Living in Dread in South Tel Aviv, Young African Migrants Feel the Hate

"For quite a while now it's been scary on the streets, but on the day of the riots, we felt it even more. On our way home from school, people looked at us in a racist way. They also said things to us. We didn't react."

Ashol Jhon, a 9th-grader at the Bialik-Rogozin School in Tel Aviv, of South Sudanese origin, describes the day, nearly two weeks ago, that south Tel Aviv residents took to the streets to demonstrate against the presence of African migrants. "When we got home, our mother wasn't home. And then we heard sounds outside of people running, shouting, cursing. I was really scared to be home alone. I'm the eldest. I have three small brothers. Our mother had gone to visit a friend. I called her, because she had gone out alone with the baby. I called her lots of times. She came back at about 12:00, because it wasn't safe to go out. My brothers and I didn't go to sleep. We waited for her."

It is difficult for the restrained, noble-looking Jhon to talk about that day, and her feelings about living in the Hatikva neighborhood since the riots broke out. She refrains from giving too many details about the difficult hours she experienced, as cries of incitement and the sounds of breaking glass were heard outside. But it is not hard to sense the fear that for her, and for her friends, is gradually turning into bleak despair.

Jhon arrived in Israel, via Egypt, about four years ago, after a difficult journey with her parents. She prefers not to give details of those travails, either. The Hebrew she speaks sounds natural, as though she were born here. She says that up until a few weeks ago, she felt at home in south Tel Aviv. But that feeling of security is now gone.

Once South Sudan declared its independence last July, and talk of deporting the refugees began, the community began its struggle against forced deportation, Jhon relates. And she has taken an active role in that struggle. Not long ago she was one of the spokespersons at a demonstration.

Jhon is, of course, not the only one feeling scared. A sense of fear and dread has long been hovering over many of the migrant workers' children, big and small, in south Tel Aviv. However, the situation escalated recently, as the riots began.

"Their fear is palpable," says Dr. Gal Harmat of the Critical Pedagogy program at Seminar Hakibbutzim Teachers College in Tel Aviv. Harmat instructs students who are studying early childhood education; they do in-service training at kindergartens in south Tel Aviv and also serve as aides in the kindergartens (this a joint project of the nonprofit Mesila organization, which aids migrants, and the Tel Aviv municipality ). "The parents of these students," says Harmat, "are really afraid there will be grenades or Molotov cocktails thrown at their homes, and they are afraid for their children."

According to Harmat, the students themselves have also begun to express fear, since the first demonstration in the Hatikva neighborhood. They are scared they will be marked as working for aid organizations that help the foreign residents, and that the fury will be directed at them. "The press is drumming it into them that they have to be afraid of the Africans, that they will rape them."

Growing up too fast

In a conversation with a group of junior high and high school students at Bialik-Rogozin, among them children of refugees and labor migrants from Africa and other places, as well as of veteran Israelis, the teens and pre-teens spoke a lot about what might be called the banality of racism, being marked out by the masses simply because of skin color. Throughout the conversation it became clear that these children are being forced to grow up too quickly. There were not many giggles or high-fives in the room. Instead, these children radiated suppressed pain and silence.

Some of the African children complained that the Israelis - not all of them, they clarified, but rather those who point at them, call them mean names and call for their deportation - cannot even tell them apart. "It doesn't make any difference to them," said one boy, "for them we are all Sudanese. All of us are criminals, rapists, because of one Sudanese who made a mistake."

"It annoys me that they say 'the Sudanese' did it," says 12th-grader Muhammad Hassin, whose family came from North Sudan. "You go on Facebook and you see statuses: 'A Sudanese did it.' They don't distinguish among us - Sudanese, Congolese, Eritrean. If one [African] did something, we all did it."

"I'm sick and tired of always hearing people say, as we walk by, that we are smelly, and other racist comments like that," says Jhon. "When I walk down the street, I always hear about the Sudanese. Sometimes I say to myself that I will answer but in the end I don't because I am afraid," she admits. "I ignore them but inside I am angry at the way they think and at the way they look at me."

Ben Ben-David, an 11th-grader from a veteran Israeli family in the Hatikva neighborhood, notes that this type of thinking and behavior is exactly the type of racist behavior they teach students about in history class. "You don't look at every individual person but you generalize because of color and race, and you discriminate against all. The demonstration against the migrants was not very sophisticated; it was simply filled with hate speech."

The demonstration spread the fears of Africans, he observes. "To my regret, even my mother, my own flesh and blood, now says, 'I am afraid of them.' And friends my age are also afraid to go to certain places because they are scared of the Sudanese, which is not rational."

Ben-David says he tries to be realistic and practical. "The only possible way to stop the hatred is to get to know the people; to see that they have a face, that they have feelings. But because of the fear I don't see a situation where anyone can convince an Israeli with prejudices. They are too afraid of them now."

Others, too, connect the violent events to their civics and history lessons. Eleventh-grader Hailav Arega, whose father is from Eritrea and whose mother is from Ethiopia, finds it shocking that there is graffiti on store windows saying "Death to the Sudanese."

"That kind of thing happened during World War II. The last thing you'd expect is that it would happen at the hands of someone who went through it himself, in Europe. I don't understand. How can a person forget his own history?" exclaims Arega in shock.

B. is a 12th-grader who came to Israel through Egypt, but is originally from Turkey. (She asks not to be identified by name because her status is problematic.) "I understand there is a debate here," she says, "and there are Israelis who say there is no room for the migrants and that the country belongs to the Jews. But why the violence? They had no right to break windows or beat people up, or curse at them."

"In 11th grade, when we began to learn about the Holocaust, I started crying. I really wanted to convert (to Judaism). When I saw what they did in the Hatikva neighborhood, I remembered Kristallnacht. The next morning I came [to school] wearing a shirt with the date of Kristallnacht on it and the date of the demonstration."

"The newcomers are always guilty of everything," she adds. "That's how it's been in every era. There was once an period when the Jews suffered from this."

B. says he understands what racism is. "It's difficult for me that dark-skinned people are marked as different from Jews because of their color. They don't stop me in the street because I am white and they think I am Russian. I have a friend who has dark skin and I see how they look at her. It's embarrassing. My friend wanted to go to a lecture by [writer] Aharon Appelfeld at Tel Aviv University but she couldn't because it was the evening and she is afraid to come home in the dark."

Arega, who lives in Beit Hashanti, a shelter for at-risk children, and is receivng his matriculation certificate this year, with impressive grades, finds it hard to understand the Israelis' insensitivity. "I'm not passing judgment and I don't blame all of them. In everything there are the bad people and the good people. But I thought the Jewish people could understand what it is to be refugees who have come from places where things are bad for them. It's absolutely clear that if we go back to our own countries, it's either prison or death, or life in the army until you die. My father was in the army his whole life. From the time I was very small I never saw him. He looked for a new life and that's how we ended up here."

"We merely want a future, want to realize our dreams. I can't understand it. Why does it bother anyone that we're living here and want to build our future? Why do they want to throw us into the garbage? The refugees aren't even asking for all that much. I would like to do a lot of significant things for society and I want to serve the country because my parents and siblings are here. After all, if Iran fires a missile it won't distinguish between the refugees and the Israelis."

Jhon says the South Sudanese community is now split by a dilemma: go back to Sudan willingly or stay in Israel and fight to be recognized as refugees? She herself, however, has decided. "I still feel Israel is a good place but I am afraid. I feel like my life and my friends' lives are in danger here. I don't hate and I still respect the people who are here, but there is a limit. No one can stand this racism. The message I want to transmit is that we want to leave here. But we can't go back there."

No need to suffer like this

Jhon says her parents feel the opposite way, and for now they prefer to remain here, because even though South Sudan has obtained independence, it is still a very dangerous place. There are no hospitals and conditions for raising children are not good. "But," she says, "I told my mother, 'Let's take our things and leave. We don't need to suffer like this."

Her friend, who is sitting next to her, 8th-grader Aluk Banong adds, "I would rather go back there because in the end everyone will die, here or there."

Throughout out this difficult conversation one girl, a 9th-grader named Victoria James, sits silently, staring at the floor. Every now and then she and her friend talk quietly between themselves. When James finally raises her head it's obvious her eyes are full of tears. She asks to speak to me privately.

"My feeling," she says, "is that when I walk down the street everyone is looking at me as though I am a big disaster." Her voice trembles and she bursts out crying. "They say that they are afraid of us but I am afraid of them. I am afraid they will do something to me on the way, or they will hurt me because I am a black African. While the demonstration was happening my father was at work and I didn't stop thinking about him, about whether he'd come home.

"Today anyone can curse us. Anyone can say he is looking for African girls, or that we have come here to take over. We are fed up. We are still young. We want to live happily like other children in this country, to realize dreams. When I was little my dream was to be a singer. When I grew up I realized I want to be a doctor to help the children in Sudan who are dying of diseases. That's what I want to do."

Arega intends to study economics and become a politician. "The only chance I have is here," he says quietly.