“Last winter I saw on television dozens of African migrants huddled together in Levinsky Park. The sight was horrible and I decided to help them by giving the migrants food and blankets. During the Holocaust, I had to learn to live with being ostracized and hungry, and when I look at the migrants in Israel, I can see what I fought for at age 11. We can't turn a blind eye while these people are in distress…[but the hundreds who came to protest today] are just a drop in the bucket. Where are all the Israelis?. Don’t they care that these people have no hope? That if they're shipped back to their countries they could die?"
African refugees in a Tel Aviv park
Hundreds Of Holocaust Survivors And Their Children Protest Israel’s Mistreatment Of African Refugees
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families marched Saturday night to protest Israel's policy of deporting African refugees, Ynet reported.
The Tel Aviv protest was the idea of Atta Buchman, a 65-year-old daughter of Holocaust survivors, and Oren Rimon, a 15-year-old who volunteers at a kindergarten for the children of African refugees. The two met when, as a part of a school project, Rimon visited the retirement home where Buchman has lived since suffering a stroke.
"I wasn't thinking about holding a protest before I met Atta, but having read about the current situation with the refugees I got angry and together we realized that a protest was in place as it was not done in this capacity before," Rimon told Ynet.
Buchman, who immigrated to 20 years ago from Lithuania, is cared for by Eritrean refugees."They are the best caregivers we have. They have patience and a constant smile on their faces,” she said.
“[A]s a daughter of Holocaust survivors she is ashamed of the way refugees are being treated in Israel," Rimon told Ynet. “We’re not comparing Israel's treatment of migrants to the Holocaust, but we're simply saying that a State which was founded by migrants should not treat other migrants this way."
Another Holocaust survivor who attended the protest is Shimon Segali. The 80-year-old survivor from Hungary told Ynet that “last winter I saw on television dozens of African migrants huddled together in Levinsky Park. The sight was horrible and I decided to help them by giving the migrants food and blankets. During the Holocaust, I had to learn to live with being ostracized and hungry, and when I look at the migrants in Israel, I can see what I fought for at age 11. We can't turn a blind eye while these people are in distress…[but the hundreds who came to protest today] are just a drop in the bucket. Where are all the Israelis?. Don’t they care that these people have no hope? That if they're shipped back to their countries they could die?"
Rimon and Buchman publicized the march by making a video of Buchman telling her story and inviting survivors and their families to join the march.
Rimon posted the video on Facebook, and hundreds of survivors and their children joined the march.
The government does nothing to help the vast majority of African refugees who reach Israel, and many sleep in parks and on beaches, even in the worst weather. They are frequently exploited, working primarily as day laborers who are paid substandard wages, if they are paid at all.
Orthodox rabbis, haredi rabbis and right wing politicians have joined right wing activists in holding demonstrations calling for the refugees to be deported, even though deportation violates international law. They have also used racist and xenophobic language that helped incite a wave of violence against the African refugees, including a riot in South Tel Aviv just after Passover, and wave of arsons that have injured and almost killed African refugees.
Some Israelis, who are primarily secular, try to help the African refugees with food, temporary shelter, day care, and other services, including applying for official refugee status with the government.
But Israel’s right wing coalition government processes those applications a a snail’s pace, and approving only a handful of applications despite the fact that most of the African refugees in Israel legally qualify for refugee status.