This is an extremely deft & subtle propaganda piece which appeared in the Guardian-UK. The caption says it’s children in Tel Aviv watching an acrobat perform during the Purim festival, a Jewish religious holiday.
The solidarity being forged between US Blacks & Palestinians is a cause of great alarm to Israel, especially since they have always touted the role played by American Jews in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That progressive role is beyond dispute but of course they weren’t the only white people to participate in that movement.
Israel is being exposed for the ethnic cleansing of African refugees & immigrants–either imprisoning them or deporting them back to war zones like South Sudan where Israel is engaged in substantial economic plunder. There have also been frequent mob actions against refugees encouraged by Israeli politicians.
Last year, after an Israeli court ordered the release of African refugees held in detention over a year, the Israeli government declared those released would not be allowed to live or work in Tel Aviv or Eilat.
But perhaps these children are Ethiopian Jews. Israel has about 136,000, most of whom were airlifted into Israel in the 1980s & 1990s after a farcical rabbinical ruling they were direct descendants of the Jewish tribe of Dan. Such are the sarcasms of Israeli immigration policy.
In the past few years, there have been countless protests by Ethiopian Jews against the mob violence & protesting systematic discrimination & racism against them. Over half of Ethiopian Israelis live in poverty & only half graduate from high school. In 2013, Israel admitted it forcibly administered birth control injections to Ethiopian Israeli women without their consent or knowledge.
Given racist realities in Israel, it is not conspiracy-thinking to call this charming photo of children at a festival in Tel Aviv nothing but shameless propaganda to peddle the image of Israel as a haven of ethnic harmony when it’s a cesspool of white supremacy toward Palestinians & Africans.
Cut through this crap & build BDS.
(Photo by Ariel Schalit/AP)