Reprinted En.mida.org.il.
Last week, a 29 year old illegal immigrant from Eritrea was charged with the attempted rape of an 80 year old woman in South Tel Aviv. The victim, in describing the attack, said “he beat me and dragged me across the floor.” Later in the week, a 40 year old woman was brutally raped near the Old Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. The perpetrator is still on the loose.
Over the past few years, urban neighborhoods throughout Europe have been overtaken by refugees and illegal immigrant populations. Crime has risen, local populations have lost their sense of security, and areas have become no-go zones for police. South Tel Aviv is on the precipice of becoming like these European cities. Yet the media remains silent, and the ruling class are oblivious to the situation.
Last week’s violent acts in South Tel Aviv are not sporadic instances, but tragically have become the norm. Last week, during a protest involving illegal immigrant groups, residents of South Tel Aviv and local police were ridiculed and berated by illegal immigrants who screamed ‘the police are ISIS’, ‘this is not your country’, ‘your country is sh-t’, ‘you are not a Jew’. Many police were needed to quell the demonstrations, which turned violent towards the end, as illegal immigrants began attacking residents filming the protest. In previous documented cases, illegal immigrants are seen hitting an elderly Israeli with a wood plank, while in other instances saying “the Nazis should be thanked” and showing admiration for Hitler.
Sheffi Paz, a resident of South Tel Aviv and a leading activist against illegal immigration, has received death threats on her Facebook account on more than one occasion.
The rapes, violence, intimidation, and the lost sense of security, intensify the feeling that South Tel Aviv is losing its Israeli character. This feeling is backed by a report published by the Knesset Research and Information Center (KRIC) last June which estimated that the illegal immigrant population in South Tel Aviv is greater than the Israeli population. This assessment was based on information received from different branches in the Tel Aviv municipality. It estimated that at the beginning of 2016, the illegal immigrant population in South Tel Aviv numbered between 48,000-60,000 people, whereas the Israeli population in that area is 39,150 according to 2014 statistics, with those numbers declining annually.
Yet, it is possible that the gap is even greater.
In response to KRIC’s request for additional information, the Tel Aviv municipality admitted that it lacks statistics regarding births and deaths among the illegal immigrant population as well as a realistic count of the children. In an effort to reach an accurate number of illegal immigrant children, KRIC crosschecked information from the Tel Aviv municipality and statistics from the Ministry of Health, and concluded that there were an estimate of 3,600 illegal immigrant children below age six, as opposed to Israeli children in that same age group numbering 2,960.