Israel's Treatment Of Refugees Among Worst In The Developed World

“We − HIAS, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security − trained Israeli officers to the highest international standards,” he said. “But the [Israeli] system is basically carved out to reject claims. The state is doing just about everything it can to not implement the spirit of the Geneva Convention. Instead of judging claims effectively, it is deterring refugees from coming or staying here.” The rate of asylum seekers receiving refugee status in Israel is the lowest in the world.

Joel Moss in his office with refugees

Chaim Landau writes in Ha'aretz:

…French-Israeli lawyer  Jean-Marc Liling, …who used to work for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, emphasized that Israel has no immigration or refugee policy. More non-Jews than Jews have made Israel their home since the mid 90’s, and about 10 percent of Israel’s working population are African migrants, Liling told us the system in place to determine eligibility for refugee status is opaque and inadequate at best; there is no coherent government policy  to ensure migrants and asylum seekers receive the  minimal services and rights they are  entitled to. Most of those here are in a state of limbo: they are not deported home by Israel, but are not allowed to work legally either. The result is a system characterized by arbitrariness. It is neither just nor smart, and is arguably the worst of all worlds.

This failure is exacerbated by statements made by Israel's politicians… Interior Minister Eli Yishai saying that most African refugees are criminals, and suggesting that they are HIV carriers…Likud MK Miri Regev calling African migrants a ‘cancer in our body’ while stirring up a mob that went on to attack random Africans in South Tel Aviv. Statements like this, which invalidate the humanity of the ‘strangers’ among us, constitute a Hilul Hashem (desecration of God’s name), and cause bewilderment and shame among many Jews worldwide who normally support and admire Israel.

What Israel does need is a thought-out and sensible policy; the broad contours of such a policy are already known. Refugee status should be properly ascertained according to transparent professional criteria; those who are eligible should be granted assistance and the right to work, perhaps in place of importing foreign workers from Thailand and the Philippines. Those not eligible may be deported back to their country of origin, as is the practice in most other countries.

This crisis presents an opportunity…for concrete and substantive Israeli and global Jewish cooperation and joint learning. Jews abroad, living as a minority, have substantial experience and expertise in dealing with matters relating to refugees and minorities. Israeli policy makers should be consulting with global Jewish organizations such as –the  Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the American Jewish Committee, and others. Unfortunately, where the Israeli government has consulted with these organizations, it has mostly ignored their  recommendations.…

More than ignore recommendations from Jewish groups outside Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has been more stingy in accepting refugees than many countries were when Jews tried to flee the Nazis three quarters of a century ago, as Lauren Gelfond Feldinger reports, also in Ha'aretz:

When Israel became one of the last democratic countries to launch a system to deal with asylum claims, in 2009, the international refugee expert who oversaw the initiative could not have predicted that his high hopes would turn slowly into disappointment.

Joel Moss, a former Canadian asylum judge who relocated permanently to Jerusalem four years ago to head the local Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society office, looked grim as he reflected on his work here.

Moss was hired to oversee HIAS’s contract to train Israeli government officials in refugee law and in judging asylum claims. He recounts how he was looking forward to using his expertise to help Israel fulfill its legal obligations, as party to many international conventions that deal with such claims. As an Orthodox Jew, he was also thrilled to help the state meet the moral obligations of Jewish law “to help the stranger,” he said.

But looking back on the Israeli system he helped launch three years ago, Moss says that he is now “saddened for the asylum seekers, and saddened and embarrassed for Israel.”

“We − HIAS, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security − trained Israeli officers to the highest international standards,” he said. “But the [Israeli] system is basically carved out to reject claims. The state is doing just about everything it can to not implement the spirit of the Geneva Convention. Instead of judging claims effectively, it is deterring refugees from coming or staying here.”

Though Israel signed the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, which was created in the wake of the Holocaust, as well as its 1967 Protocols, which should ensure refugees “fair and humane asylum proceedings,” the rate of asylum seekers receiving refugee status in Israel is the lowest in the world, Moss said.

Since the 2009 launch of Israel’s Refugee Status Determination unit, 8,000 of 65,000-plus cases have been heard. Of those, 16 people have been granted asylum, according to the Ministry of the Interior. According to the UNHCR, the MOI figures are misleading. After Israel took over the responsibility of judging claims from the UNHCR three years ago, Israeli RSD officers made only two positive recommendations for asylum status, one of which was granted, said William Tall, the UNHCR envoy in Israel. "The rest were case assessed and recommended by us [before the handover]."…

Israel's behavior with regard to refugee issues under Netanyahu should embarrass, anger and sadden all of us.

Unfortunately, for many of us, it will do none of those things.

Comments

[Blimps]

Israel's Treatment Of Refugees Among Worst In The Developed World

I think Israel should send them all to the US. Here we will treat them fairly and with compassion.

[Rocky]

We should not try to impose "Western values" on the Middle East. There are about three times as many people in metropolitan Cairo alone as there are Jews in Israel. Israel simply can't be a refugee/immigrant welcoming society for non-Jews.

The US nation building missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been failures in many respects. Palestinian elections have not turned out the way the US had hoped. Even the modern medical advances introduced into poor countries around the world since the UN was formed have been mixed blessings at best. The populations of these countries have exploded since 1950 as the decline in childhood mortality has failed to be accompanied by a similar decline in birth rates.

[AztecQueen2000]

Let's be fair, here. Israel is a tiny country which lost a significant percentage of territory in 2005. Why must they have to take in refugees when they can barely handle their own population? Why isn't anyone getting on the case of the rest of the Middle East, which has more territory and more oil wealth.

[Maskil]

First of all, it's too bad we're only first worst among "The Developed World."

Second of all, why are we being compared with The Develped World?

[malcom@aol.com]

fk them monkies

[Seraphya]

The real issue is lack of political will/ability to get anything done with the pandering to the special interest blocks like haredim and settlers, if it weren't politically taboo they would pander to the arab voting block as well.

Israeli governments for years now are unable to have a thought-out and sensible policy on just about anything.