Israel's demonisation of refugees – is this a nation forgetting its history?

Throat-clearing to begin with: racism happens everywhere, and there are few countries (perhaps Sweden is one?) where refugees get a genuinely welcoming reception. The lines engraved onto the Statue of Liberty, from the "New Colussus" by Emma Lazarus, have never fully been honoured anywhere: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
But there is something particularly depressing about the stories emerging from Israel about xenophobia and hatred of refugees from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia. Take this report in the Guardian, about an apartment building housing ten Eritrean refugees which was firebombed on Monday. Or this story, from the Economist, which recounts a demonstration where hundreds of Jews, led by settlers from the West Bank, marched through Tel Aviv chanting "Africans out". Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denounces "infiltrators" while the interior minister Eli Yishai attacks "Aids-infected migrants" who, he alleges, only come to rape women. Read more