Since 2006, about 60,000 Africans have arrived in Israel on harrowing treks through the Sinai
Desert, fleeing poverty, persecution, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
As refugee camps across Africa fill up, and Europe closes its gates to asylum seekers,
Israel became the next best option, accessible by land and said to be a developed democracy.
But instead of providing them with safe haven, Israel is both refusing to grant them any
benefits and denying them the ability to work legally to support themselves.
Faced with poverty and exploitation, a new nightmare unfolded.
While protests raged in the streets against the presence of asylum seekers from Africa,
the man who held the power to determine their fate, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai demanded
their expulsion, and the few isolated Israelis who dared to protest like this woman were
met with harsh backlash.
At the anti-African rallies we documented, one figure was ubiquitous.
A member of Knesset named Mikhail Ben-Aril in August 2010, we interviewed him at his
parliament in spring.
Ben-Arei is known for leading nationalist marches through Arab neighborhoods inside Israel,
where he antagonizes, intimidates, and menaces Arab citizens.
On the holiday of Chanukah, Ben-Arei led a rally at Levinsky Park, a public space in
South Tel Aviv that has become home to many Africans who were denied work permits and
the ability to afford housing.
Earlier in the year, at an anti-African rally in Tel Aviv that was attended by thousands,
Ben-Arei was joined by lawmakers from the governing Likud party and other mainstream politicians.
Minutes after the rally, a thousand Israelis rioted, attacking African homes and businesses
and assaulting any African they found in the street.
Here is footage shot by one of the participants in the riot, a supporter of Mikhail Ben-Arei.
Days later, Yulia Shmuelov Belkovich, at the time a legislator from the centrist opposition
party Kadima, called for Israelis to advocate for the Africans to be locked in prison camps
alongside the Assadim seekers.
According to the Israeli Coalition Against Racism, incidents of racist incitement by
Israeli public figures doubled in 2012.
In many cases, the targets of their hateful invective were not Palestinians, but African
migrants.
Chief among those targeting the presence of Africans in Israel is a core of hundreds
of state-appointed rabbis, including some of the premier religious authorities in Israel,
who issued a letter forbidding Jews from renting apartments to the African asylum seekers and
any other non-Jews.
Here is a rabbi that we filmed, one of many who labored to promote the religious edict.
Though painted as an existential threat, the fact remains that Africans in Israel pose
no known security threat to the country.
None of them have engaged in acts of terrorism against Israel, and very few of any hold anti-Israel
opinions.
Most are eager to contribute to the prosperity and well-being of the country.
So why are they being demonized, and why is the government so determined to deport them?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously warned that if the level of Arab citizens
of Israel exceeds 30% to the general population, Israel could become a binational state and
would lose its Jewish character.
With tens of thousands of non-Jewish African migrants living in Israel by 2010, Prime Minister
Netanyahu warned that their presence increases the looming threat to the Jewish character
of the state.
Already, the Israeli Knesset has amended the Anti-Infiltration Act passed in 1954 to prevent
Palestinian refugees from returning to their property.
After the new version of the law, non-Jewish migrants can be arrested on site and held
in prison without trial for three years or more before being deported.
To hold the migrants and asylum seekers before deporting them, Israel's government has built
what it calls an accommodation center in the Negev Desert.
Blueprints of the center reveal that it will be in fact the largest prison of its kind
in any industrialized nation.
Currently, about 2,000 Africans languish in the detention center in what human rights
groups describe as substandard conditions.
This footage we shot outside the prison shows how vast it is.
A comprehensive look at the interior of the prison camp has never been presented to the
general public.
Until the Israeli government is able to resolve the crisis, the chaos on the streets continues.
This past New Year's Eve, we followed a mob of ultra-nationalists as they marched through
South Tel Aviv demanding the expulsion of non-Jewish Africans.
After the march, the ultra-nationalists gathered at the headquarters of Mikhail Ben-Ari's
strong Israel party, and that's when we were recognized as left-wing journalists.
The
