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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Nov 19 2010 - 09:22:06 EST
Published 01:28 17.11.10
Latest update 01:28 17.11.10
South Tel Aviv residents call for expelling foreigners from neighborhood
Emergency meeting assembled following the Friday murder of an Eritrean
woman by her husband in the Hatikvah neighborhood.
By Ilan Lior
Residents of south Tel Aviv are stepping up their fight against the
foreign workers and African refugees living among them.
On Tuesday, 100 people attended what they called an emergency meeting
in the Hatikvah neighborhood, following the murder of an Eritrean
woman by her husband on Friday. One participant was Corinne, whose
mother, Esther Galili, was beaten to death by a Sudanese citizen near
the Tel Aviv central bus station nine months ago.
The residents called on the authorities to expel the foreigners,
complaining they were violent, drunk and sexually harassing women.
Many said they were afraid to go out after dark.
"Why do I need to live in fear?" asked Valeria, a resident of the
neighborhood for the past 16 years. "I bought a home here, I love the
neighborhood and I am afraid to go home after work. They should not be
here."
Several people called out from the audience, "We hate them, they are
stealing everything they can, they behave like animals and they are
chasing our girls."
The residents agreed that landlords and business owners need to be
pressured not to hire or rent apartments to foreigners, as the Bnai
Brak municipality decided last week regarding foreigners in Pardes
Katz. They also complained that the media supports the foreigners
without exposing what life is like in the neighborhoods. Several also
called for protest measures such as demonstrating, blocking roads and
burning tires.
Most of the participants were adults who have been living in the
southern neighborhoods for many years, but one of the few younger
people there said he had launched a Facebook page for the cause.
One of the organizers, Tel Aviv Likud councilman Shlomo Maslawi, said
the residents feel abandoned.
"At the city council they call me a racist. If those bleeding hearts
lived here and their children and grandchildren lived here, they'd be
behaving differently. They have abandoned us. The flow of infiltrators
isn't abating, it's just growing stronger. There is no end to this. We
were the majority here and now we're a minority," he said.
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