Along with the Palestinians, Black Lives too don't matter in Israel

And,  the USA follows the Israeli government's footprint. 

David Sheen at Truthdig
Black Lives Don't Matter in Israel

Getting caught with marijuana by authorities in country where it is illegal is never a pleasant experience. Even if members of your family back home are able to pull strings and secure your early release, it’s no fun to be behind bars for any length of time, to lose your freedom even temporarily.

But at least one Israeli citizen caught with weed in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula knows well how easy he got off. Though he was released from jail after just a few days and allowed to return home, his seriously injured cellmate, also from Tel Aviv, was left to languish for a lot longer.

The reason for the disparity in their treatment: Elyasaf is a Jew and a citizen of Israel, who had a stamp in his passport attesting to the fact that he had entered Egypt legally. Ablel, on the other hand, is an Eritrean refugee, who was forced from Israel into Egypt against his will and then tortured by human traffickers.

“Now, you hear this story, and you don’t believe it,” Elyasaf said. “It sounds unbelievable. And really, if I wasn’t there, if I didn’t meet the young man and hear it from him myself, with him there in the Egyptian jail, lying next to me, and I see that it’s true, I wouldn’t believe that something like this is possible. What kind of country do we live in? A man is kidnapped in the middle of the day from downtown Tel Aviv!”.



Ablel Tsegay serving food in his south Tel Aviv restaurant, Dolphin. (Ablel Tsegay / Facebook)

Getting caught with marijuana by authorities in country where it is illegal is never a pleasant experience. Even if members of your family back home are able to pull strings and secure your early release, it’s no fun to be behind bars for any length of time, to lose your freedom even temporarily.

But at least one Israeli citizen caught with weed in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula knows well how easy he got off. Though he was released from jail after just a few days and allowed to return home, his seriously injured cellmate, also from Tel Aviv, was left to languish for a lot longer.

The reason for the disparity in their treatment: Elyasaf is a Jew and a citizen of Israel, who had a stamp in his passport attesting to the fact that he had entered Egypt legally. Ablel, on the other hand, is an Eritrean refugee, who was forced from Israel into Egypt against his will and then tortured by human traffickers.

“Now, you hear this story, and you don’t believe it,” Elyasaf said. “It sounds unbelievable. And really, if I wasn’t there, if I didn’t meet the young man and hear it from him myself, with him there in the Egyptian jail, lying next to me, and I see that it’s true, I wouldn’t believe that something like this is possible. What kind of country do we live in? A man is kidnapped in the middle of the day from downtown Tel Aviv!”
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Egyptian border guards caught Elyasaf, a 30-year-old graphic designer, with weed as he was heading home after a few days of vacation at a Red Sea resort. When they locked him up in a Taba prison, he was shocked to learn that a fellow Tel Avivan who spoke perfect Hebrew was stuck in the cell with him.

There, Elyasaf became the first person to hear Ablel’s scandalous story.

After Benjamin Netanyahu’s government built a high-tech fence on the Egyptian border in 2013, the influx of African refugees to Israel ended abruptly. So criminal gangs that had made millions in the preceding years from trafficking and torturing for ransom those refugees now needed an alternate source of income. Bedouin brigands figured that refugees who had managed to make it into Israel could be brazenly kidnapped off the streets of Tel Aviv—and then smuggled back into Egypt.....