Israeli inspector pours bleach over food in Tel Aviv restaurant run by African migrants

[Jefferson23]

Hundreds of meals are destroyed as part of a crackdown on illegal businesses owned by African migrants.

By Ilan Lior | May.14, 2013 | 1:18 AM

snip* The inspector, from the ministry’s district office for Tel Aviv, was participating in a raid by police and municipal inspectors on illegal businesses owned by African migrants. Altogether, the raid shut down 10 businesses in the city’s Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood, confiscating their equipment and welding the doors shut. The equipment was then loaded onto vans by other African migrants who had been hired as contract workers.

Many diners saw the inspector pouring bleach on the food, and one, asylum-seeker Aladin Abaker from Sudan’s Darfur region, posted photos of the incident on his Facebook page. He also described his feelings of humiliation.

“Everyone ? except the destroyers ? was in tears from the humiliation,” he wrote. “The waitress told us, ‘I’ve seen very harsh things in my life, like torture in Sinai, but this humiliated me more than what happened to me in Sinai.”

Abaker accused the inspector of “insensitivity to people and their culture, which sees food as a sacred thing that must be respected,” and said the raid was aimed at “embittering our lives so we’ll return to Africa ‘voluntarily.’”

in full: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-inspector-pours-bleach-over-food-in-tel-aviv-restaurant-run-by-african-migrants.premium-1.523888

[delrem]

1. This is similar to the use of armored bulldozers to wipe out uncertified Arab structures.

Using total control of the economy as a tool for demographic control, for "herding" and "transfer".

These migrants won't be allowed to set down roots. Note that the ministry has no objection to using migrant African labor as grunt forces to destroy the higher economic/social aspirations of the same migrant African community. This isn't odd. E.g. central/south american migrant labor is commonly used in the US and is considered to be normal, but when some in that migrant community have higher aspirations and try to set down roots, to create a business and thrive, a lot of US Americans freak out.

What's striking about this account is that obviously the Israeli officials were acting dramatically, to visibly demonstrate their point (pouring bleach on the food was hardly necessary) in front of the whole migrant African community, just the same as Israeli officials use armored bulldozers, checkpoints, fences, annotated citizenship documents, to dramatically demonstrate their point to Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or not.

(Of course it's not *identical* - there're differences between pouring bleach on the food then using African migrant labor to cart away the property isn't quite the same as bulldozing homes on one street and spraying sewage on homes on another. They're the *same* in the sense that they're both dramatic and demonstrative assertions of control over "facts on the ground", over life and liberty.)

eta: Since Haaretz is under a paywall I accessed the article by:
1. Copying the article subhead "Hundreds of meals are destroyed as part"
2. Destroying my internet history
3. googling "Hundreds of meals are destroyed as part"
4. using the google link to access the article.
I then had to re-login to DU, which is no problem.
I just discovered a simpler way.
1. copy subhead "Hundreds of ...."
2. create new incognito window
3. googling, following the link.