Germs in the body politic..?
Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ's (yes, his pop is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose novels The Devil On the Cross [1980; Gikuyu or Kikuyu title: Caitaani mutharaba-Ini] and Weep Not, Child [1964] have been sitting unread on my shelves for close to ten years now) has an interesting column (the piece is titled "The Promised Land") in the current issue of the BBC's Focus On Africa magazine (the October - December 2012 issue [Vol. 23, No. 4]); as it's not posted either on "Auntie Beeb's" site or on the author's site, I thought I'd quote extensively from it:
"The Israeli government has been giving the 60,000 Africans living illegally in Israel two choices -- take $1,200 and be flown to your country of origin, or face deportation. Large detention centres to house the Africans are being built and according to the local Haaretz newspaper: 'Around 1,000 migrants have been flown back to South Sudan so far.'
"The language being used to justify the deportations is scary in its blatant racist dehumanisation of the Africans. For example, The Guardian newspaper quotes Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, saying: 'Why should we provide them with jobs? I'm sick of the bleeding hearts, including politicians. Jobs would settle them here, they'll make babies, and that offer will only result in hundreds of thousands more coming over here.' Miri Regev, an Israeli legislator, has also been quoted by The New York Times describing the Sudanese as 'a cancer in our body.' And a poll taken after her statement showed that more than half of Jewish Israelis agreed with her.
"In justifying the deportations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: 'If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.' And elsewhere he described them as 'a scourge' and 'infiltrators.' The rhetoric has paid off -- violence and racism against the immigrants has risen to such an extent that African diplomats from countries like Ghana and Kenya have complained about no longer feeling safe walking the streets of Tel Aviv or jogging. A number of apartment blocks housing African immigrants have been fire-bombed.
"Yet, studies in Israel show that crime is actually lower within the African immigrant communities than in the larger Israeli population. But the Israeli government will not see the immigrants for what they really are -- non-political actors, families composed of fathers and mothers and little children who have had to flee certain death. These Africans are not in Israel in search of upper-class lives, they are there because it is the only way to save their lives."
Personally, I find it deeply ironic that a Jew -- a member of a religious / racial minority that has itself been demonized and vilified for centuries as a "scourge," a "disease," and "vermin" -- should turn around and paint another minority group as a "cancer." (Much as I was honestly shocked when a Russian Jew of my acquaintance, who married a Muslim from Azerbaijan and lived there until the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan twenty-odd years ago forced them flee the country, denied the Armenian Holocaust perpetrated by the Ottomans in the closing years of and the years following World War I, insisting that the Armenians "made up" or "exaggerated" the death toll and the causes of death.)
One final paragraph from Mukoma's column (his father's works are usually alphabetized under "Ngũgĩ"; sorry if I've erred in assuming that "Mukoma" is his surname):
"In my opinion, no matter the irony, a history of the Holocaust and present-day anti-Semitism does not automatically mean that Israel should have more empathy than the US for illegal immigration; or that the US, because of its history of immigration, should do more than Kenya or Nigeria. No one country should have a higher or lesser moral obligation than another to do the right thing. But like every other state, Israel has a duty to respect and protect the human rights of those seeking help within its borders. There cannot be a way around this."
Hopefully the entire column will eventually be posted, either on the author's site, or on the BBC's.
"The Israeli government has been giving the 60,000 Africans living illegally in Israel two choices -- take $1,200 and be flown to your country of origin, or face deportation. Large detention centres to house the Africans are being built and according to the local Haaretz newspaper: 'Around 1,000 migrants have been flown back to South Sudan so far.'
"The language being used to justify the deportations is scary in its blatant racist dehumanisation of the Africans. For example, The Guardian newspaper quotes Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, saying: 'Why should we provide them with jobs? I'm sick of the bleeding hearts, including politicians. Jobs would settle them here, they'll make babies, and that offer will only result in hundreds of thousands more coming over here.' Miri Regev, an Israeli legislator, has also been quoted by The New York Times describing the Sudanese as 'a cancer in our body.' And a poll taken after her statement showed that more than half of Jewish Israelis agreed with her.
"In justifying the deportations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: 'If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.' And elsewhere he described them as 'a scourge' and 'infiltrators.' The rhetoric has paid off -- violence and racism against the immigrants has risen to such an extent that African diplomats from countries like Ghana and Kenya have complained about no longer feeling safe walking the streets of Tel Aviv or jogging. A number of apartment blocks housing African immigrants have been fire-bombed.
"Yet, studies in Israel show that crime is actually lower within the African immigrant communities than in the larger Israeli population. But the Israeli government will not see the immigrants for what they really are -- non-political actors, families composed of fathers and mothers and little children who have had to flee certain death. These Africans are not in Israel in search of upper-class lives, they are there because it is the only way to save their lives."
Personally, I find it deeply ironic that a Jew -- a member of a religious / racial minority that has itself been demonized and vilified for centuries as a "scourge," a "disease," and "vermin" -- should turn around and paint another minority group as a "cancer." (Much as I was honestly shocked when a Russian Jew of my acquaintance, who married a Muslim from Azerbaijan and lived there until the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan twenty-odd years ago forced them flee the country, denied the Armenian Holocaust perpetrated by the Ottomans in the closing years of and the years following World War I, insisting that the Armenians "made up" or "exaggerated" the death toll and the causes of death.)
One final paragraph from Mukoma's column (his father's works are usually alphabetized under "Ngũgĩ"; sorry if I've erred in assuming that "Mukoma" is his surname):
"In my opinion, no matter the irony, a history of the Holocaust and present-day anti-Semitism does not automatically mean that Israel should have more empathy than the US for illegal immigration; or that the US, because of its history of immigration, should do more than Kenya or Nigeria. No one country should have a higher or lesser moral obligation than another to do the right thing. But like every other state, Israel has a duty to respect and protect the human rights of those seeking help within its borders. There cannot be a way around this."
Hopefully the entire column will eventually be posted, either on the author's site, or on the BBC's.