Israeli Youths Beat elderly migrant in Jerusalem [MORE]  In photo, South Sudanese refugee Samuel Akue sits next to suitcases he purchased in a market in south Tel Aviv in preparation for his deportation from Israel. Recently, members of the Israeli government have been much more open and forthright in their racism - this time against the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees and migrant workers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described African migrants in Israel as "illegal infiltrators" that threaten "our existence as a Jewish and democratic state." Knesset member Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, described refugees as "a cancer in our body" while addressing a mass rally that would shortly devolve into a riot targeting an African neighborhood in Tel Aviv.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai was even more open during an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv.  Speaking about the African migrants, Yishai said "Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man." Most of the African migrants in Israel originate from Sudan and Eritrea.

Yishai's other comments on African migrants are telling. He has referred to South Tel Aviv, an area with a considerable African population, as "the garbage can of the country," and has repeatedly claimed that refugees and migrants are behind a massive crime wave, including rapes of Israeli women.  This is not borne out by data from the Association of Rape Crisis Center in Israel or the Israeli police.  Perhaps to explain this discrepancy, Yishai said that Israeli women who have been raped by migrant workers choose not to report the crimes "our of fear of being stigmatized as having contracted AIDS."  In response, William Tall, the representative in Israel of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees reminded Yishai that there was no AIDS epidemic in the African migrant population of Israel.