Residents of south Tel Aviv are stepping up their fight against the foreign workers and African refugees living among them.

On Tuesday, 100 people attended what they called an emergency meeting in the Hatikvah neighborhood, following the murder of an Eritrean woman by her husband on Friday. One participant was Corinne, whose mother, Esther Galili, was beaten to death by a Sudanese citizen near the Tel Aviv central bus station nine months ago.

The residents called on the authorities to expel the foreigners, complaining they were violent, drunk and sexually harassing women. Many said they were afraid to go out after dark.

"Why do I need to live in fear?" asked Valeria, a resident of the neighborhood for the past 16 years. "I bought a home here, I love the neighborhood and I am afraid to go home after work. They should not be here."

Several people called out from the audience, "We hate them, they are stealing everything they can, they behave like animals and they are chasing our girls."

The residents agreed that landlords and business owners need to be pressured not to hire or rent apartments to foreigners, as the Bnai Brak municipality decided last week regarding foreigners in Pardes Katz. They also complained that the media supports the foreigners without exposing what life is like in the neighborhoods. Several also called for protest measures such as demonstrating, blocking roads and burning tires.

Most of the participants were adults who have been living in the southern neighborhoods for many years, but one of the few younger people there said he had launched a Facebook page for the cause.

One of the organizers, Tel Aviv Likud councilman Shlomo Maslawi, said the residents feel abandoned.

"At the city council they call me a racist. If those bleeding hearts lived here and their children and grandchildren lived here, they'd be behaving differently. They have abandoned us. The flow of infiltrators isn't abating, it's just growing stronger. There is no end to this. We were the majority here and now we're a minority," he said.