In Terror in Tel Aviv I reported: "On April 27, 2012, five Molotov Cocktails were thrown in Shapira Neighborhood, a poor area in Tel Aviv's south. One of them hit a kindergarten, where children were sleeping (see picture); the others hit private homes. In one case, the terrorists opened the window of a house—where people were sleeping—and threw an ignited bottle inside. God's unsleeping angels made sure nobody was hurt. The event was barely mentioned in the Hebrew media and was completely ignored by the international one. The main report on the event was made by the Israeli website Maavak ("struggle" in Hebrew; www.maavak.org.il). I almost forgot to mention that the victims were black people; the attackers were Jews." The attacks displayed two characteristics that showed they weren't sporadic events. Attacking a kindergarten at midnight showed planning in the choice of the target; the use of Molotov Cocktails also proved premeditation. These weren't attacks performed by a redneck running amok and seeking a suitable victim. The Hebrew media hardly reported the event, and the Israeli administration didn't investigate the attacks properly. Yet, I had no way of proving my fears of these being planned events.

Shapira Neighborhood Kindergarten after Attack

Anti-African protests in Tel Aviv

Almost a month afterwards, on May 23, violent anti-African protests took place in Tel Aviv; 17 Jewish protesters were arrested by the police, which feared a new pogrom against the Africans living nearby. Tel Aviv is not La Paz (see Gas in La Paz); its denizens seldom protest. Yet, this protest was violent and racist as the picture at the right shows. Non-Israelis may be tempted to catalogue this as typical Israeli violence, not different from that seen against Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and many other places. Yet, the protest took place in the most cosmopolitan and tolerant city in Israel. This is odd; the openly racist slogans used in the protests do not fit the local culture. As in the Molotov Cocktails attack, these were signs of planning and premeditation. The racist ideology needed to be "cooked" in the area for a while in order to gather momentum for the violent events. The detained people were released after a few days and the event was forgotten; no organization was blamed. The only open action taken by the Israeli Administration with respect to the African workers was to speed up the construction of a fence separating Israel and Egypt. Later this year, Israel will finish building a fortified fence between the countries. It is mighty, much taller and more solid than the old fence separating Israel from Syria; one of its main goals is to stop the entrance of illegal African workers to Israel. In contrast, deportations of African workers seldom happen, irradiating a quiet tolerance of the Israeli Administration towards the modern builders of the Zionist dream. After all, they are hard workers, well-bahaved, and kind people.

Before turning to the rabbi's words, it is important to understand the true dimensions of the African scene in Tel Aviv. The attack was aimed at Sudanese and Eritrean refugees. In Israel there are several thousand (estimates vary between 4,000 and 8,000) people who have arrived from Sudan and are seeking refuge from the ongoing military conflicts in their home country. Small numbers of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees can also be found. All of them arrived by land, after a perilous trip across the Sinai and Negev deserts; reports on the horrors faced by them along the way should be enough to grant recognition of the survivors as refugees upon arrival. In order to accomplish the feat, they use the help of local Bedouins, the only masters of the desert (see Explosion in Sinai). Israel has formally recognized as refugees only a few hundred of them; the rest work as illegal workers, hiding in the vast population of foreign workers building up the Zionist dream. They replaced the Palestinians, who are not welcome anymore in Tel Aviv. In this precarious and rather violent condition, Sudanese workers face deportation back to war and death. To put things in proportions; these less than 10,000 refugees live in "Gush Dan," the metropolitan area with Tel Aviv at its center; it encompasses seven cities, and roughly 3 million people.

Anti-African protests in Tel Aviv