Description

African asylum-seekers march in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, December 28. The numbers are the IDs issued by the Israeli immigration authorities. A biblical quote from Exodus is above (behind) the 144519 sign.

Ira Glunts for Mondoweiss

Thousands of African asylum-seekers, joined by Israeli supporters, held a silent march through Tel Aviv last night (Saturday). The protesters demand that the Israeli government recognize them as political refugees and request freedom for their countrymen, who are being held in three Negev desert detention centers, Saharonim, Ketziot and Holot, because of their official status as illegal immigrants. The march, which began at Lewinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv, concluded with a rally at Rabin Square. Ha’aretz estimated 5000 protesters participated in the demonstration.

An African man, who spoke in rudimentary Hebrew at the rally, compared the situation of the asylum-seekers to that of the Jews in Europe in 1939. He told those gathered about the dictatorial governments from which the immigrants had fled and their desire to live in a democracy and to have “equality.”

Many of the demonstrators carried candles, while others carried placards, some in Hebrew, and others in English and French. Many marched with signs on which were written the seven-digit identification number assigned them by the immigration authorities.

The idea for using the numbers on the placards came as a result of a newspaper article from earlier in the week which touched off a public outcry against the immigration authorities. The mass circulation daily, Ma’ariv, ran a story titled, “From the Point of View of the State, the Detainees Are Only Numbers.” That piece reported that African asylum-seekers who were arrested at a Jerusalem demonstration, after fleeing from the Holot “open” detention facility, were listed in a court document solely by their ID number [see graphic below]. The court papers were later refiled to include the names of the detainees.