Isabel Kershner has filed the first New York Times report on the wave of anti-African protests and violence that has continued in Israel over the past few weeks. She doesn’t seem to capture what is shown above:

The issue has become an explosive one in Israel. Many African migrants have settled in poor areas of south Tel Aviv and in the southern border town of Eilat, and have met increasing resentment.

Residents of south Tel Aviv complain of rising crime in migrant areas, and have staged noisy demonstrations, egged on by right-wing politicians and activists. At a demonstration in the Shapira Quarter last week, rightists handed out leaflets offering self-defense courses, and protesters chanted, “The people want the Sudanese deported,” holding placards with slogans like, “This is not racism, this is survival.”

Some stores run by African migrants were damaged and looted last month.

“It was better in Sudan,” said Ibrahim Abdullah, 25, an asylum seeker who was idling on the grass in a south Tel Aviv park last week. Mr. Abdullah said that he worked now and again in building, but that he had no money and relied on handouts for food.

Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, was quoted on Friday as saying that “the infiltrators, along with the Palestinians, will quickly bring us to the end of the Zionist dream.” Noting that Israel had its own health and welfare issues, he said, “We don’t need to import more problems from Africa.”

“Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man,” Mr. Yishai said in an interview with the newspaper Maariv.

Even so, there has been emotional debate here about the obligations of a country like Israel, largely founded by refugees. While opponents of the African influx say they worry about Israel’s future as a state with a Jewish majority, other Israelis have volunteered to help the asylum seekers and say that Israel, of all places, should show compassion toward those fleeing hardship.