Azealia Banks vows ‘never’ to return to Israel after ‘racist’ treatment in Tel Aviv
Published time: 9 May, 2018 19:43
Edited time: 10 May, 2018 07:32
Rapper Azealia Banks performs onstage during the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival in 2015 © Karl Walter / AFP
American rapper Azealia Banks has tweeted out a lengthy list of her grievances with Israeli people after she says she was racially and sexually harassed on a trip to Tel Aviv.
The artist claimed that she was treated rudely on multiple occasions due to her skin color, including being subjected to extra security checks at the airport, facing hostility in restaurants and grocery stores, as well as being
“purposefully coughed on” and “stepped on” in public.
CHEAPY XO
@cheapyxo
Sidebar: i love my fans but the people in Tel Aviv are really very rude. The folks at the hotel, in restaurants, at the grocery store treated me with such disregard I really didn’t enjoy my time here. The show was great tho
11:28 AM – May 8, 2018
248 77 people are talking about this
CHEAPY XO @cheapyxo 9 May
How much y’all wanna bet these racists at this airline lost my bag on pudpose
CHEAPY XO
@cheapyxo
Why are these people like this? I don’t understand… the amount of times I’ve been purposefully coughed on, stepped on, cut in line is tooooo much . I need a strong drink
1:23 AM – May 9, 2018
133 45 people are talking about this
Banks even accused airline staff of losing her bag “on purpose” because she is black. In one tweet, Banks claimed that on her flight home, a rabbi sitting next to her on the plane asked if he could sex with her “for money.”
Banks also described another incident where
“some old Jewish lady” screamed at her on the plane. “Y’all country is nuts,” she declared in another tweet.
CHEAPY XO
@cheapyxo
On my flight back I sat next to a rabbi who taught me some numerology then asked if I’d have sex with him for money .. “away from the community”.. it was kind of kinky but I politefully declined.
1:07 AM – May 9, 2018
767 155 people are talking about this
CHEAPY XO
@cheapyxo
No some old Jewish lady on my el al flight screamed at me in front of the whole plane for trying to put my bag where hers was. It was so racist I sat in my seat and cried
1:02 PM – May 8, 2018
282 128 people are talking about this
The reaction to Banks’ comments on Twitter was mixed. While some echoed her experiences in Tel Aviv, others branded Banks herself a racist for tarring all Israelis with the same brush.
Seth Mandel
@SethAMandel
I have no doubt Azealia Banks faced racism on her trip, but just want to say these particular examples (she cites more in the piece) will be familiar to literally any person who has ever been to Israel or flown on El Al newsweek.com/azealia-banks-…
5:49 PM – May 9, 2018
122 70 people are talking about this
David Sheen
@davidsheen
WHAT? Racism against a non-Jewish black woman? In Israel? A state whose leaders regularly use the N-word, associate black folks with death-causing diseases like ebola & cancer, who round them into camps & deport them back to the tortures they fled from? Who could have predicted?!
1:01 PM – May 9, 2018
224 191 people are talking about this
Storyteller Rebecca
@dorothyofisrael
You ignorant racist. Any non citizen has their checked before checking in. My Jewish cousi and friends complain Israelis are rude, but yo on rants blaming racism. Educate yourself on place you go to, before you embarrass yourse
twitter.com/cheapyxo/statu…
12:05 PM – May 9, 2018
3 See Storyteller Rebecca ‘s other
The singer also lamented the mad “dark voodoo vibes” she felt in Israel and vowed not to return
“unless it’s for some real money.”
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A couple of days ago on Facebook, 4 days to be exact, I was involved in discussion on the ongoing situation in South Africa. I tackled topics like racism, white supremacism, apartheid, colonial oppression, etc.
Of course, many whites came out guns blazing, claiming we need to move forward and stop talking about the past.
Now, how do we ignore the past of apartheid when whites in Afrika are still racist and continue to refuse the fact that Afrikans have achieved self-determination?
Following that debate, yesterday (3 April 2017), I received an obscene message hereunder from a certain Ryan Vogel of Modderfontein, Gauteng, SA (as per his Facebook profile) via my inbox.
Note:
I have deliberately separated the expletive-loaded message (in bold) from my text with a dashed lines. Previously, I wrote on ‘Polite Behaviour On Social Media’.
—————————————————————–
‘It’s cunts like you who deserve to get fucking cancer and die a very slow painful death. All you do is fucking incite racism and spread bullshit propaganda. Fuck you, cunt’
—————————————————————— According to Ryan Vogel, it is people like me who incite racism and cause division because we keep talking about past injustices which were inflicted upon Afrikans during decades of colonial apartheid. I find convenient, the fact that whites who invaded and plundered Afrika for decades, oppressed its people, invented the system of apartheid which was based on repressive racism and shunted Afrikans to bantustans, introduced a contract labour system which turned men into manual labourers housed in compounds away from their wives and children for months on end, etc, are now preaching to us about the sacredness of democracy and racial harmony.
It is hypocrical of whites in southern Afrikan countries, mainly, South Africa and Namibia, to lecture us about democracy, reconciliation, letting go of the past when apartheid only ended in these two countries 24 and 27 years ago, respectively.
Most importantly, white people want to maintain their apartheid status quo in spaces like schools, residential areas, churches, social clubs, etc. Many of them shun government jobs because they do not want to be supervised by black people or work with black people at all.
It follows that one cannot even talk about social mingling between blacks and whites as on a minute percentage of white people will associate with black people at all. In rare cases where there is an interracial marriage between a black man and white woman or vice versa, it will be that such a union comprises of persons from the liberation struggle background who have social justice ideals in common. Otherwise, you only have to scratch the surface to discover that, invariably; the black spouse is either very rich or a celebrity of some kind, in sport or entainment.
This, probably, has its roots in the Immorality Act, 1927 (Act No.5 of 1927) an apartheid law which prohibited interracial liaisons. The original purpose of apartheid, like Nazism; is planked on the purity and supposed superiority of the white race, something inspired by eugenics.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that Hendrik Verwoerd, an Afrikaaner nationalist who invented apartheid took a leaf from the racist-inspired eugenics movements of western countries which were prevalent in the 1930’s.
People like Ryan Vogel, descendants of racist Afrikaaner nationalists in southern Afrika who oppressed, segregated and discriminated against non-whites have no moral high ground to talk about racial harmony. White people killed many Afrikans for standing up to colonial and apartheid injustices, they drove them off their lands and appropriated it for themselves. In Namibia, the Herero/Nama genocide almost wiped out the Herero ethnic group and the survivors were banished into the desert to die of thirst and starvation.
Many people in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and SA were forced to go into exile, starting the late 1950’s, to the late 1980’s to swell the ranks of liberation movements, take up arms and take the fight to the racist whites occupying their motherlands. Many Afrikans freedom fighters sacrificed their lives on battlefields, were improsoned without trial, disappeared without a trace at the hands of apartheid death squads. The history, and notoriety; of places like ‘Vlakplaas’ in South Afrika is well-documented.
I will not, therefore, make no apologies to racist whites, especially whites of the Afrikaaner stock. Let history judge me harshly for my stance on colonialism and apartheid for I have suffered on account of these draconian systems.
Afrikans cannot continue to suffer in Afrika just because we want to make peace with racist whites who are now telling us to appreciate colonialism for it had supposedly brought us modern life and delivered us from our mudhuts.
If whites in Afrika persist with their notion of race superiority, the only thing that will resolve racial discord is the end of the current generations that went to war with each other because of colonialism and apartheid.
In words inexpressible
In emotions definable
In tears manifestable
In poignancy palpable
An act of moral cowardice
A template of societal decadence
An assault on human dignity
A call for judicial activism
Endlessly;
Why!
Why!
Why!
(Dedicated to the late Megameno Kamwangha)
Wishing all my Followers and the Followed a wonderful 2017.
Let us all make do with the cards life has dealt out to us.
Hold steady:
A year is but a measure of time.
Aknowlegement:
This great article by Melanie Verwoerd originally appeared in News24.
In the last couple of days, I have been verbally attacked by a couple of white people from the American extreme far-right for disagreeing with the them on certain matters of opposing interest on this platform.
One of these (a white male) strangely believes he has the unfettered right to hurl insults on president Obama (his president) simply because he differs with him politically. I had to point it out to him that he appeared hell-bent on attacking and vilifying president Obama solely because he was black. However, he promised me that he would even redouble the amount of bile he was already spewing copiously onto the person of the president by posting more vitriolic material.
I have a problem with racist whites from the so-called first world who tend to be very ignorant about us in the much-despised ‘third world’. People in the west take what they read online or in print or watch on the news at face value. This is worsened by the western media houses which have a bad habit of selective reporting on events in outside their by fixating on miserable and depressing stories of malnutrition, war and HIV/AIDS in some parts of the ‘third world’ while ignoring positive stories in others. It is as though the whole ‘third world’ is one amorphous lump engulfed in corruption, hunger,disease, illiteracy, wars and homelessness.
Some of these maladies are, also, present in western countries but the western media and their research institutions would rather display the ‘third world’ as red spots when they seek to sensationalise and flavour their stories. We acknowledge problems exist but not in the form they are presented by the west.
Now, one of these American whites made reference to how modern slavery was still rampant in most of the ‘third world’ including Namibia, my country. A map showing areas in the ‘third world’ with a prevalence of modern slavery was bandied about but for some unfathomable reason the western (read ‘first world’) part of the map was lightly coloured (no incidence of modern slavery) while the ‘third world was heavily reddened (very high incidence). How insidiously dishonest!
I had to point them to the fact that the problem of modern slavery is prevalent in the so-called first world, too, considering the fact that incomes and wealth distributions in the ‘first world’ are higher than in the ‘third world’ hence making clandestine slavery practices like forced labour, human trafficking and forced prostitution more common in rich western countries.
My white interlocutors were still denying this fact which left me no option but to refer them to relevant web addresses containing such information. In the US, for example, forced labour and prostitution is prevalent but not practised openly for obvious reasons.
Needless to say, these ignorant yet arrogant whites never came back to me to argue the contrary after pointing them to that concrete evidence but kept their belligerent posture by calling me all sorts of names. I was told how uneducated I was considering I was from Namibia, a ‘beeping’ idiot, etc.
Then we progressed to another matter. The UN had recently supported calls for reparations to descendants of Afrikan American slaves who have suffered the iniquities of slavery for decades. I believe the United Nations was right in supporting such calls for reparations because they genuine and are meant to right the wrongs of the past in which black people’s dignity was violated. White people then treated black people as part of their movable their property to the bizarre extent that a black person’s life was viewed as inconsequential and could be extinguished at the whims of their master. Black women then were at the pleasure of these white ‘masters’ to the level were even black married women could; in the presence of their powerless husbands, be called to the ‘master’s bedroom like it was the normal thing to do.
This issue invoked anger in these fellows as they felt that black people in America today are better off than they were over a century ago. That they are far more fortunate than their Afrikan counterparts and thus the calls for reparations to redress the wrongs of slavery were actions of ungrateful people.
Mention was made of a certain Mr Sunga, who, I believe spearheads this noble crusade to have America own up to its past injustices. Mr Sunga was painted as a cantankerous character for initiating such unheard moves to take on the mighty America.
One of these ignorants even went as far as to suggest the the UN headquarters be relocated elsewhere outside America; maybe Afrika since the UN, he said, was anti-American. They went to imply that president Obama was in cahoots with UN to subvert America interests. These arrogant whites felt that since America was contributing immensely to the UN finances, the UN had no right to support such calls. I had to tell them that the location of the UN offices in Nrw York does not give America leverage to dictate UN initiatives and policy decisions around the world mandate.
The United Nations is a world body and cannot be seen to take sides. They are mandated to address world matters like armed conflict, political dispute resolutions, education, refugees, food security, etc.
If America or Iran is seen to have violated human rights the UN must address such without fear or favour. If Israel kills Palestinians, the UN must speak out in defence of the victims of such atrocities regardlesd of whether Israel is an longtime ally of America or not.
It is an annoying fact that white people from the west labour under this fallacious notion that they know everything under the sun and that they are, by default, entitled to lecturing those of us who live in the so-called third world on anything. However, the longer you interact with them, the sooner you discover how naìve they really are on their outlook of the outside world.
To these racist American whites referred to above or any like-minded whites for that matter, I have this to say to you:
You are not automatically possessed of sharp intellect or agency by your being white. You are not smarter than me just because you mother tongue is internationally spoken either.
Which One Is More Topical Right Now?
In my country, Namibia, president Geingob recently launched his blueprint for development on which his plans of action for the remainder of his tenure in office will be planked. He named it the Harambee Prosperity Plan.
The concept is positioned on four pillars which I am not going to enumerate on account of my prevailing laziness on delving into minute details. Politicians love their concepts; something to be remembered by, some kind of brave, witty and high-sounding but improbable footprint in the imaginary soft dunes of politics. A political legacy on which their reputation will continue to ride after they have left office and eventually; this world.
But enough of Harambee let us have some Harambe.
I was not surprised to learn that Mr Geingob’s concept has a bestial cousin housed in some restrictive zoo in Cincinnati in America but whose name is somehow missing one ‘e’ and thus spelt as Harambe. I would bet you two pence that these two had their ancestral origins in nearby Kenya and the brainchild of the seminal Mwangi Kariuki (yes, you know him!) who met his end under mysterious circumstances in the early 1970’s during Kenyatta’s era.
Now, of late the odious spectre of racism has reared its angular head and this time the epicentre was Cincinnati. In some wild animal zoo! Before the now well-reported Harambe demise, Cincinnati was but an obscure detail to me; some distant backwater in America.
We all (Afrikans and anyone who has Afrikan blood careening in their veins) know that white people love their dogs and cats but a couple days ago they have shown us that they will always put an animal before a black person. Long story condensed:A situation arose in that filthy zoo in which a 4-year old boy fell into the enclosure where Harambe, the gorilla, was held in captivity (remember, in the not so distant 1800’s, black people were also impounded to be prodded and poked like some beasts to satisfy the perverted voyeuristic caprices of the whiteman). Surely we have all heard of Saartjie Baartman!
The human mind is a mystery, diabolic chamber sometimes. Upon falling into the enclosure the gorilla became fidgety and those standing outside had, in that instant no split-second idea of what the jumpy Harambe could do to the little man. So, a judgement call was made to put down the gorilla and save the tot. An intuitive pre-emptive action, so to say.
This infuriated racist whites! White people felt the zoo staff had no right to choose who lives and who dies between the two occupants of that momentary space in the pound. The termination of the gorilla touched off an online tsunami of racist attacks from white people some of whom felt that it was wrong to kill an endangered gorilla while saving a human whose population is in ‘oversupply’.
Really? Since when are peole the same as animals or is it because the boy in question happens to be black and therefore his life is being equated to that of a gorilla?
What if this boy was white? Could these rabidly racist white people have argued from the same twisted moral angle? We know that there are some good white people in this world but these are few compared to those who hate black people.
But I have seen this opera before!
Not so long ago, I have been called a ‘monkey’ by a one racist white male (Brandon Hammilton, what kind of name is Brandon anyway?) from Europe (Britain) on a social network platform for speaking in support of a fellow Afrikan who was the subject of a virulent racist onslaught. Nobody called me that to my face before and I was momentarily taken aback. This is 2016 right or have we somehow teleported back to the early 19th century?
What makes so many white people think they are more human than black people? Is it their orangish skin or is it some cave-concocted lie passed on from one white generation to another which stokes the fire of their hatred towards black people?
I know of some really dumb white people who cannot even construct a sensible sentence in their own mother tongue. I know of white people who never went past high school but who still pretend to be very all-knowing and smart. I do not think for once people are different from each other in terms of their mental enterprise. People just need equal opportunities from the start and they will achieve each according to their inborn individual mental prowess.
I will rehash what I said some moons ago that people are possessed of the same intellect regardless of the colour of their skin. I have always illustrated my argument as follows:12 babies (50/50, black/white) born on the same day, in the same hospital, educated through the same schools up to university will only achieve in academics and in their working lives based on their innate characteristics as individuals and not based on their skin colour.
Why then do whites keep advancing their racist stereotypes about black people being subhuman and, therefore, deserving of ridicule?
People might differ culturally but as humans they are fundamentally the same.
It is in the way we were raised.
Only someone who has excused themselves from the use of logic would insult others on social media; I believe.
I have recently been abused several times on one social media and it left me with a sour digital taste in my mouth.
Believe me, I can be very opinionated on issues of interest to me but I will never hurl crass missiles on anyone on any public domain aside from strongly speaking my mind on issues. However, some people cannot stomach divergent views and will use obscene language if they differ with other interlocutors on social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is one thing to say to someone:’It is quite a stupid thing to say’ but totally another to directly lash out:’You are stupid’ or ‘F*ck you’ on a public space like Twitter or Facebook.
If I come across such crude language directed towards me I normally respond politely by thanking the assailant and telling them how intelligent and civilised I think they were and it ends there. They rarely follow up on their anti-social behaviour and one can only deduce that the message has registered; that in time they will be cowering in shame.
Whatever we say on social media is read and processed by everyone with access to the internet including our parents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters and friends and acquaintances, our colleagues and our employers or our business partners. Now, who in their right mind wants their loved ones, friends, children, etc, to read such crude expletives fom them just because they could not control their temper involving certain matters on social media?
What if you have verbally attacked someone over the weekend on a certain social medoa platform because your differed on a matter that you feel very strongly about without really knowing who they are and on Monday you meet them at that workshop they are presenting for your employer and upon their perusing the list of attendees they made you and actually approach you about your behaviour during teabreak?
Advisably, we need to govern our emotions and bridle that interactive tap of our fingertips on those keys on our smartphones, tablets, phablets or laptops. We can always be heard much more clearly in politeness as opposed to shouting our lungs out in these digital halls, fallaciously thinking that if we insult others on social media our posts will receive more ‘likes’ or more positive ‘comments’ when we are plainly exposing how bovinely crude our sociability really is.
Our behaviour on social media is actually a window through which those who interact with us could view the type of upbringing we had as children and how we were raised by our parents or our guardians.
As a point of fact, the person who is predisposed to launching insults on fellow interlocutors on these platforms will do the same on the street or in a crowded mall regardless of who is listening or watching and they will even go as far as rolling up their shirt sleeves to fight in public without fear of causing disrepute to their name.
‘If human dignity lies in thought then let us all strive to think well’_Pascal
Vapopya's Say 