For years now, there has been a growing population of African refugees and migrant workers living in south Tel Aviv. Coming from dangerous and difficult backgrounds, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, they come to Israel and are let in, many having been turned away by Egypt and other countries along the way. Each one’s story is more shocking and tragic than the next.
Many arrive with the intention to work, and work they do. All the more, they do the kind of manual labour that most unemployed Israelis wouldn’t even consider. So why the drama? Well it’s largely down to the increase in crime and violence that has accompanied their arrival. Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv (as well as, but to a lesser degree, those in Eilat, Arad and Jerusalem) are fed up. They don’t feel safe in their own neighbourhoods any more. They’re frustrated because the vast majority of the roughly 40,000 refugees in Israel are concentrated in their streets, whilst the rest of Israel continue to live life uninterfered. The situation has been escalating recently, with shocking incidents of attacks on refugees by Israeli residents of Tel Aviv, who are no longer just protesting, but have begun to throw Molotov cocktails and the like into the residence of the African population.
AFRICAN BOY PLAYING FOOTBALL
Taken on 4th April 2012, Levinsky Park, Tel Aviv
The situation is certainly a complex and problematic one. One that is all the more sensitive when you consider the Jewish people’s history of genocide, mistreatment and subsequent seek for asylum. Indeed, it was this shared history that brought the Africans and the Jews together last month. In the Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover), we remember our history of being slaves in Egypt and then being freed from slavery by God, through Moshe. The refugees in Israel too have fled dire states of war and famine, arriving in the Jewish state.
Israeli Jews and African refugees got together in Levinsky Park, the local hangout for the Africans, in the run up to Pesach, for a traditional seder meal. In what was a rare but beautiful moment, they shared their stories with one another and ate matzah (a symbol of affliction) together.
REFUGEE SEDER - holding up matzah, the bread of affliction
Taken on 4th April 2012, Levinsky Park, Tel Aviv
