Journalist to speak on Africans in Israel
- Details
- Published on Monday, 01 September 2014 09:00
- Written by editor
August 30, 2014
Sheen has covered the plight of African refugees in Israel for journals as diverse as Ha’aretz, 972 Magazine, The Daily Beast, Black Agenda Report, Al Jazeera, Electronic Intifada, and Muftah. He has been featured on news reports on the topic in the Huffington Post, CBC, France 24, Vice, and other international outlets. His homepage and YouTube channel dedicated to the topic of Africans in Israel serve as important resources for international news agencies and anti-racist activists alike.
http://www.davidsheen.com/racism
Starting in 2006, out of the millions of sub-Saharan Africans that have fled ethnic cleansing, political persecution and environmental collapse on the continent, 60,000 have sought refuge in Israel. The Israeli government let most of them in, hesitant to be seen as outright forcing refugees back to the horrors they fled from. But to ensure that they would leave as soon as... possible, the government conducted a campaign to incite racial hatred against them, passed laws to criminalize them and is now rounding them up off the city streets and incarcerating them in desert internment camps. The government openly admits that its objective is to “make their lives miserable” so that they will relent and agree to self-deport.
In January 2012, Sheen produced a one-hour video report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination about Israel’s treatment of African refugees. On the basis of the report, the UN body criticized the Israeli government for the crimes catalogued therein, and the following year the U.S. State Department followed suit. Unfortunately, these rebukes fell on deaf ears in Israel.
Video - http://bit.ly/isracism Trailer - http://bit.ly/afrefuge
In the spring of 2013, the New York Times solicited a 10-minute video by Sheen and fellow independent journalist Max Blumenthal about Israel’s treatment of African refugees. The Times refused to publish it, however, apparently fearful of a backlash from supporters of the Israeli government. The Nation went on to publish the video in October 2013 and it went viral, spawning multiple bootleg versions and chalking up over a million hits and counting on YouTube.
Video - http://bit.ly/newrace
Sheen now lives in Dimona, the home of the African Hebrew Israelites, and is working on a book about Israel’s treatment of Africans, Jewish and non-Jewish, past and present. Sheen was the first to report on the striking parallels between Israel’s current attempts to deport all African refugees and its historic attempts to deport all African Hebrew Israelites, a group of African Americans who migrated to Israel in the late 1960’s.
Speaking Sample - http://bit.ly/israfel
Sheen last gave lectures on this topic in North America in the spring, including stops at Harvard, Princeton, UCLA and another 20 campuses and communities across the continent. After Sheen’s presentation at Harvard Law School, the event organizer described it “like a TED talk, only better”. Below is a link to a video of the presentation Sheen gave on March 9, 2014 at Vancouver, Simon Fraser University:
SFU presentation - http://bit.ly/ilswar
Sheen’s upcoming presentations will include material presented on those occasions, as well as a considerable amount of new information he has covered in the interim. Sheen will also relate the plight of the African refugees to the treatment of other dispossessed people in Israel (i.e. Palestinians) and to the treatment of other African peoples around the world.
Between October 14 and November 7, Sheen will be visiting the United States and Canada to conduct a series of interviews and to speak publicly about the plight of African refugees in Israel. He will be bringing his unique insight and a wealth of information that he has documented which will educate audiences -- and hopefully inspire some to action.
David SheenMobile: +972-54-5355973 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Skype: realdavidsheen Web: http://www.davidsheen.com
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CAIA Active Members Committee
