"WE SHALL not be a normal people, until we have Jewish whores and Jewish thieves in the Land of Israel," our national poet, Haim Nahman Bialik, said some 80 years ago.
This dream has come true. We have Jewish murderers, Jewish robbers and Jewish whores (though most prostitutes in Israel are imported by international slave traders from Eastern Europe through the Sinai border).
But Bialik was too unambitious. He should have added: We shall not become a normal people until we have Jewish Neo-Nazis and Jewish concentration camps.
THE CENTRAL news item nowadays in all our electronic and print media is the terrible danger of "illegal" African migrants.
African refugees and job seekers are drawn to Israel for several reasons, none of which is an ardent belief in Zionism.
The first is geographical. Israel is the only country with a European standard of living that can be reached from Africa without crossing a sea. Africans can easily reach Egypt, and then they have only to cross the Sinai desert to get to the Israeli border.
The desert is the home of Bedouin tribes, for whom smuggling is an age-old occupation. Whether Libyan weapons for Hamas in Gaza, Ukrainian women for the brothels of Tel Aviv or job seekers from Sudan -- for good money, the Bedouin will get them all to their destination. On the way they may hold them for ransom or rape the women.
The Africans -- mainly from North and South Sudan and Eritrea -- are attracted by the Israeli Labor market. Israelis have long since ceased to do the menial jobs. They need people to wash the dishes in the posh restaurants, clean their homes and carry the heavy loads in the markets.
For years, these jobs were done by Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. After the intifadas, our government put an end to this. The Africans fill their place.
They are, of course, paid what Israelis consider hunger wages, but enough to enable the migrants to send money back to their families. Small sums of dollars look like fortunes back home.
To enable them to send the money, the migrants lead a dog's life. Almost all of them are single men, crammed into dirty old houses in the slums of Tel Aviv and other towns, ogling the local girls, getting drunk for recreation.
The Israeli inhabitants of these slums, the poorest of the poor, hate them. They accuse them of all kinds of crimes, including rape, violent quarrels and murder. They also believe that they carry dangerous diseases which are almost unknown in Israel, such as malaria and tuberculosis. Unlike Israelis, they have not been inoculated at birth.
All these accusations are, of course, vastly exaggerated. But one can understand the Israeli slum-dwellers who have to live with poor foreigners with whom they have no communication.
In such circumstances, racism flourishes. The Africans are easily recognized by their skin. The usual racist verbiage -- "They rape our women," "They are all carrying deadly diseases," "They are like animals" abounds, added to a special Israeli one: "They endanger the Jewish State."
All in all, there are now some 60 thousand Africans in Israel, to which must be added about 3,000 newcomers every month. There are also large numbers of ("legal") Thais who work in agriculture, Chinese and Romanians in the building industry, Philippinos aiding the sick and elderly.
(A current joke: An old Palmachnik -- member of the pre-state illegal military organization -- attends a veterans' reunion and exclaims: "Wow, I didn't know there were so many Philippinos in the Palmach!")
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