Letter From Refugees Of Genocide Surfaces

If you were Prime Minister of England or President of America in 1940, what would you have done if you received the following letter:

"We beg you to accept, after proper security vetting, refugees from murder, and provide them with the refuge, as you have already done for the small number who have already reached your border.

"We are persecuted by a regime who is your bitter enemy - we are your allies. We do not doubt your right to choose who you want to accept and who not, and your policies towards economic refugees cannot be criticized. We, however, are in a different category.

"Your proposed change in policy makes no distinction between people who try to come here for economic reasons - to better their material life - and those who come here as a result of widespread murder, rape and torture. We cannot go back – we have no homes to go back to and return means certain death. The policy change now proposed will present us who beseech you for refuge with no choice. You will return us to torture and death.

Your fear of being swamped by refugees is unfounded, as the number of persecuted still able to flee is limited, and the possibility of safe passage to your borders is rare."

Would you open the doors to Jewish refugees? Or would you keep out Jews based on security reasons, fear of economic depression, or other reasons?

Hindsight being 20-20, and blood relationships being what they are, I suspect all of you would act to take in as many Jewish refugees as possible. And you'll rip me apart for even thinking otherwise.

Flash forward to 2008. The Prime Minister of Israel got nearly the identical letter yesterday, as the Jerusalem Post reports:

Southern Sudanese beg Israel to accept them as refugees
By REBECCA ANNA STOIL

During a period in which the Knesset is trying to impose harsh penalties on border infiltrators - including refugees from the genocide in Darfur - another group of Sudanese are lobbying the government for recognition as refugees from a genocide that has killed at least 1.9 million civilians.

Majier Pap, a representative of southern Sudanese refugees living in Israel, has sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asking that Israel "accept, after security vetting, refugees from genocide from southern Sudan, and provide them with the same status that the 500 Darfuris were - rightly - given."

"We are South Sudanese, mostly Christians, persecuted by a regime of Muslim fundamentalists, who are bitter enemies of Israel - we are, to all intents and purposes, your allies," he wrote. "We do not doubt the right of Israel to choose who it wants to accept and who not, and your policies towards economic refugees cannot be criticized. We, however, are in a different category."

In his letter, Pap addressed a recent Knesset bill that would impose hefty prison sentences on all those who infiltrate the Israel-Egypt border, with especially tough sentences reserved for those coming from enemy states, such as Sudan.

"Those who propose the law make no distinction between people who try to come here for economic reasons - to better their material life - and those who come here as a result of genocidal persecution," he wrote. "Hostilities are being renewed now on the borders between North and South Sudan. We cannot go back, and the law now proposed will present us with a choice of jail, deadly persecution in Egypt, or death at the hands of the Sudanese government. Your fear of being swamped is baseless, as the number of southern Sudanese in Egypt is limited, and the possibility of crossing the Sinai is extremely difficult and life-threatening."

Fighting between southern Sudanese, who are mostly Christians and the North, which is dominated by the Khartoum-based Islamist government, has continued and observers are concerned that it is escalating, despite of a US-brokered peace agreement in January 2005.

The US government estimated that more than two million civilians in the South have been killed under the auspices of the Khartoum government, and the 2002 Sudan Peace Act accused the government of carrying out genocide. An additional four million southern Sudanese - around 80 percent of the region's population - were displaced during the conflict, with at least half a million fleeing to the surrounding countries.

Now what?

Haredi rabbis have already come out against granting refuge to these people. So have national Religious rabbis. So has much of the right and center of Israel's Knesset, religious or not.

So what would you do? Send these people back to their deaths? Turn a blind eye as Egyptian soldiers shoot them down a few feet from the Israeli border?

Is the "purity" of the Jewish people and the fear of possible future intermarriage more important than saving lives?

Every one of you who decides to turn these refugees away, to close Israel's doors in their faces, has no basis to criticize America, England, Switzerland, Canada or any other country for its behavior during the Holocaust.

You can't have it both ways.

Comments

[Yochanan Lavie]

I would rather have South Sudanese Christians in Israel than radical Muslims, or leftwing Palestinean Christians. Also, Israel can be a transition for them, to the west. Just like most of the Vietnamese eventually left, but with good feelings towards Israel.

[Paul Freedman]

There are economic considerations for Israel to offer a refuge for the millions of individuals who are at risk--up to four million and a basic misunderstanding of facts at the heart of the question--with the best will in the world Israel would be hard pressed to absorb four million individuals in a humanitarian effort that would be secondary to its main national goals and also distract from them. Israel could offer refuge to a less comprehensive number but its political system seems to be paralyzed across the board.

Moreover, America and Britain did not merely refuse to circumvent its existing legal procedures to let Jewish refugees into America or Britain during the course of the war beyond a select circle of elites; America and Britain each took additional steps beyond indifference; the State Deparment deliberately ignored its own immigration procedures to deny entry to refugees its own laws *already permitted*, extending the bureacracy of paper processing, adding arbitrary delays, until, by intention, Jews who were entitled, already, by American law to come to America, were killed. And, as is known, in concert with the Palestinian leadership, Britain denied Jews refuge, not in Britain, but in Palestine.

[R]

Well today Britain take in all and sundry and that includes refugees who have nothing to run away from at home and just think it's rosy in the UK as they will be given a free home and all sorts of benefits.
If you have people coming to your borders running for their lives you should not turn them back. Israel gives money to the ungreatful palestinians who use their money to kill them with, so, instead Israel should use some of that money to house these refugees and as they are building new settlements anyway they can spare some of those apartments for the people that need refuge, plus they can integrate these refugees into society and it could help the economy as most charedim don't do army or work.

[Ariel Sokolovsky => מזמור לדוד Song of David the Movie (with Hebrew Subtitles)]

B"H
I think they should let them in but not whole 2 million of them (I don't think there is enough place or resources for that). They should let some in and demand help from international organizations to absorb them and demand other countries follow in helping to save the rest of them.

[bend over for chabad]

i am the big bad lubabo censor so be it known my masters at vin have me pulling all anti chabad rubashkin and related posts. so there haters! you cant post on vin anymore. i am taking all of your posts down. thats how insecure i am so there!

[Yochanan Lavie]

Sudan Refugee (with apologies to Tom Petty)

We are real thin, we both know it,
The press don't talk too much about it
Ain't no real big secret, all the same,
Somehow the UN don't get around to it.

Listen, it does really matter to me
Christians, you believe what you wanna believe
You see, you don't have to live like a Sudanese

Somewhere, somehow, some Muslims must have
Kicked you around some
It's the "religion of peace,"
Therefore you've been abandoned

Motek, it is tough in the Middle East
Boychick, The Jews also had to fight to be free
You see, you don't have to live like refugees
Israel can welcome a few Sudanese

Bubleh, you ain't the first
A lot of other Africans have found berth
There are Ethiopian Jews, too
Tzelem Elohim, you got to feel to be true

Somewhere, in South Sudan, some terrorists must have
Ethnically cleansed you some.
Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped,
Tied-up, taken away, and held for ransom

Nu, skin color don't really matter to me
Together we will fight Islamic tyranny
You too, you don't have to live like a refugee
[We understand because:]
Shoah victims don't have to live like refugees
Sephardic Jews don't have to live like refugees

[A reader]

From those on the right opposing the refuge, what is the explanation they are giving, and why does one commenter say it is 2 million people, while you and the writer imply it is a couple thousand? Also, here's an idea why doesn't the UK or US send in an airlift and help them to safety in a different country? Or why doesn't Israel let them in and then later send them to other countries?

[Yochanan Lavie]

Reader: Yes, Israel can't take all 2 million (if it's that many) and other countries should step up to the plate. Using Israel as a transition point is fine; I mentioned the Vietnamese boat people who did just that. But I think Israel can take in a handful, maybe a few hundred.

[Ariel Sokolovsky => מזמור לדוד Song of David the Movie (with Hebrew Subtitles)]

B"H

The US government estimated that more than two million civilians in the South have been killed under the auspices of the Khartoum government, and the 2002 Sudan Peace Act accused the government of carrying out genocide. An additional four million southern Sudanese - around 80 percent of the region's population - were displaced during the conflict, with at least half a million fleeing to the surrounding countries.
I'm sorry I misread the above quote from the article.
It is actually much less than 2 million.
In any case to pass a proposing heavy prison sentenses for crossing the border even for people fleeing genocide as the government is planning seems very cruel and against the letter and spirit of our Holy Torah.

[Archie Bunker]

Shmarya should put his money where his **** is and get himself a mail order Sudanese bride to miscgenate with.

[Paul Freedman]

Two million have died violently, half a million have fled, beyond that, given the 4,000,000 displaced, there are a large number of potential refugees at risk--that would be the Holocaust analogy--not the Jews who had fled Germany and were camped out on the border of Soviet held Poland but the at risk population--which was larger. If Shmarya wishes Israel to take responsibility for healing the broken remnants of southern Sudan, that's a tall order. The Israel government otoh basicallly doesn't want to take in anybody who makes it to the Egyptian Israel divide.

[Isa]

Not ONE Moslem refugee!!
Israel contradicts Islam (and the Quran) with its existence.The 'grateful' refugee will hate us in time.
For Christians and others, ESPECIALLY Christians who have suffered persecution from Islam nothing theological will prevent them from standing shoulder to shoulder with us holding a rifle to protect the land that they also hold dear.

[Yoni]

Hey, I've got a better idea - since we in Israel seem to have our hands a wee bit full at the moment, why don't you and mommy take in these poor folks to your lovely abode in Bumf**k, Minn.? I second Archie's wish for you to find your Queen of Africa bashert, LUCKY JIM!

[Yochanan Lavie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/nyregion/16bigcity.html?scp=1&sq=black+Jew&st=nyt

A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn
By SUSAN DOMINUS
Published: June 16, 2008

Moments before Yosef Abrahamson, 16, accepted an award for the essay he’d written in a competition sponsored by the Police Athletic League, an officer approached him to complain about his fedora. The hat, an essential wardrobe item for Hasidic men, was gaudy, the policeman told him, and what’s with all these kids today and their nose rings and their attitudes. A second police officer, overhearing the conversation, came over to steer away the first one, who reappeared a few minutes later to apologize. He’d never seen a Hasidic Jew, he told Yosef.

A policeman working in New York who’d never seen a Hasidic Jew? What he probably meant, Yosef theorized, was “that he’d never seen a Hasidic Jew of color. I think he was probably making some assumptions there.”

Thanks to his Egyptian father, who left the family when Yosef was young, and his maternal grandfather, who was of African descent by way of Panama, Yosef looks African-American (though his family prefers to describe themselves as Jews of color, believing their culture to be exclusively Jewish). Yosef moved to Crown Heights only a year ago, until then having lived in Omaha, where his mother’s maternal family, German Jewish merchants, had settled several generations earlier.

If Yosef, who attends the yeshiva Darchai Menachem in Crown Heights, ever finds himself writing a college application essay, his advisers would have a hard time choosing which of his compelling story lines would most dazzle those college admissions officers: The story of growing up in the only Hasidic family in Omaha? Or the story of being the only student of color in his yeshiva? Or maybe the story of being the only Hasidic person of color in Omaha’s competitive ice skating circuit?

Despite the friendships he made while ice skating, a hobby his mother encouraged to round him out, life in Omaha was “a bit lonely,” Yosef admitted last week while eating a Kosher hamburger on Albany Avenue with his mother and his older sister, Sarah, 22. His mother, Dinah, who joined the Chabad-Lubavitch movement after seeing videos of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson several years ago, home-schooled both of her children.

Yosef was obviously sheltered from too much scrutiny from the outside world, but the surprising combination of his race and his particular form of religious observance fazed no one in Omaha — for all the average person knew in Omaha, all Hasidic Jews were of African descent, his mother said. When friends from Nebraska first visited New York, they were fascinated to meet some white Hasids for the first time.

It was easier for Ms. Abrahamson to raise her children in Omaha than it would have been in Crown Heights, she said.

“People are laid-back in Omaha,” she said. “It’s different there.”

Omaha is not, for example, a place where race relations between Jews and blacks have exploded into days of riots, as they did in Crown Heights in 1991; nor have the police in Omaha ever deemed it necessary to set up mobile command centers to monitor simmering tensions between Jews and blacks, as the New York police did last month in the Brooklyn neighborhood in response to two unrelated physical altercations.

A young man like Yosef could easily start to feel like a powerful symbol, rather than just a kid, the human embodiment of that famously controversial Art Spiegelman New Yorker cover depicting a Hasidic man embracing an African-American woman.

But life in Crown Heights is somehow less complicated than that for Yosef, a tall, athletic young man who seems to have internalized Omaha’s easygoing ways (and its broad Midwestern accent). Beyond the misunderstanding at the awards ceremony — of which Yosef said, “It was a bit strange, but really, I understand” — he says he has felt comfortable in Crown Heights from the moment he came there to advance his education.

Through summer camps and occasional trips to New York, the Abrahamsons were already familiar to the Jewish community in Crown Heights when he arrived last fall (the community has only a handful of other black families). The response from the African-American community has been, if anything, amazement. “Now I’ve seen everything,” an African-American man said three or four times as he passed Yosef and his mother and his sister walking home from synagogue.

Some black neighbors recently asked Ms. Abrahamson questions about the meaning of some Lubavitch fliers they had received in the mail. The family sensed that the neighbors had long been harboring those questions but had felt a certain comfort level with the Abrahamsons because of their shared skin color.

If there have been resentful or disapproving responses from either side, they have apparently gone as far over Yosef’s head as the references his ice skating friends used to make to movies or television shows he’d never seen.

The ease with which both communities have received Yosef seems a little unlikely, but appropriate in the year of what some call the country’s first post-racial presidential campaign. Except that the Abrahamsons consider themselves “post-racial, for real,” said Ms. Abrahamson, a Republican delegate in Nebraska who is not a fan of Mr. Obama. To the contrary, the whole family strongly supports John McCain, and Yosef will be a page at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in September.

One more item to add to that list of possible essay topics.

[Yochanan Lavie]

More:

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/living/stories/2008/06/18/black_jewish_faith.html

[Paul Freedman]

Shmarya: the Washington Post reports that governmental activity in Southern Sudan has wound down and that the misery in that region is no longer part of an "Arabist" takeover plan with genocidal overtones but the unfortunate result of intra-tribal, intra-warlord anarchic warfare over money, land, and trucks. I don't see Israel's special moral obligation to take in anyone from anywhere in the world who is displaced due to the disintegration of their state. There are some three billion people on this globe and the world is full of misery. Death stalks the living and the living prey on each other routinely in its shadow.

Count your blessings.

[Paul Freedman]

Shmarya: the Washington Post reports that governmental activity in Southern Sudan has wound down and that the misery in that region is no longer part of an "Arabist" takeover plan with genocidal overtones but the unfortunate result of intra-tribal, intra-warlord anarchic warfare over money, land, and trucks. I don't see Israel's special moral obligation to take in anyone from anywhere in the world who is displaced due to the disintegration of their state. There are some three billion people on this globe and the world is full of misery. Death stalks the living and the living prey on each other routinely in its shadow.

Count your blessings.