While Israel likes to present itself as a ‘defender’ of the Jewish people, its treatment of Jews of African background presents a different reality.
On April 28, Israel ordered the deportation of at least 46 families of African settlers residing in occupied Palestine.
According to the Associated Press, “the African Hebrew Israelites began arriving in Israel in 1969, following Ben Carter, a Chicago steelworker who renamed himself Ben Ammi Ben Israel and claimed to be God’s representative on earth. But Israel wasn’t sure what to make of the newcomers, who arrived on tourist visas, adopted Hebrew names and a West African style of dress. The government was unsure whether they qualified for citizenship under the country’s “Law of Return,” which is granted to almost any Jew who requests it.”
After decades in occupied Palestine, it is mainly the Africans who are being deported from Israel, despite being welcomed initially to depopulate Palestine of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.
There are frequent episodes of arrests and deportations of African settlers from Israel and systematic discrimination against them is a very common occurrence.
To informed observers, Israel’s decision is not surprising.
According to the BBC, “in the 1990s the Israeli national blood bank had routinely destroyed blood donated by Ethiopian Israelis for fear of HIV”.
Clashes between the African community and Zionist forces are also a regular occurrence due to police brutality against the African community in occupied Palestine.
In Israel, some African settlers are often described as a polygamous and vegetarian sect. Some critics point out that this description is used to create intellectual segregation between African and European Jews.
Zionist Israel has been a long-time ally of the despotic apartheid regime that had ruled South Africa until 1994.
Thus, it is not surprising that settlers of African background are treated as second class citizens by a regime which itself has only recently been described as apartheid by Human Rights Watch.
South African scholar of Semitic languages, Dr. Mustafa B Mheta is of the opinion that Israel uses the African community as a political steppingstone to access the natural resources of Africa and to expand its influence on the African continent.
Considering that Israel survives as an occupation power on the billions of dollars of annual handouts from Western regimes, primarily the US, and Palestine does not have significant natural resources, Africa could provide an additional economic lifeline to the Zionist entity.
Israel’s well known racist attitude towards African settlers could prove to be the biggest spoiler of Zionist political thrust into Africa.