‘No one talks about this’: The plight of black people in the Middle East

David Swift and Michal Huss speak to two of the almost 200,000 black people living in Israel, where the implications of racism can be just as deadly as in the United States

Israeli security forces detain a protester during demonstrations in Tel Aviv last year against police violence and the killing of a young Ethiopian man (AFP/Getty)

When Israel was brought into the global debate on anti-black racism, it was through a discussion of parallels between the treatment of African Americans and Palestinians, and very little consideration was given to the lives of the almost 200,000 black people within Israel itself. Race in Israel can be loaded with many of the same, often deadly, implications as in the United States: last month, a court acquitted two men, Israel Defence Forces soldier Yaakov Shimba and Israel Prisons Service officer Ronen Cohen, who in 2015 shot an Eritrean asylum seeker, Haftom Zarhum, believing him to be a terrorist. Zarhum was then badly beaten by a mob, and later died in hospital.

East African refugees like Zarhum began arriving in Israel via its border with Egypt in 2005, fleeing the civil war in Sudan or the totalitarian regime in Eritrea. Today it’s estimated that 23,140 Eritrean and 6,466 Sudanese citizens constitute 91 per cent of all asylum seekers in Israel. Their perilous passage involves crossing the Sinai desert, where Bedouins kidnap, torture and ransom Africans. According to the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, 7,000 refugees are survivors of torture in the Sinai.

“When I arrived in 2008,” Taj Haroun, formerly head of the African Student’s Organisation in Israel, tells us from his office in south Tel Aviv, “Neve Sha’anan (the main area of settlement for African asylum seekers) was like the red light district of Amsterdam. I haven’t been there but that’s what I heard; a lot of prostitutes. When I arrived all the streets were like that. Today, this is a business hub. The house prices have gone up as well. So it’s become a very successful business hub for asylum seekers and Israelis, especially for the ones that own places. It’s a very good business, and they don’t want the asylum seekers to go. No one talks about this.”