African // Current TV

Hate rally against Africans in Tel Aviv caught on video as Haaretz deletes article about it

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz mysteriously removed from its website an article exposing atrocious Israeli racism against black people just hours after it was published.

The article by David Sheen – a copy of which was made by The Electronic Intifada before Haaretz deleted it – reported on a rally by Israeli Jews on Sunday in Tel Aviv against African immigrants, demanding that they be sent home because Israel is a “Jewish state.” The rally was addressed by Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the Israeli parliament from the National Union party which also favors expelling Palestinians.

The deleted article stated:

The demonstrators chanted “The people demand the expulsion of the infiltrators,” “We have come to expunge the darkness,” and “Tel Aviv is for Jews, Sudan is for Sudanese.”

Ben Ari criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu for allowing African migrants to remain in the county after they had already entered in recent years. He called Netanyahu’s cabinet “the blackest government ever for Tel Aviv.”

Shocking video of hate rally
Video taken at the rally and posted on YouTube by Sheen, shows some of the vile racism, including by Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari.

Protesters can be heard chanting such slogans as, “Sudanese to Sudan, Tel Aviv is for Jews” and “Their place is in Sudan, not here. This is a Jewish state!”

“Restrict their movements”

Ben-Ari then praised the mayor of the Red Sea port city of Eilat for his alleged harsh treatment of Africans. The mayor, Ben-Ari said, “is doing a great job with the Africans there. I only wish we did the same here in Tel Aviv. He doesn’t allow them to attend schools, he restricts their movements, he knows what to do.”

Africans ‘bad for property values’

“Disgusting! Why should my son go to school with 30 Sudanese in a class?”

The same woman adds, “Let’s see you take them back home to your neighborhood and then we’ll see you complain that your property values are dropping.”The Israeli newspaper Haaretz mysteriously removed from its website an article... more

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Anti-African Rally in Tel Aviv

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'POV: Mugabe and the White African' on PBS

Anyone else watch this? Seal Six needs to take down Mugabe's ass.

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

July 26, 2011

"Mugabe and the White African," which makes its television premiere Tuesday night on the PBS series "POV," is a documentary film by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson about Zimbabwean Mike Campbell, who took Robert Mugabe's government to court in an effort to save his family farm and to have Mugabe's "land reform" program declared officially illegal. Campbell, who died in April at age 78 from what his family described as the lingering effects of a beating by Mugabe loyalists, won that battle, though anyone with a lick of sense can see that he was bound to lose the war.

The battle, however, is the subject of the film, which is cut to build toward a moment of triumph. Campbell, who had raised mangoes and corn on his Mount Carmel farm since 1974 — and of which he became legal owner, post-Zimbabwean independence, in 1980 — became well-known, even before this film, as a last, nearly lone voice of refusal.

"It's quite surreal that someone who is as gentle at heart as Mike is about to take on a man who has brought death to thousands," Campbell's son-in-law Ben Freeth says as they head off to what they believe will be their day in court, before the Southern African Development Community Tribunal in Namibia.

It is hard not to sympathize with its protagonists: Mugabe's government targeted white land owners exclusively in its expropriations; it has Campbell, his wife, Angela, and Freeth attacked. And the white-haired Campbell possesses a sangfroid that seems cinematically superhuman. ("I don't think there's much use getting excited," he says, told of armed men outside. "I'll go out when I finish my drink.") He is pictured as a good boss, as well, a color-blind man in love with his country.

"I happen to be white, so I'm a white African," says Campbell, who was born in what was then Southern Rhodesia.

The subtler shadings of this question are not explored. Indeed, though its case seems clear-cut, there are problems with the film. Some were surely a byproduct of its semi-covert production: the Mugabe government would have no interest in stating its case for a film critical, or even impartially interested, in its practices; it is a dictatorship that uses violence to maintain power. (Its legal team walks out of the tribunal when its request to further delay the case is refused.) But some are structural: I felt at times that I was watching a sort of commercial, a document without historical or wider contemporary context whose contrasting images of prosperity and ruin told a story of white capability and black chaos. (Freeth likens Zimbabwe to a football game without rules or referees.)

It is oddly lacking in black African voices. From Campbell's side there is really only his South African instructing attorney, Elize Angula; and from his opponents' side there is the man who believes he is the owner of Campbell's property, the son of a high-ranking official in the ruling party. Mugabe himself is present in film clips and sound bites to which he brings the crazy: "If rigging the elections means winning the elections through majority voting then let it be."

Whenever Campbell or (mostly) Freeth are seen with their black workers, the workers are mostly talked at, not with. ("We are all children of God," says Freeth. "We can all live here together.") Whether or not that accurately represents their relationship, there is something in these scenes that smacks of the very sort of colonial paternalism that African liberation movements gave the lie to, and from an American perspective, reminds one of the false equivalencies of Jim Crow.Anyone else watch this? Seal Six needs to take down Mugabe's ass. By Robert... more