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)

Andy, the perennial near-do-well, if not outright reprobate, purposefully crashed his car into a castle gate after it failed to open automatically. In his defense, he was half in the wrapper & unaware of any obstacles. He thought it was just a serf he’d run down & on the wages Betty pays them, they’re easily replaceable.

Betty has kept Harry busy on goodwill adventures all over the world to repair the damage he keeps doing to his public image. She doesn’t want to send him back to Afghanistan for photo ops since last time she did that, he almost singlehandedly handed the war to the Taliban.

Her 90th birthday celebrations are coming up next month & go on for three months with nightly horse shows to console her for having to pass on the horse track & let all those trifectas go by without laying a bet. Camille, her track mate, is inconsolable. There will be a street party for 10,000 of Betty’s closest friends wearing those silly hats that typify the British aristocracy & are historically derived from horse culture–as is the entire culture of the aristocracy.

She recently visited the London Zoo with her good-for-nothing consort to open an Asiatic lion pavilion. Zookeepers thought they’d have to keep some of the lions in isolation during the visit for safety reasons but the smell of all that blue blood was an unexpected deterrent to mayhem. And Phil never once had to be held back from attacking the lions.

Photo is Betty & lion. You shouldn’t have to ask but Betty is on the left.

(Photo from Telegraph)

(Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

Among the speakers was an Israeli doctor whose talk was by Skype. What he would have to say about immigration could only have to do with Zionist settlement on Palestinian land. You can imagine my horror, even though he was a liberal Zionist who advocated the 1967 borders. I was the only one who challenged him in what seemed to be a political event attended by dead people with no connection to immigration & who couldn’t distinguish immigration from colonialism.

Two of us made an enormous stink about his inclusion as a speaker & persuaded a leading figure in the institute that it was a disastrous political mistake. That eventually led to the resignation of the director.

I relate this story not for self-aggrandizement (though I am certainly proud of the role I played) but because there are going to be all sorts of opportunities like this now that Israel is out to destroy BDS. Activists will be called upon to challenge such events & it’s clear that many will be persuaded by our best efforts.

(Please don’t ask which institute was involved since they corrected their course & that is not relevant to the story. Perhaps more important is that Mexico is politically repressive & the institute had to protect itself from government repression–which does not explain their inclusion of the Israeli guy but makes their avoidance of Mexican politics at least understandable.)