MIDDLE EAST: Violence erupts overnight as hundreds of Israelis demonstrate against African migrants in southern Tel Aviv

Record ID: 348523

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: Violence erupts overnight as hundreds of Israelis demonstrate against African migrants in southern Tel Aviv
  • Date: 25th May 2012
  • Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (MAY 24, 2012) (REUTERS) ORIT MAROM, PUBLIC ACTIVITY CO-ORDINATOR FROM 'ASSAF' REFUGEE AID ORGANISATION, SITTING IN OFFICE MAROM WRITING (SOUNDBITE) (Hebrew) ORIT MAROM, PUBLIC ACTIVITY CO-ORDINATOR FROM 'ASSAF' REFUGEE AID ORGANISATION, SAYING: "The situation in the (south Tel Aviv) neighbourhoods is very difficult, but of course this is not a justifi
  • Embargoed: 9th June 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5URS582Q8YGH2MOU6GHB5ZAJ5
  • Story Text: Long-simmering tensions between Israelis and African migrants spilled when a rally against the foreign influx in a Tel Aviv tenement late on Wednesday (May 23) turned into an anti-African rampage.
    Police said 20 people were arrested for assault and vandalism. Trash cans were set alight, storefront windows were broken and a crowd attacked an African driving through the area, breaking his car's windows. No serious injuries were reported.
    Orit Marom from "Assaf" refugee aid organisation, condemned the violence and called on the Israeli government to solve the issue.
    "The situation in the (south Tel Aviv) neighbourhoods is very difficult, but of course this is not a justification for such racism, violence and riots. We have been saying all along that this is a ticking bomb, we have been saying all along that the Israeli government must address this issue," Marom said.
    Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai who spoke in parliament on Wednesday, said the growing community of Sudanese and Eritrean border-jumpers were a crime risk jeopardizing the Jewish state.
    "We are not racists. We will take care of any refugee which is really a refugee. But we will keep the Jewish majority in the state of Israel. We will guard the Zionist project, if we don't want another war of Independence in a few years. And this is not an exaggeration," said Yishai, who heads a party run by rabbis in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative coalition.
    "After a year of struggle and harsh criticism against me, I was not broken, deterred or despaired. And God willing I will not deter for a second. I will be given all the means and I'm working to get all the means and it's not easy. If I will be given all the means without exception, in less than a year, there will not be even one infiltrator left in the land of Israel," he added.
    Fleeing poverty, fighting and authoritarian rule, some 60,000 people from Eritrea, Sudan and what is now South Sudan have crossed illegally into Israel through the relatively porous desert border with Egypt in recent years.
    That has jarred the Jewish state, with its small and already ethnically fraught citizen population of 7.5 million. Some Israelis warn of a gathering demographic and economic crisis while others argue that country born of the Holocaust has a special responsibility to offer foreigners sanctuary.
    Fleeing poverty, fighting and authoritarian rule, some 60,000 people from Eritrea, Sudan and what is now South Sudan have crossed illegally into Israel through the relatively porous desert border with Egypt in recent years.
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