African Asylum Seekers and the Changing Politics of Memory in Israel

On 18 December 2010, an Israeli Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called, Anu Plittim, (‘We are refugees’) that provides pro bono legal support to asylum seekers¹ arriving in Israel from Sudan, the Ivory Coast and Eritrea organised a charity concert. This concert was promoted by stickers that paraphrased a well-known Hebrew slang saying: ‘You can call your grandfather an infiltrator’. This title, as well as the name of the NGO, was not chosen accidently. Rather, it was meant to publically demonstrate that African refugees can easily be associated with many Israelis’ personal histories as well as with Israeli collective memory. Similarly, Itamar Mann, Annu Plitim’s chairman, claimed that ‘the Israeli government is insisting not to decide on any immigration policy. Imprisonment [of asylum seekers] is against Israel’s humanitarian obligation’. The NGO’s director, Shira Penn, further claimed that: The reference to refugees as infiltrators is a racist demagogic meaning employed by the establishment in order to incite the public against them. You can’t frame a whole group of luck-struck individuals who are only seeking refuge just because the specific way they are forced to enter Israel makes it easier to portray them as such.