Over the past five years, about 200 African asylum seekers living in Israel, most from Ethiopia and Eritrea, were secretly resettled in other Western countries, including the US, by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – an unheard of step that essentially classifies Israel as a Third World backwater, taken after Israel refused to honor its international obligations to help these sick, hopeless refugees.
Over the past five years, about 200 African asylum seekers living in Israel, most from Ethiopia and Eritrea, were secretly resettled in other Western countries, including the US, by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This happened because the UN and the rest of the developed world has to treat Israel, which is supposedly part of that developed world, as a Third World backwater country because Israel refuses to do anything to help these non-Jewish African asylum seekers. Israel won't even process applications for asylum and for refugee status. It won't provide healthcare for these asylum seekers and even bars them by law from receiving certain types of medical treatment even if they have the money to pay for it.
So the ones with the most need for immediate assistance are quietly referred by human rights groups to the UNHCR, which vets them and then resettles them.
Ha'aretz lists a few of these cases. Note that in every one of them, these people were refugees and in every case, Israel abused them:
…One case involved a Sudanese man who went blind in Israel due to illness but was not eligible for assistance here.
“He felt really helpless, supported by others and unable to make a living," [Elisheva] Milikovsky [Director of the department for Migrants and Persons Without Status at Physicians for Human Rights] said. "In Denmark he received housing suitable for the blind and courses that helped him deal with his blindness.”
In another case, a young woman from Eritrea with a kidney disease was resettled in Canada about a year ago. She needed a kidney transplant, but in Israel an asylum seeker cannot enter the waiting list for the procedure, Milikovsky said. In Canada, the woman received legal status and got on the list.
Only in exceptional cases does a Western country take in asylum seekers from another Western country [for the purposes of this classification, Israel is a Western country]. Normally, the migrants come from developing countries or refugee camps.
“The fact the United States and Sweden treat asylum seekers from Israel as they do those from African refugee camps is a badge of shame for Israel,” said attorney Michal Pinchuk, director of the refugee assistance organization Assaf.
Sharon Harel, a senior official of the UNHCR in Israel, said resettlement was relatively rare.
“We are constantly interviewing and identifying people with special needs," she said. "Only those who answer the definition of refugee and have special circumstances that seem relevant to resettlement do we refer to this process."
Harel said the UNHCR helped those who fit the criteria when an immediate solution was required, “but we don’t want to absolve the country of its obligation to refugees.”
No worries there, Sharon. The Israel of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu absolves itself from all wrongdoing. In fact, it often absolves itself of its own courts and absolves itself of much else, because you see, the Israel of Bejamin Netanyahu does no wrong because it can do no wrong. And it knows this because Netanyahu, perhaps the lowest leader Israel has ever had, says so.