The headline brought me back to the race-riots of Detroit in my childhood. What a shameful and disgusting episode it was in the US's history when racism was mainstream, and abuse and alienation by skin color was rampant.
Not learning from our history (or even the world's history) it appears Israel's citizens seem hell bent on reliving our horrific past. How long does it take the World to learn that bigotry and clannishness by color, creed or sexual orientation is justifying brutalizing a fellow human?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
The protesters claim the Africans are responsible for a rise in crime, bearing signs saying "This is not Africa" and "Stop talking, start expelling".
"Blacks out!" shouted demonstrators in the crowd, while others yelled "Send the Sudanese back to Sudan", as other protesters derided the "bleeding-heart leftists" working to help them.
The Police stood by, and eventually arrested 17 of the worst offenders.
"A group of about 10 or 15 boys stopped one black kid cycling on his bike. They pulled him off and were punching and kicking him in his head. The police just stood and watched until it got really out of control."
Other witnesses described a gang assaulting a mother carrying a young baby so violently that she was forced to drop her child. Others stopped shuttle buses to search for migrant workers among their passengers.
Alabama anyone? Who would think that some 50 years after our own violent racist abuse of Black people in America, we would watch this scene replay, on what us again the lowest paid demographic... people doing migrant work to survive, and in this case many are refugees from the horrors of Sudan.
Like our own George Wallace, some of Israel's Politicians incited this with hysteria-driving rhetoric used solely to create anger at this fragile demographic. Remember this?
Peace Now, an Israeli human rights organisation, is calling for an investigation into whether the speakers at Wednesday night's rally, including Knesset ministers Miri Regev, Danny Danon, Yari Levin and Michael Ben-Ari, are guilty of incitement.
During her address, Ms Regev described illegal immigrants as a "cancer in our society".
Danny Danon, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, wrote in a Facebook status later the same evening: "Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv."
I guess I should not be surprised, for the US is still acting in ways horrific to humankind in our own borders, demonizing Mexican workers, both legal and illegal; profiling and abusing them. See Sheriff Joe in Arizona for living proof of that.
I have to shake my head and wonder. All the "haves" or even "kind-of haves" in the World love their cheap products, and manage to block out the exploitation those prices derive from both here and abroad to create them. Then when economic times get tough, the Elite Class incites resentment against the very exploited people for creating that crisis, when they are just its worst victims. We fall for it here, they are falling for it in Tel Aviv.
When will people learn it is not the migrant workers picking your fruit or olives for pennies a day, it is not the day laborer laying bricks under 100 degree skies ruining your economy. It is the very system of Capitalism and the enormous income divide between the Mega-business owning Mega-rich and the rest of us doing that.
They pull enough off the top of every thing sold - one CEO makes so much on average that you would have to work 3,489 years to make that. Quadruple that number for the lowest income people.
I understand that they have taught us to be afraid of one another. I understand that fear has bred real violence in cases.
I understand that People of Color seem to be fair game within our own borders by the police here still, just as Palestinians and Blacks are in Israel.
I understand some of you will start talking about secure borders and the flood of people that would come in if we didn't. But I don't agree. If we started making income equitable and war a crime, there would be no reason to emigrate. I would also remind you that both the US and Israel are based on fairly recent immigrations of people from a World History view. Nationalism in this light is the worst excuse for abusing others.
They only call it Class War when people fight back.
Which side are you on?
I mean, really, which side are WE on?
I want to see every human treated with respect, dignity, and a chance to make a living, and all that would be possible had we a system that did not allow the abject greed of the few to impoverish so many. A system in which the Upper Echelons did not use their media control to incite hate between the common people, the workers who should be united.
It is not the Sudanese at fault. Nor the Mexicans, Black Americans, or Palestinians that our world is turning to shit. It is not the average Mom, Dad, Son or Daughter either. Nor is it some obscure Afghani villager, or Iranian student. Can you not see what they are doing to the humans of this world?
It is the greed of the few, and the fact we LET them condition us into fear and loathing of one another.
Its time for the PEOPLE, the real HUMANS dying of this to say, "We kill no more for you. We hate no more for you. We let our brothers starve no more for you. We seek revenge no more for you."
Then, signs like this sad one I found on FB yesterday will no longer exist in this world.
I'm with the bleeding heart liberals in Israel. I'm with the Socialists in the US.
I know who's side I'm on.