Photos: Tel Aviv is alive with the fury of 50,000 African refugees

RIGHT NOW: The streets, sidewalks, parks, squares of Tel Aviv are burning with pride and desperation and a timeless plea for human dignity.

I've never seen anything like it.

Israel's roughly 50,000 African asylum seekers have been on strike for the last three days. They have bravely walked out of their workplaces and are rallying by the tens of thousands across the city, protesting “>the group marched along the stunning Tel Aviv coastline to protest in front of various embassies, including the U.S. embassy, as well as the local headquarters for the United Nations' refugee agency. Protesters begged foreign leaders to either put pressure on Israel or to intervene in the situation themselves.

And today, they re-convened at Levinsky Park, where they decided — quite historically — to keep the strike going until their demands are met. Aka, until Israel agrees to find a more humane solution to their predicament than “>told me last June that he was having trouble gathering even a few dozen people, much less thousands, to rally for refugee rights.

And at the general assembly on Saturday, organizers seemed aware of the fragile new miracle they were witnessing. They warned against in-fighting and divides between nationalities. “All of us, we have to remain together,” one speaker said. “When we are not together, we will not be equals. It is your role to commit yourselves to join your brothers. Let us join hands together and say 'No' to prison.”

Shouted another man into the loudspeaker: “I see you sleeping! Don't sleep! Don't sleep!”

“>since the start of December, when a change in Israeli law allowed for the indefinite jailing of African immigrants in “>Day Without a Mexican” and showing Tel Aviv what life is like without them toiling behind the scenes.

“>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said, flat out, “Demonstrations and strikes will not help,” the panic really set in.

“They can't stay out of work forever,” one of the businessmen said, eyeing the thousands of asylum seekers chanting their freedom chants around him. “Maybe we can just hire some of these guys.”

“>as numbers rather than names, protesters started carrying around posters with numbers printed across them, conjuring the wrist tattoos of Holocaust victims.

“>Their crime rate is lower than that of the rest of the population. They have escaped unthinkable violence in countries whose populations the U.N. has clearly recognized as deserving asylum. And now that they have reached Israel, they need to work — a fact of life which the Netanyahu administration has used to pitch them as “illegal infiltrators” exploiting this developed nation the Jews have fought so hard to build.

At Tuesday's press conference, Mulgeta Tumuzgi, a young man from Eritrea who has been in Israel for six years now, appealed to the breed of Israeli who tends to shout “Go home!” as Africans march past on the streets of Tel Aviv.

“The government continues to lie to the public and