17 Mar 2015

Israel: haven for marginalised under threat

The shopping centre at Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station is a refuge for foreigners who have moved to Israel and want to set up a business. But its future is under constant threat, writes Toby Bakare.

“I don’t like to go in there if I don’t have to.” A taxi driver sums up the opinion of many Tel Aviv locals when it comes to the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. It’s seen by many as an eyesore and has become known as “The Elephant”, due to the enormous cost of building it.

In recent years the building has fallen into disrepair, fewer than 50 per cent of the shops inside are occupied, and it’s seen as a haven for crime. It’s also located in the Neve Sha’anan district of Tel Aviv, the home of Ethiopian Jews – or Falashas – in Tel Aviv, and one of the poorest, most neglected parts of the city.

It’s all in stark contrast to when the station was opened in 1993 by the then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Then it was the biggest station of its kind in the world and its owners hoped it would be a light and modern shopping centre with a constant flow of new people from the bus terminals.

Marginalised

But with numerous vacant lots has come an opportunity for some of the more marginalised in Israel to stake a claim for themselves.

One such example is Yung Yiddish, a cultural repository of Yiddish culture tucked away on the fifth floor of the station (pictured above). Set up by Mendy Cahan, the centre now holds 50,000 yiddish books and keeps alive a language which is near extinction in Israel and Europe. Mendy himself grew up in Belgium in a Yiddish-speaking household before coming to Israel 30 years ago.

“There are no Yiddish bookstores in Israel, this is why I started collecting,” says Cahan. “I started with a few of my parents’ books and now I have 50,000. English, French, German – they are fine, they don’t need me – but Yiddish does.”

That night Yung Yiddish hosts a traditional Klesmer (pictured above) for an audience of 50 playing traditional songs in Yiddish and French as buses roar overhead shaking the foundations. Without the centre these books and a huge slice of Jewish culture would have disappeared a long time ago and without the bus station there would be no place for Yung Yiddish to call home.

As well as the old, there’s also the new inside the bus station. On the third floor is Raheem (pictured below), a young man who fled war in Sudan to come to Israel. He’s had his shop, which sells hip hop clothing, for just over a month. He tells me he likes the location as there are lots of people, and lots of potential customers, walking by.

Security and the Arab-Israeli conflict will be the number one issue when voters go to the polls in March for elections to the Knesset. But not far behind will be the issue of immigration of non-Jews from Africa and Asia. Previously, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has talked of migrants from Africa threatening the “national identity” of Israel.

Firm estimates are hard to come by but it’s thought there are 250,000 foreigners living in Israel. In addition to this, there are 135,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel. The majority of those live in Tel Aviv and integration has been difficult in the past as many struggle to find work and acceptance. The bus station provides a rare refuge and for a lucky few a business opportunity.

Racism

The station is home to to one of Tel Aviv’s few advocacy groups where Ethiopian Jews can come and seek advice. Daily, a large group of Filipino children gather in a neglected hallway to practise their breakdancing skills.

The 1990s saw waves of immigration from the Philippines and Ethiopia: the former a traditional migration of people seeking better economic opportunities and work in the healthcare sector, the latter as part of a huge airlift operation to rescue Ethiopian Jews out of Addis Ababa during civil war.

Both groups have stayed in large numbers in Israel but have suffered problems. Ethiopian Jews suffer from widespread racism on a daily basis while Filipinos struggle to gain full citizenship rights from the Jewish state. Both have made homes in the station.

In a bid to make the station more attractive, there are now public art installations and graffiti artworks throughout (pictured above). There are also a number of artist studios, all of which the manager, Miki Ziv, hopes will attract a new crowd. In the basement there is a nightclub – The Block – which is now a fixture in Tel Aviv’s vibrant club scene.

This ugly concrete structure in downtown Tel Aviv is not what the original builders had in mind but it has become invaluable to those who use it. Despite this, the future of the station is under constant threat.

Currently there are plans to tear down the station to make way for a new housing development in south Tel Aviv. It could be that time will soon be up for The Elephant.

Ziv hopes that the station will stay intact, but can imagine a day when this isn’t the case. “We don’t know what will happen in the future, we have a lot of economic problems. Probably, it will become some kind of high rise trade centre.”