Israeli settlers block access to bomb shelters

As the war between Israel and Iran intensifies, Israelis are systematically excluding minority groups from bomb shelters.

It is well documented that the Israeli government do not provide Palestinians living in the occupied territories with the same protection that they do for Israelis. This includes failing to build bomb shelters in Arab towns.

Apartheid Israel has shelters for its Jewish citizens but not for Palestinian citizens of Israel. https://t.co/5sC5vHLdRt

— Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 (@LalehKhalili) June 18, 2025

Israeli settlers hoard basic defences

In Tamra, a Palestinian town in the north of the occupied Palestinian territories, only 40% of the 37,000 residents have either a safe room or a bomb shelter. There are no bunkers or public shelters, like in the majority of cities that Israel is occupying.

I just spoke with a 🇵🇸 elder about how 5 Palestinians were martyred today in “Israel” as a result of Iranian airstrikes & she asked me to keep 3 points in mind:
1. Israel deliberately does not provide equal protection to 🇵🇸 citizens, from bomb shelters to sirens to the Iron Dome. pic.twitter.com/AKJGdNtcWI

— Ghada Sasa | غادة سعسع PhD(c) 🇵🇸 (@sasa_ghada) June 15, 2025

According to CNN,

Civil defense capabilities are built into the infrastructure of Israel. Israeli law requires all homes, residential buildings, and industrial building built since the early 1990s to have bomb shelters. These shelters prove crucial to protect Israelis when warning sirens go off – providing the public with safe and fortified locations to hide from incoming rockets.

But as we have already established, Israelis don’t care about Palestinians. They are left to fend for themselves, creating makeshift shelters from holes, tunnels and bridges:

While Jewish Israelis have bomb shelters in their settlements, here is what Palestinian-Bedouin citizens of Israel in the Occupied Naqab have to “protect” themselves and their families with: Makeshift holes, flood tunnels and under bridges. https://t.co/Sedw7urAeG pic.twitter.com/ou2jkg8Hk5

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) June 15, 2025

This is an Arab woman from an unrecognized village in the Naqab, southern Israel.
She sits inside an open concrete pipe under the night sky.
This is her bomb shelter because the state refuses to recognize her village or provide basic protection. pic.twitter.com/ep7nHACGGC

— Saleh Elkrenawi (@sh22kr) June 17, 2025

Additionally, reports suggest that the Israelis designed the Iron Dome to systematically exclude Palestinian towns coming under attack.

According to The New Arab:

Arab towns, especially in the Naqab (Negev), are routinely classified as “open areas” where Iron Dome is programmed to allow missiles to fall, or worse, detonate interceptors above them, showering civilians below with shrapnel.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by LPC (@landpalestine)

This means that Iran is killing Palestinians in airstrikes, which of course, Israel will use to its full, genocidal advantage.

2. Israel attempts to intercept missiles using methods that increase the likelihood that they fall on Palestinian-majority towns.
3. Israel is more likely to declare and spotlight the murder of Palestinians in its psychological war to turn Palestinians against Iran.

— Ghada Sasa | غادة سعسع PhD(c) 🇵🇸 (@sasa_ghada) June 15, 2025

Minorities kicked out of shelters

One video on X showed Africans crammed into a small bomb shelter with Israeli settlers. Originally posted by Sheffi Paz, a far-right ‘anti-migrant’ activist, the caption included:

And at the next alarm, we will again fight with them for every square meter in the shelter, and again there will be residents who will be left outside.

The funniest part is that this anti-migrant, far-right genocide supporter was BORN IN POLAND.

“Israel” is such a racist “country” that we’ve seen video of Jews keeping Thai workers out of bomb shelters, and now complaining that there are people of African ancestry in a shelter taking up space. This genocidal racist “state” is what the West loves most https://t.co/FGkH3RNgYt

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) June 18, 2025

Additionally, Thai workers are being denied entry to shelters:

This is the TRUE face of Apartheid #Israel.. bunkers and shelters are “for Jews only”.. not for Thai and foreign workers.. not mentioning the Arabs of course!

Despicable..! 🤢

——#IsraelIranConflict #IsraeliranWar #IranIsraelConflict #IranIsrael #IranVsIsrael pic.twitter.com/0PuDcGpJvU

— Dr. Abdallah Marouf د. عبدالله معروف (@AbdallahMarouf) June 17, 2025

There are around 38,000 Thai workers in Israel, primarily on farms, due to higher wages than are available back home.

After the October 7 attacks, Israel faced a shortage of foreign workers as so many left their ‘precious homeland’ on evacuation flights.

However, the terrorist state extended work visas and added pay bonuses of around $500 a month.

It’s a shame they couldn’t include ‘access to bomb shelters’ in their employment contracts.

Zionism – that failed supremacist political ideology built on violence and displacement, living on stolen land – shows its true colours. https://t.co/Xey5SWMkAy

— Michael Forde (@MichaelForde4) June 16, 2025

This also raises questions about the treatment of 32,000 Indian workers known to be in Israel.

Oh, you’re poor?

However, it seems that even poor Israeli settlers from less affluent neighbourhoods are being denied access to shelters:

Well apparently not even for all Jews! pic.twitter.com/pNhbX3omfo

— Sirloinofice (@Sirloinofice1) June 18, 2025

IN ISRAEL,

Israelis refused to let other Israelis into the shelter during a bombing, even though they had children with them, simply because they were from a different building. pic.twitter.com/tyy8WQA291

— Muhammad Smiry 🇵🇸 (@MuhammadSmiry) June 19, 2025

Maybe their building was chosen by god, millions of years ago?

Different race ✔️
Different religion ✔️
Different building ✔️ https://t.co/eiWVCO0RKh

— Hammad Shakil (@hammadshakill) June 19, 2025

So much for ‘love thy neighbour’.

Israeli settlers have made repeated bloodthirsty calls for the lives and land of Palestinians. The second they face a few Iranian bombs, they turn not only on the migrant workers around them, but also on each other.

It’s time to call Israel what it is: an apartheid state. But, the majority of the Western capitalist world is too spineless to call it what it is.

However, this is what Zionism looks like in practice – a supremacist ideology that dehumanises and devalues Palestinian lives, along with the lives of poor workers from the Global South. Zionism is a death cult that will devour even itself. That’s what Western powers are propping up.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Roya News