1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:04,620 Good. Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon. 2 00:00:04,740 --> 00:00:17,760 Thank you. I am delighted to present the speaker today, Professor Jacobi, who is Professor of Development Planning at UCL. 3 00:00:18,270 --> 00:00:25,590 His research focuses on post-colonial architecture, planning and development in Israel, Palestine, the Middle East and Africa. 4 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:30,030 Spatial justice and urban health, contested urbanism, 5 00:00:30,840 --> 00:00:38,610 transnational migration and informality are in the core of his research and consultancy work, teaching and activism. 6 00:00:39,270 --> 00:00:45,330 He is currently studying the ways in which ideology, planning and health are entangled. 7 00:00:45,570 --> 00:00:50,219 And the title of his talk Today's Israel Africa. Identity, Culture and Politics. 8 00:00:50,220 --> 00:00:53,370 Professor Jacobi, welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. 9 00:00:54,420 --> 00:00:57,300 Thank you for the invitation and thank you for coming here. 10 00:00:58,230 --> 00:01:03,720 My presentation today is very much based on my latest book that was published two years ago. 11 00:01:05,250 --> 00:01:09,270 But, you know, I prepared myself for this presentation. 12 00:01:09,270 --> 00:01:15,660 And luckily there are enough political events in Israel that are very much linked to what I'm going to discuss today. 13 00:01:17,430 --> 00:01:22,230 So let me see if it works. 14 00:01:22,240 --> 00:01:24,930 Okay. On January 2011, 15 00:01:25,620 --> 00:01:34,320 the Israeli Knesset Committee for Immigration held a special meeting to discuss the impact of immigration on Israel demographic balance. 16 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:40,590 The discussion revolved around the origins of immigrants who had arrived to Israel over the past decade. 17 00:01:41,370 --> 00:01:47,819 One of the speakers warned the committee members of the danger of losing control over 18 00:01:47,820 --> 00:01:53,280 Israeli demography in view of the arrival of asylum seekers from various african countries. 19 00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:57,180 In a quote. Oh, you know, i'll cut that paragraph. 20 00:01:57,540 --> 00:02:02,250 Let me just say that right now there are 35,000 african migrants. 21 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:10,800 They make a special. They take a special taxi to El-Arish and hire a guy to the Israeli border. 22 00:02:11,310 --> 00:02:22,770 Each of them pulls pulls out a cell phone to make two calls, first to their contacts in north Tel Aviv and secondly to their friends in Somalia. 23 00:02:23,730 --> 00:02:31,890 This statement not only reveals the rationalising discourse that was developed in Israel in relation to the flow of African asylum seekers. 24 00:02:32,310 --> 00:02:42,630 But also unexpectedly it exposes the deny geography of Israel, which borders not only with Middle Eastern countries but also with Africa. 25 00:02:43,860 --> 00:02:50,850 Israel's denied geography is denied the geography as geographies are at the core of my talk today. 26 00:02:51,210 --> 00:03:00,930 I intend to demonstrate that Israeli space is charged with various dimensions of Africa and Israel, as well as Israel in Africa. 27 00:03:01,410 --> 00:03:08,880 However, in spite of the analogies between the two territories, the geopolitical discourse ignores the linkages. 28 00:03:09,510 --> 00:03:19,049 Therefore, my main goal is to treat Africa as a conceptualising principle underlying a new interpretation of the interrelations between space, 29 00:03:19,050 --> 00:03:32,350 culture and society in Israel. A fresh look at the known cartography reveals an existing land bridge between Israel and Egypt via the Sinai Peninsula, 30 00:03:32,800 --> 00:03:41,470 which serves as the gateway to Africa. This passage between Israel and Africa is denied as part of the imaginative geography of Israel. 31 00:03:41,710 --> 00:03:51,280 As a villa in the jungle, a well-known Hebrew expression that encapsulates the Israeli construction of identity and sense of place as being white, 32 00:03:51,610 --> 00:03:54,700 European like, democratic and enlightened. 33 00:03:55,180 --> 00:04:00,910 A villa that dominates a white and modern territory surrounded by walls and borders. 34 00:04:01,840 --> 00:04:04,840 My attempt is to focus on this bridge as a cultural, 35 00:04:04,840 --> 00:04:11,440 political and spatial intersection in which Africa's presence is significant to the Israeli context. 36 00:04:12,100 --> 00:04:14,590 I would like to emphasise two main claims. 37 00:04:15,190 --> 00:04:26,080 First, that Africa was and still is an ingredient of the constant reshaping of Israel self-identity as Decolonised Western project. 38 00:04:26,620 --> 00:04:30,640 Secondly, both the Israel in Africa and Africa. 39 00:04:30,670 --> 00:04:37,540 In Israel, perspectives are used as instruments for the demarcation of Israel's ethnic boundaries and 40 00:04:37,540 --> 00:04:43,750 for the reproduction of hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion whitening and likening. 41 00:04:45,700 --> 00:04:55,179 The ambivalent relationship between Israel and Africa encompasses various practices that it will discuss today, including planning, 42 00:04:55,180 --> 00:05:05,350 architectural architecture, pilgrimage, settlement demarcation and fortification of geopolitical, racial and identity related boundaries. 43 00:05:08,170 --> 00:05:12,910 Africa is present in Israel in its history, demography and geography. 44 00:05:13,510 --> 00:05:21,970 One of the intersections that brought the Zionist project in Africa together was the plan to establish a Jewish colony in East Africa, 45 00:05:22,270 --> 00:05:31,329 otherwise known as the Uganda Plan. While never realised the plan offered Africa as an alternative to Zion initially 46 00:05:31,330 --> 00:05:36,400 from territorial point of view and later as a symbolically unthinkable option. 47 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:44,860 Likewise, it is agreed that the East Africa plan was used as a tactical bargaining means or another 48 00:05:44,860 --> 00:05:51,160 step in failed or herzl's diplomatic efforts to legitimise the idea of Jewish nationalism. 49 00:05:52,270 --> 00:05:56,920 The East Africa proposal, as phrased and designed by Lord Chamberlain, 50 00:05:57,280 --> 00:06:05,589 was based on colonial perception and cultural binaries that conjoined the Jews with the European 51 00:06:05,590 --> 00:06:11,890 colonisers who settlement in Africa would facilitate the region's colonisation by white people. 52 00:06:12,910 --> 00:06:22,780 Many of the discussions within the Zionist movement concerning this plan accentuated the integral inclusion of the Jews within Western Europe, 53 00:06:23,050 --> 00:06:27,490 thus enhancing the binary division between black Africa and white Jews. 54 00:06:27,880 --> 00:06:35,260 Yet this did not prevent an antisemitic reaction within Britain and among the white 55 00:06:35,260 --> 00:06:40,960 settlers in East Africa who objected to the Uganda plan since Jews were ranked as black. 56 00:06:41,800 --> 00:06:47,050 The white settlers of East Africa excelled in cultivating dramatic images of a 57 00:06:47,050 --> 00:06:52,960 forthcoming Jewish invasion that would transform the region into a new Jewish ghetto. 58 00:06:53,410 --> 00:07:03,250 Nevertheless, the refugee colonialism strived to establish a state in a reverse mode while imperialist states established colonies, 59 00:07:03,610 --> 00:07:07,300 the Jewish colonies established a state, as Alan noted. 60 00:07:08,380 --> 00:07:13,630 The plan emphasised the migration geopolitics that was the core of the Uganda debate, 61 00:07:13,630 --> 00:07:22,690 combining a people without land, as Zheng will, Zheng will put it, only this time with a continent without people. 62 00:07:23,590 --> 00:07:34,060 After Uganda, Zionists would never again pursue philanthropic goals in general and vacant African territories in particular East Africa. 63 00:07:34,390 --> 00:07:42,430 Rather than being an actual plan, was the junction of ideas and identity formulations and would continue to be so after the 64 00:07:42,430 --> 00:07:50,200 establishment of the State of Israel during the sixties and the beginning of the seventies. 65 00:07:50,740 --> 00:07:58,780 Israel and Africa initiated various economic partnerships, such as the trade of arms, logistic and military equipment. 66 00:07:59,470 --> 00:08:03,520 African states became major consumers of Israeli weaponry industry. 67 00:08:04,180 --> 00:08:11,500 Israel trained African soldiers and took part in the Cold War by assisting in the creation of intelligence networks. 68 00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:15,160 In the new in the post-colonial African states. 69 00:08:15,820 --> 00:08:20,440 I would suggest that these issues will be viewed from a different perspective. 70 00:08:20,950 --> 00:08:27,790 Striving to look. Beyond the instrumental logic of Israeli involvement in Africa, 71 00:08:28,180 --> 00:08:35,320 mainly the effort to create the barrier between and the new African countries, states and the Arab world. 72 00:08:35,590 --> 00:08:45,820 This is the main explanation that you find in the literature about why Israel was intervening or extensively intervening in Africa in the sixties. 73 00:08:49,210 --> 00:08:53,450 One of the main discourses concerning Israeli involvement in Africa during that 74 00:08:53,470 --> 00:08:58,540 period is the common fate of the exiled Jewish people returning to its land. 75 00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:05,650 Recently relieved of the colonial burden, the British mandate with the Decolonised African African people. 76 00:09:06,010 --> 00:09:12,550 This was the main discourse that was very much discussed based on extensive study of documents. 77 00:09:12,850 --> 00:09:19,450 I suggest that studies of Israel Africa relations totally ignore the significance of the of Israeli 78 00:09:19,450 --> 00:09:26,080 involvement in Africa in the formation of Israel's only identity as a western modern white state. 79 00:09:26,680 --> 00:09:36,579 From an analysis of the documents. I propose that the myth of vacant space that Africa embodied as a reflection of 80 00:09:36,580 --> 00:09:42,670 aspirations became a guiding principle in the course of realising the Zionist utopia. 81 00:09:45,070 --> 00:09:51,880 Israel's spatial model was formulated by architects of the Echelon Alyosha 82 00:09:51,940 --> 00:09:58,840 Jones masterplan that shaped the Israeli a new colonial geographies after 48. 83 00:09:59,770 --> 00:10:05,799 The success of the Zionist Territorial Territory Realisation Project was one of 84 00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:10,540 the main catalysts of Israel Africa relations during the sixties and seventies. 85 00:10:11,050 --> 00:10:12,100 During this period, 86 00:10:12,370 --> 00:10:21,310 Israel exported to Decolonised African countries models that it used to effectively facilitate the settlement process within Israel, 87 00:10:21,580 --> 00:10:29,559 such as the kibbutz and the natural outposts. Knuckles knuckle our semi military agricultural settlements. 88 00:10:29,560 --> 00:10:40,330 I will not be able to go into details now, but while doing a research in the Israel State Archive, 89 00:10:41,050 --> 00:10:47,860 I came across a collection of photos that depicted African youth in one of the though kibbutz 90 00:10:47,860 --> 00:10:55,120 agricultural farms that were established in various African countries during the six years. 91 00:10:55,300 --> 00:10:58,690 That was part of the development aid that Israel exported to Africa. 92 00:10:59,290 --> 00:11:06,610 Surprisingly, I seem to recognise in the photos familiar images from my own family album, 93 00:11:07,480 --> 00:11:12,520 the pioneer posture of youngsters with harvested fields in the background, 94 00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:21,520 the soldierly appearance of African national recruits, Israeli agriculture guides, visiting Africa for African farmers, etc., etc. 95 00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:27,069 One of the photos that you can see behind me that drew my attention. 96 00:11:27,070 --> 00:11:33,940 Attention featured a group of African women sitting by tables carrying swing machines. 97 00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:43,690 The stands, the perspective, the objects and the educational message of the photo strongly resemble those of my family album. 98 00:11:44,530 --> 00:11:54,790 Shortly afterward, I skin a skin sorry I skin through my parents album, 99 00:11:55,270 --> 00:12:00,220 containing photos taken during the first two decades that followed their immigration to Israel. 100 00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:07,090 The album was packed full of pioneering photos youth dressed in uniform, dancing in the fields, 101 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:12,850 dark skinned boys on the Sea of Galilee, shore and group of girls trekking in the Galilee. 102 00:12:13,810 --> 00:12:19,570 Suddenly I found the familiar photo that resembled the one from the Israeli State Archive. 103 00:12:20,050 --> 00:12:26,650 The photo depicting girls of a Latino of from Iraq, girls who emigrated from Iraq, 104 00:12:27,130 --> 00:12:35,410 learning to sue as part of the widening process that they had to undergo in order to become Zionist, modern and productive women. 105 00:12:36,400 --> 00:12:39,430 Yet it was not just the visual similarity, 106 00:12:39,940 --> 00:12:45,940 but mainly the political and cultural identical ness of the two photos one taken in the 107 00:12:45,940 --> 00:12:53,860 DeSoto in 1972 and the other in Kibbutz Sol in the north of Israel two decades earlier. 108 00:12:54,760 --> 00:13:01,419 That made me realise the central issue of cultural aspects of the establishment and stabilisation of Israel. 109 00:13:01,420 --> 00:13:11,260 Africa relations, geostrategic considerations taking part in the Cold War and making economical profits were 110 00:13:11,260 --> 00:13:18,340 not the only factors that tied Israel and African countries together during the sixties, 111 00:13:18,790 --> 00:13:22,770 but also and the logical process of nationalism that produced. 112 00:13:22,870 --> 00:13:33,250 Knowledge and special and speciality is based on the motivation to generate a modern national territory, identity and society. 113 00:13:35,890 --> 00:13:44,560 Israel, as an architectural laboratory, provided the basis for the construction of residential, public and cultural buildings. 114 00:13:44,830 --> 00:13:54,370 For immigrants, immigrant communities served as a platform for Israeli architects and planners to perform considerable work in African countries. 115 00:13:54,730 --> 00:13:59,710 I'm talking about hundreds of architectural planning and development project projects. 116 00:14:00,520 --> 00:14:08,139 I suggest that the expertise of Israeli architects who worked in Africa during the sixties and seventies stemmed from wider 117 00:14:08,140 --> 00:14:15,820 colonial knowledge networks and at the same time served as an additional tool to the imagination of African geography, 118 00:14:16,150 --> 00:14:23,740 as well as the solidification of moral justification for intervening in African state space. 119 00:14:25,450 --> 00:14:33,639 As I have discussed in detail elsewhere, the ideological dimension of planning and construction in Africa and use the example, 120 00:14:33,640 --> 00:14:40,120 and I would like to use the example of Lebanon and Israel in construction and civil engineering 121 00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:47,110 company that illustrates how its projects in Africa were not merely economically pragmatic, 122 00:14:47,440 --> 00:14:51,430 but also a means of implementing Israel's foreign policy. 123 00:14:51,970 --> 00:14:58,330 Subsequently, Israeli architects whose professional biographies demonstrate my claim that Israeli 124 00:14:58,330 --> 00:15:03,040 architectural knowledge in Africa intervened with wide networks of colonial planning, 125 00:15:03,340 --> 00:15:07,690 knowledge, division or variation. 126 00:15:07,690 --> 00:15:12,669 I mentioned in before the dominant architect during the first decade of the 127 00:15:12,670 --> 00:15:18,250 state of Israel was not only materialised but also gained extensive exposure. 128 00:15:19,420 --> 00:15:30,399 Sharon's Nigerian project the planning of if a university here I mean you can see the university 129 00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:37,300 campus address two interrelated issues concerning the migration of colonial architectural knowledge. 130 00:15:37,900 --> 00:15:44,170 First, Sharon's planning methodology, mainly the utilisation of a regional survey, 131 00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:50,350 a detailed document that examined the climate, the topography, the everyday life of the indigenous population. 132 00:15:50,680 --> 00:16:01,050 You can see, you know, one page from his survey here. And the infrastructure, sorry, and the indigenous population. 133 00:16:01,080 --> 00:16:04,470 Population. Second, Sharon's Climatic Overview. 134 00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:14,770 We was obsessed with the issue of climate. Being aware, being part of the way in which modern modern school of architecture referred to climate. 135 00:16:15,250 --> 00:16:19,000 It was not just a problematic ingredient in his planning, 136 00:16:19,300 --> 00:16:25,060 but also an instrument of a hierarchical categorisation of geography, culture and development. 137 00:16:25,740 --> 00:16:36,400 One another example The May Brothers had also viewed Africa as a planning and architectural arena. 138 00:16:37,150 --> 00:16:41,860 Their intensive involvement, mainly in the field of construction, started in 59. 139 00:16:42,760 --> 00:16:49,450 Their work coincided with Israel's political interests in the continent and was supported by the Minister of Finance, 140 00:16:49,450 --> 00:16:52,840 Livia Eshkol and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Golda meir. 141 00:16:53,710 --> 00:16:57,730 This support was not merely symbolic or political. 142 00:16:58,180 --> 00:17:06,580 The state of Israel financially guaranteed the mayor's investment in Ivory Coast and even granted them direct loans. 143 00:17:06,970 --> 00:17:09,400 The brothers were private entrepreneurs, 144 00:17:09,970 --> 00:17:15,880 and this was a very interesting fact to discover that the state of Israel gave loans to a private interpreter there. 145 00:17:16,330 --> 00:17:25,450 They were not even Israelis. Okay. In this context, the work of Tommy Leiter's, the architect, 146 00:17:25,460 --> 00:17:36,160 was involved in the design of overy of the Autoliv while in Cote d'Ivoire, which you can see here is very, very interesting. 147 00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:44,770 In my view, Leiter's Golf was starting at the AA, the Architecture Association School here in London, in London. 148 00:17:45,340 --> 00:17:50,380 And he was married into the mayor family and collaborated with them in Ivory Coast. 149 00:17:50,410 --> 00:17:57,460 What is very interesting is that Tommy, largest of all, studying in the AA, you know, the tropical architecture. 150 00:17:57,940 --> 00:18:02,650 And then he moved to work in Ivory Coast and then he moved back to Israel. 151 00:18:03,340 --> 00:18:07,840 There is a clear link between the state's interest and private capital interests, 152 00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:14,800 as well as the way in which the the exportation of expertise is driven by a variety of economic, 153 00:18:15,130 --> 00:18:22,420 national security and identity related interest and resulted in the development of white tourism in Ivory Coast. 154 00:18:28,860 --> 00:18:36,540 In light of the case, the architect who planned the leave while the migration of architectural knowledge 155 00:18:36,540 --> 00:18:41,970 from London via Africa eventually landed in Israel in the early seventies, 156 00:18:42,300 --> 00:18:49,530 when Formulators exported his learning experience and ideas to another unexplored land, 157 00:18:49,530 --> 00:18:55,140 the occupied territories where he planned Ma'aleh Adumim as well as some other settlements. 158 00:18:55,980 --> 00:19:01,770 I will not go into details, but it was very interesting to interview Tommy Leiter's of about the similarities in the way 159 00:19:01,770 --> 00:19:07,320 in which his experience in Africa was relevant to planning new settlements in the West Bank. 160 00:19:10,950 --> 00:19:12,840 I'm just going to be okay. 161 00:19:13,770 --> 00:19:23,880 It seems that the presence of black community in Israeli space became significant in the 1980s due to immigration from Ethiopia. 162 00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:31,170 The Ethiopian community in Israel numbers around 200,000 people, 163 00:19:31,560 --> 00:19:37,470 most of whom were born in Ethiopia, and their immigration to Israel was initiated by the state. 164 00:19:38,370 --> 00:19:45,210 Much has been written about the discrimination and racism against Ethiopian immigrants because of their skin colour. 165 00:19:45,690 --> 00:19:51,120 On the part of both the establishment and the public discourse, the blood, purity, 166 00:19:51,420 --> 00:19:57,569 hygiene and degree of Jewishness were and still are points of contention concerning 167 00:19:57,570 --> 00:20:04,680 the simultaneous exclusion from and inclusion in the Israeli ethno national project. 168 00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:12,150 This situation is reflected in the socioeconomic profile of the Ethiopian community in Israel, 169 00:20:12,480 --> 00:20:17,430 70% of which are classified as being below the poverty line. 170 00:20:17,820 --> 00:20:25,530 And only 50% of Ethiopian children attend kindergarten, as opposed to 95% of the general population. 171 00:20:26,490 --> 00:20:35,100 The Ethiopian community is concentrated in peripheral cities, both in Israel as a whole and in the Tel Aviv metropolis. 172 00:20:36,090 --> 00:20:44,040 These data are not coincidental. They are the consequence of a planning policy that serves as a mechanism of social control, 173 00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:49,200 as attested by the master plan for the absorption of Ethiopian Jews, 174 00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:56,310 which restricts mortgage loans to those Ethiopians who choose to settle in specific locations. 175 00:20:57,330 --> 00:21:06,300 Furthermore, in 2010, certain streets in several cities were declared and they, quote, not open to grant recipients. 176 00:21:06,780 --> 00:21:09,570 In order to prevent that European Jews from settling there. 177 00:21:10,050 --> 00:21:17,550 I would like to emphasise the manipulative exploitation of the segregation process involving the Ethiopian population in Israel. 178 00:21:18,570 --> 00:21:26,400 The first of these is the use of an institutional residential policy that aims to direct Ethiopians immigrants to frontier neighbourhoods. 179 00:21:26,700 --> 00:21:34,080 Some, such as the ones that accommodate Arab residents in order to control the demographic Jewish, are balanced. 180 00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:38,280 One example is the Multiscale neighbourhood in Lod, 181 00:21:39,300 --> 00:21:48,450 a Jewish Arab mixed city which was established as a Jewish neighbourhood and during the last decade has gradually accumulated an Arab majority. 182 00:21:49,260 --> 00:21:58,830 The development is called a neighbourhood. The Ethiopian Jewish residents who comprise comprise 29% of the neighbourhood's population. 183 00:21:59,130 --> 00:22:07,320 I think today it's much more. Were intentionally settled there by the authorities in order to do this the neighbourhood. 184 00:22:07,860 --> 00:22:16,650 Thus Ethiopian immigrants eventually found themselves widening the neighbourhood on one end and blackening the city on the other. 185 00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:24,030 A second in simultaneous motivations was the public clamour for the dispersion of 186 00:22:24,030 --> 00:22:29,220 Ethiopian Jews in order to prevent the creation of a racial and class oriented ghetto, 187 00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:37,050 such as the quiet neighbourhood in the Harvard, also known as Harlem in the Israeli public discourse. 188 00:22:39,530 --> 00:22:50,629 Ethiopian immigrants as the representatives of Africa and Israel serve as serve as privileged subjects for sociological, 189 00:22:50,630 --> 00:22:52,610 political and spatial research. 190 00:22:53,210 --> 00:23:01,220 However, the fact that North African immigrants arrived to Israel as early as the fifties is commonly ignored in this context. 191 00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:10,400 The literature and discourse regarding North African immigrants often associate them with other mizrahim, 192 00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:15,350 Orientals, Jews, and with the experience of being an Oriental Jew, 193 00:23:15,620 --> 00:23:26,230 albeit with a special connection with North Africa as a distinct cultural unit during the period of Israel's involvement in Africa, North Africa. 194 00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:33,440 And it was exactly the same years that North Africa became one of the most significant sources of immigration to Israel. 195 00:23:34,250 --> 00:23:41,450 But while Israel in Africa realised its policy and familiarised the Israeli public with the continent, 196 00:23:41,870 --> 00:23:47,780 North Africa and Israel became a demographic fact that required special treatment. 197 00:23:48,470 --> 00:23:57,500 North African immigration to Israel as a material culture and social fabric was subjected to amendment by means of spatial policy, 198 00:23:57,740 --> 00:23:59,090 among other measures. 199 00:23:59,660 --> 00:24:09,200 The moral geography of Africa in Israel was required through the new Zionist space to present a normative, well organised daily life. 200 00:24:09,770 --> 00:24:20,180 There was an attempt to disconnect from North Africa to turn its back on it and at the same time to transform the other into one of us. 201 00:24:20,750 --> 00:24:31,970 Thus, Africa or North Africa became a source of demographic supply which was supposed to exclude the backward diaspora like whom on the one hand, 202 00:24:32,330 --> 00:24:36,590 and create a new national and personal home. On the other. 203 00:24:39,810 --> 00:24:46,350 The discussion on Israel's black geographies has gained momentum in the early nineties, 204 00:24:46,650 --> 00:24:53,160 when African migrants workers became a daily element in the creation of an informal space in Tel Aviv. 205 00:24:54,000 --> 00:25:01,800 This includes not only the mere presence of African migrant workers, but also the economical, cultural and social exchange. 206 00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:09,440 The presence produces small businesses, religious and cultural institutions and community organisations. 207 00:25:09,930 --> 00:25:18,630 Glitterball will be here in a few weeks time. All next week already discusses the diaspora nature of the existence of African migrant workers, 208 00:25:19,230 --> 00:25:29,100 exposes the creation of hidden sites in Tel Aviv, follows the mobility of the black foreigner around the city and the metropolis. 209 00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:37,500 Importantly, Sabar demonstrates through their biographies the way African migrant workers attempt to 210 00:25:37,500 --> 00:25:44,010 construct the common destiny and the common experience of the African and Jewish diaspora. 211 00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:57,630 This is a theme that was very much presence among the African workers, African asylum seekers who arrived to Israel in recent years. 212 00:25:57,930 --> 00:26:08,310 In recent years mark a turn in the political discourse which dragged between and it was centric ideology and a commitment to universal human rights. 213 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:16,140 As I discussed elsewhere, there were two main interrelated courses of Africa and Israel in this case. 214 00:26:16,860 --> 00:26:23,730 The first refers to the shifts in the Israeli authorities policy regarding African asylum seekers. 215 00:26:24,780 --> 00:26:27,220 So regarding African asylum seekers. 216 00:26:27,570 --> 00:26:36,540 A policy that condones surveillance practices, deportation, confinement and dispersion as a means of intimidation. 217 00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,360 And the non policy of abandonment. 218 00:26:39,360 --> 00:26:48,090 Abandonment along with a violation of the State's commitment to assist asylum seekers under the obligation of international treaties. 219 00:26:49,230 --> 00:26:58,680 The second focuses on the way in which on the way, sorry, this policy is linked to the geographical imagination of Africa by Israel, 220 00:26:58,980 --> 00:27:03,780 which serves as the foundation to the racialisation of Israeli urban space. 221 00:27:05,670 --> 00:27:15,579 Indeed, the reimagination. Of the myth of the lodge of the mythological African jungle that I've mentioned 222 00:27:15,580 --> 00:27:21,659 at the beginning is revived in the Israeli urban space among formal ballrooms, 223 00:27:21,660 --> 00:27:31,400 transformed into ad hoc churches. Convince dormitories provided by refugee aid organisations, 224 00:27:31,790 --> 00:27:38,570 parks that served as asylum seekers home as well as small businesses run by refugee refugees. 225 00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:45,110 That compromise that that comprise a social network of Africa. 226 00:27:45,140 --> 00:27:57,650 In Israel, the arrival of asylum seekers to Israel via the Egyptian border everyday redirects the discussion to the geo political level in which the 227 00:27:57,650 --> 00:28:07,610 villa in the jungle is required to fortify and maintain the border in order to maintain to maintain the separation between here and there. 228 00:28:08,390 --> 00:28:14,060 The initiative and the discourse about the fortified border are by no means coincidental. 229 00:28:14,540 --> 00:28:15,200 Discursive. 230 00:28:15,980 --> 00:28:24,920 It is linked to technologies used by Israel over the past few years in order to control the border, namely the demand to build an intelligent fence. 231 00:28:24,950 --> 00:28:32,329 As you can see here between Israel and Egypt is inseparable from our geopolitically significant event, 232 00:28:32,330 --> 00:28:36,170 which which took place during the summer of 2002. 233 00:28:36,710 --> 00:28:41,270 The first is the establishment of the Immigration Administration that aims to prevent 234 00:28:41,270 --> 00:28:46,250 foreign workers from entering Israel and to deport those who work without permit. 235 00:28:46,700 --> 00:28:51,860 The second is the construction of the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank. 236 00:28:58,060 --> 00:29:04,900 The demographic and geopolitical fortification of Israel provides the basis for a lively 237 00:29:04,900 --> 00:29:10,300 discussion on the resemblance and the differences between Israel and South Africa. 238 00:29:11,020 --> 00:29:16,300 This brings to mind one of the most controversial questions regarding politics and space in Israel. 239 00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:25,270 Is Israel marching towards an apartheid policy? This continuous debate also echoes the shifts in the relation between Israel and 240 00:29:25,270 --> 00:29:31,389 South Africa from the continent condemnation of the South African apartheid regime. 241 00:29:31,390 --> 00:29:38,740 When Israel strengthened its ties with other African countries until the cooperation with the apartheid regime, 242 00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:49,750 after the 1973 war, when most African countries have their relations with Israel severe or severe, their relations with Israel, 243 00:29:52,150 --> 00:30:01,990 the way Israel Africa relations have come full circle and are currently founded on a syntheses of agricultural aid in arms trade, 244 00:30:02,260 --> 00:30:07,360 which constitute a major part of the Israeli experience as an even golden core. 245 00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:12,400 Indeed, its existence is due to three main interrelated reasons. 246 00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,200 The first is Israel a hyper militaristic character. 247 00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:23,170 The second is the neoliberal agenda that opens channels to promoting the interest of private capital. 248 00:30:23,950 --> 00:30:31,960 And the third is the Israeli self-perception and reputation of being a democracy that operates in accordance with moral ethics. 249 00:30:32,530 --> 00:30:38,970 These three reasons have turned the Israeli experience into the new object of desire for African countries. 250 00:30:38,980 --> 00:30:48,350 As you can see here now, you know, the very well-covered visit of the previous minister of foreign affairs of Lieberman in Africa. 251 00:30:48,370 --> 00:30:53,620 It was exposed very much in the Israeli media. But basically, if you look at the people who accompanied him, 252 00:30:53,830 --> 00:31:01,450 these were representatives of Israeli companies that produce, you know, different military technologies, etc., etc. 253 00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:08,560 So these three reasons have turned the Israeli experience into the new object of desire for African countries, 254 00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:17,350 and they help create an economic bridge encouraged by Israeli foreign policy on the one hand, and the interest of private capital on the other. 255 00:31:17,350 --> 00:31:24,190 And I think this is a very interesting marriage, if you will, and between private interest and state interest. 256 00:31:30,410 --> 00:31:42,889 Today I try to demonstrate how the Israeli and Israeli project, rooted within a specific settler context that does not fit into the common historical, 257 00:31:42,890 --> 00:31:50,120 political and geographical frameworks is not only an inner mechanism of territoriality. 258 00:31:50,690 --> 00:31:57,850 Rather, it is a central component in the design of moral geography that shapes its foreign policies. 259 00:31:58,460 --> 00:32:03,740 You can see how the relation between what happened within Israel after 48 was very 260 00:32:03,740 --> 00:32:08,630 valuable to its relations with Africa after the new African state in the sixties. 261 00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:13,640 Here, the Israeli project of internal geopolitical whitening, 262 00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:21,110 i.e. modernisation Indonesian is the platform for its external whitening in the international sphere, 263 00:32:21,410 --> 00:32:27,080 i.e. Israel as a Western giver motivated by moral mission of aid. 264 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:38,510 The presence of Africa in Israel is further accentuated in the case of African asylum seekers who have immigrated to Israel during the last few years. 265 00:32:39,110 --> 00:32:47,479 Here I suggest that the function of the geopolitical border coincides with the body of knowledge that highlights the 266 00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:54,920 centrality of the discourses and practices aimed at controlling contact between the black body and the white body, 267 00:32:55,100 --> 00:32:59,900 as well as rationalising commercialisation of minority. 268 00:33:00,650 --> 00:33:07,610 It is clearly reflected in the way in which racialisation breaches for the purification of the 269 00:33:07,610 --> 00:33:13,970 social body and the protection of the collective identity against any external penetration. 270 00:33:15,290 --> 00:33:16,969 Through this perspective one, 271 00:33:16,970 --> 00:33:25,610 they point to other patterns of racism that are formatted and organised around social sociological signifier such as poverty, 272 00:33:25,820 --> 00:33:34,700 gender and illegality, which is very relevant to the African asylum seekers that replace biological markings, namely the colour of the skin. 273 00:33:35,990 --> 00:33:41,900 Today also highlighted the actual and the analogical link between Africa and Israel, 274 00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:49,549 treating Africa as a geopolitical and cultural concept which allows a renewed observation of territory 275 00:33:49,550 --> 00:33:57,800 and identity in Israel as a demonstrated familiar spatial in social categories such as Muslim refugees, 276 00:33:58,100 --> 00:34:08,329 natural outposts, Israeli architecture, development aid or modern space are constructed here by means of or in contrast 277 00:34:08,330 --> 00:34:14,510 to their utilising moral discourse and expert practices invested in knowledge, 278 00:34:14,510 --> 00:34:17,000 power, relationship relations. 279 00:34:18,410 --> 00:34:32,360 Despite this, despite cases which demonstrate the relevance of the discussion on Africa, expressions like this is not Africa. 280 00:34:32,390 --> 00:34:38,000 This is from a demonstration Africa location. This is the name of my book in Hebrew to Africa. 281 00:34:39,740 --> 00:34:47,569 So the expression like this is not Africa are routinely articulated in Hebrew when the Speaker wishes to position 282 00:34:47,570 --> 00:34:55,700 Israel on the Western progressive and white section of the whole of the world geopolitical and cognitive map. 283 00:34:56,510 --> 00:35:02,060 This is not. Africa epitomises the moral geography of Israel in Africa. 284 00:35:02,420 --> 00:35:06,230 Israel is here while Africa is there. 285 00:35:06,950 --> 00:35:19,940 The boundary between here and Africa is negatively marked by not the negation of the black, the underdeveloped who validates here by way of mirroring. 286 00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:27,670 Thank you. You just.