Institutionalized Israeli Racism: the Hospital that Segregates Africans

Do not make the mistake of thinking Israel is a liberal country which, like every other liberal country, has some racists in it. Israel’s racism can’t be attributed merely to individual bad apples because the attitudes are systemic and institutionalized. The racism is built into the basic laws of this place, which the Israeli supreme court has decided that Israel’s “Jewish” character precedes its “democratic” character if there is ever a conflict between them. Also, the national ideology shared by the overwhelming consensus and majority of Israelis (Zionism), is the affirmation of ethnic clensing in order to make room for this place’s “true” inhabitants, who’s thousands year old claim trumps any “native rights” argument. And now even hospital procedures reflect the emerging anti-African mindset which is coalescing into a whole new systemic racist attitude in this place. Here’s the hospital’s new racist policy:

Under the new rules, all migrants and refugees admitted to the hospital must have a chest X-ray, the majority are not allowed into the hospital to visit patients, and in maternity wards, nurseries and neonatal units as well as children’s wards they are separated from other patients.

And here’s what it feels like to go through the new racist hospital experience:

Asiedeu, who was granted resident status in Israel five years ago, was confronted with the new Ichilov policies on Tuesday night when he brought his nine-month-old son to be seen at the hospital. He had been referred there by the Tel Aviv District Health Office, where the baby was examined and found to be having difficulty breathing. Accompanying them to the hospital were his wife and their 21-month-old son. When they entered the hospital, after the baby’s details were recorded, a nurse wearing a face mask brought them face masks to wear, and took the four of them to an isolated room to await a doctor.

“I told her that we had no serious illnesses in the family, and we don’t have HIV or hepatitis, but the nurse said that by law we had to be isolated.” She then locked the door and left them inside.

After an hour two doctors came to examine the baby, “covered in plastic, even their eyes were hard to make out, as if he had some kind of deadly bacteria like Ebola,” Asiedeu said. They took blood from the baby and left the room, leaving the door unlocked.

After hours had passed and no one came back with blood test results, Asiedeu went to the nurses station and discovered the results had come back long before. “The nurse refused to give me the results and ordered me back to the room. I said I wanted to know what my son had, and she threatened to call security.

“At that point I lost it and said this was racist,” Asiedeu said.

It turned out the blood tests were normal, and the family was sent home. “It’s clear to me that the treatment I got was only due to the color of my skin,” said Asiedeu.

To be honest, anti-Arab racism has become acceptable in the West, or perhaps has always been acceptable, despite the becoming-unacceptable of anti-Black racism and anti-Jewish racism and even anti-indigenous racism (North American indigenous at least). I think this is a major reason why most citizens of America and American allied countries have accepted Zionism as a “progressive” ideology over the past 64 years – because it seems like a response to anti-Jewish racism, and anti-Arab racism is a category that doesn’t make sense for them, i.e. they feel they should be racist against Arabs because of what they believe is the inferiority of Arab culture.

Anti-African racism, however, has been largely ideologically overcome in the USA and other US ally nations. Israel walks a dangerous path institutionalizing its hatred of Africans and the labelling of them as “infiltrators”, especially since enough dissent at this attitude exists within the Israeli media itself to get into the Western perception (especially since Israel is always lauding itself as democratic despite occupying Palestinian land due to its free media and internal criticism). The perception of anti-African racism in Israel, both in the population, in powerful politicians, and increasingly in institutional settings, will be criticized in the American and Western press. Comparisons will begin to be made to Israel’s treatment of the indigenous population. This may push towards a deeper critique of Zionism in the west, and the becoming acceptable of anti-Zionism as a response to the problems with Palestine, Israel and the middle east.

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