“I’m sorry that I came. My friends who escaped to Canada and the United States have rights, and get treated properly. What do we have here?” he says. “Every day since the stabbing [of my baby daughter], I’m sorry that I came to Israel. There are also good people here, but I’m not considered a person, because of the color of my skin."
A drunk 50-year-old Israeli man stabbed the baby daughter of an Eritrean asylum seeker in the head with a pair of scissors last week at the central bus station in Tel Aviv. Police say the attack was not racially motivated – although that is far from clear.
According to police, the suspect, who was arrested on the day of the attack, has been hospitalized at Abarbanel Mental Health Center for observation since the day after that.
The scissors penetrated the baby's brain. She had brain surgery at Ichilov Hospital and is in a medically-induced coma to help the brain heal. Her mother refuses to leave her side.
Doctors believe some of the damage done in the attack is permanent. The baby will hopefully be released from the hospital is a few weeks.
Ha'aretz spoke with the baby's parents about the attack, its aftermath and about what it is like seeking asylum in a country that refuses to honor the international treaties governing refugees it signed, and which treats them almost as subhumans:
Yordanes and Mulo [both 27-years-old] met in Israel roughly four years ago, after they both escaped from Eritrea. When asked if they regret fleeing to Israel, Mulo says, “I’m sorry that I came. My friends who escaped to Canada and the United States have rights, and get treated properly. What do we have here?” he says. “Every day since the stabbing, I’m sorry that I came to Israel. There are also good people here, but I’m not considered a person, because of the color of my skin.
“We miss our country,” he says. “Not a day goes by that we don’t think of home. I know that this is not my place, especially after what happened, but I ask that until the situation in our country improves, that we be treated as people.”