Sheffi Paz

Sheffi Paz (; born 18 June 1952) is an Israeli activist against African immigration to Israel, living in south Tel Aviv. In the past she was an activist in the Israeli political party Meretz.

Early life Paz was born in Łódź, Poland in 1952 to Holocaust survivor parents. At the age of four she made aliyah with her parents, and grew up in Holon, Israel. She participated in the youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. After the Six-Day War, when she was 15, she participated in protests in Tel Aviv supporting Israeli settlements. Paz was a lesbian activist for LGBT rights, and was a member of the feminist lesbian association Klaf. She participated in protest shifts outside of the house of then-president Ezer Weizman, after he made homophobic public statements, and she stood on the side of drag queens in the Israeli Wigstock riots of 1998. The party won one seat and did not enter the city council.

Anti-immigration activism The South Tel Aviv Liberation Front

Since 2012, Paz has had a significant role in the movement against African immigration to Israel, as a member of the organization "Otef Tahana HaMerkazit". Paz led a branch of the organization, which calls itself the "South Tel Aviv Liberation Front". She interviews with the media, organizes violent protests and hangs signs with the goal of convincing the Israeli public that the migrant population in south Tel Aviv causes serious problems for the native residents. She often uses violent means, including pepper-spraying a guard at an elementary school, threatening an Israeli Supreme Court justice, vandalizing the home of the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, vandalizing the European Union office in Israel, and breaking into preschools for migrant children.

With this goal she has partnered with various right-wing Israeli organizations. She protests the migrants' use of public parks and schools. She frequently violently confronts and harasses human rights activists that advocate for refugees, claiming that they are violating the rights of the Jewish, low socio-economic class residents, who feel abandoned by the state and city governments. Although she voted for Meretz for decades, her radical views and actions, along with her confrontations with the Israeli left, have pushed her political views rightwards.

Since August 2017 Paz has led weekly demonstrations opposite the house of the former head of the Supreme Court of Israel, Miriam Naor, in Rehavia, Jerusalem, and outside the house of the current head Esther Hayut in Tzahala, north Tel Aviv. In November 2017 she was arrested during a protest that she led opposite the house of the head of the Supreme Court.

Paz has had numerous encounters with African migrants in which she allegedly incites violence, and has been arrested 14 times as a result of her violent behavior. In a 2016 interview with Hilo Glazer from Haaretz newspaper, she openly admitted to siding with activists who call for "Death to the Sudanese!" She also has had a restraining order placed against her by social activist Sigal Avivi.

Indictments In September 2019, Paz and bereaved mother Meirav Hajaj vandalised the entrance of office of the European Union delegation in Israel. They spray-painted slogans in red paint which read: "EU get out" and "German money kill Jews". In January 2020, Paz and her co-conspirators were charged with conspiring to commit a crime, intentionally causing property damage and vandalism. The offences cited in the indictment include destruction of property, obstructing an investigation, criminal conspiracy, breaking and entering and invasion of privacy. In preparation for this break-in, Paz and her fellow anti-immigration activists wrote to one-another blatantly racist messages including “thumbtacks should be scattered in the preschools and not the roads so as not to injure the white residents.” Paz also planned for future graffiti, of which she said: “What’s important is that it be offensive toward the children.”