"Our children and our lives cannot be dismissed!" a sign read, as protesters urged the country to send migrants back to their homelands.
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"What initially seemed as an escalation has in fact been our daily routine over the past few years," said May, a local resident. "We feel in no-man's-land," she added, referring to neighborhoods in Tel Aviv's south.
'Our children and our lives cannot be dismissed' (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
"We don't feel safe, people are afraid to walk down the street, and those violent infiltrators shouldn’t be here. This is a mechanism of self-destruction that's been activated by the State and is about to blow up any minute," May asserted.
Shefi, also a resident of south Tel Aviv, noted that "up until a few years ago we focused on education and infrastructure, but now we're in a state of emergency. We've lost all sense of security. As a woman, the feeling is insufferable. My 14-year-old son is afraid to leave the house with his cellphone so that he isn’t robbed.
(Photo: Motti Kimchi)
"My friends are leaving the neighborhood. We got up one morning and found ourselves in a refugee camp. I'm not taking sides on whether they should stay in the country or not. They just dropped them here and left. No one is taking care of them and no one is taking care of us."
Assrat, an Eritrean national, said "This entire mess was done by one person and he didn’t only hurt Israelis, but also Sudanese. He will go to jail, but you can't say that all Eritrean and Sudanese are like him. I've been in Israel for five years now. I work and never had anything with the police. I'm also scared."
During the protest, a foreign national and a female resident of Tel Aviv were arrested for allegedly obstructing an officer attempting to performing his duty.
According to reports, at approximately 11 am an argument broke out between two Sudanese nationals in south Tel Aviv, as one of them took out a knife and began stabbing his compatriot. Witnesses, including three Israelis, tried to stop the attacker, yet he retaliated by stabbing passersby, including 67-year-old Yaakov Omrad of Kiryat Ono, who was seriously injured.
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