TEL-AVIV, February 24—Over 20,000 demonstrators held a mass rally here against the government’s deportation plan—a plan that forces refugees to get out or go to jail. It was a multiracial crowd at the rally—primarily asylum seekers from countries in Africa and Jewish workers. Black and white, citizens and asylum seekers, stood together in solidarity to smash the government’s racism.
There are approximately 35,300 African asylum seekers living in Israel. Most fled from genocide in South Sudan and from fascism in Eritrea. The Israeli government sells weapons to both the belligerents in South Sudan and to the Eritrean regime, where it also maintains a covert military base (Haaretz, 12/2012).
In both cases, the regimes use these arms to commit atrocities on a monstrous scale: genocide and systematic rape in South Sudan and fascist slavery in Eritrea. People flee these countries—risking death at the border and along the way—and seek political asylum elsewhere. Israel ignores requests for asylum, and at best, these asylum seekers only gain temporary work visas.
Racism used to divide workers
The Israeli ruling class pushes anti-African racism—it is highly profitable for them. An undocumented African refugee has no real labor rights; bosses often pay them less than the minimum wage and no benefits. Even with a temporary work visa, most are unable to demand their rights from their employers. Many work in restaurants or housekeeping for very long hours at meager pay. Not knowing the language, many are unaware of their rights. In short, paradise for parasitic bosses looking for cheap wage-slaves.
A large majority of asylum seekers live in South Tel-Aviv, in working-class neighborhoods that have suffered decades of neglect by the ruling class. Drugs and prostitution are very common. Infrastructure is bad and schooling is inadequate. The ruling class dumped the refugees, bused directly from the border, into these slums. The bosses’ biggest fear is Black and white residents fighting together for their neighborhoods. Thus, local fascists pushed virulent racist propaganda against Black workers, painting them as “rapists” and “thugs” who “carry diseases.” This often involves the n-word and other derogatory terms. This has already led to violent attacks by fascist youth.
With fascist support, Israel now wants to deport these asylum seekers to Rwanda. The government claims that this would be a good place to resettle them. However, in reality, Rwanda also expels refugees, and they end up sold into chattel slavery or murdered (Aljazeera, 11/29). This is the fate awaiting these refugees, including many women and children, if deported. To pressure them into “consenting” to this deportation, the government began to round up refugees and send them to the Holot “residential facility,” which is nothing but a concentration camp in the Negev desert, where conditions are deplorable.
Workers reject racist lies
But the working class has had enough of this racist crap. Contrary to fascist propaganda about “local residents threatened by blacks,” the working class from South Tel-Aviv showed solidarity with their neighbors at this Saturday’s rally. The people are uniting. Working-class multi-racial solidarity and unity sent a message to the bosses’ politicians and pundits, as well as to their fascist thugs. The message is: the people will not accept these racist lies. That multiracial unity is the key to putting fear into the ruling class.
When the working class unites, and sees that workers’ struggles have no borders and that workers around the world can fight alongside each other against the ruling classes of every country, then we can win a world run by and for the working class. The ruling class creates the conditions that force workers to flee for their lives, the ruling class creates the borders that allow them to attack workers when they do, and the ruling class pushes the nationalism that convinces us that workers in different countries are enemies. We can and must smash these ideas and fight back. Some of the demonstrators brought red flags—because communism is the way to smash the ruling class once and for all—and their oppression and exploitation of workers.