men.

Flyers announcing the demonstration noted that “ Arabs are taking over Bat Yam, buying and renting apartments from Jews and taking Jewish girls, whom they defile.”


This is a harsh and fateful war, maybe the toughest since the State was founded,” claimed Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, one of the leaders of the demonstration.


These protests come just weeks after 50 state-employed rabbis issued a letter prohibiting Jews from renting or selling property to non-Jews, and just one day after Israel’s Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi called on legislators to pass a law making it easier to deport those lacking documents.


Israel recently began constructing a wall along its border with Egypt in an attempt to keep asylum seekers out. “The fence will be a better obstacle, but will not completely prevent infiltration into Israel,” Ashkenazi noted.


Public expressions of racist positions have become more acceptable since the February 2007 elections in Israel, after which the current government – the most right-wing in Israel’s history – took power. Proposals to prohibit public commemorations of the Palestinian Naqba, require loyalty oaths to Israel as a Jewish state and prohibit Palestinian Jerusalemites from serving as tour guides,  amongst others, have mushroomed under Netanyahu’s government.


Israelis Hold Racist Demonstrations against Migrant Workers, Palestinians.