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In Another Blow To African Refugees, Israel Violates International Law And Agreements, Will Deny All Foreigners Born In Israel Birth Certificates

The existence of this draconian decision was included in papers on a separate case filed by the government with the High Court of Justice Monday. In that case, the government’s existing policy of refusing to include the father's name on foreigners' birth certificates – allegedly unless the parents pay almost $2,000 for a DNA test to confirm the father's paternity – has been challenged.

High Court Rules That Extended Detention Of African Refugees Without Trial Is Illegal, Right Wing And Haredi MKs Vow To Ignore Or Skirt Ruling

“[The justices and left wing refugee advocates should] take one [African refugee] home to their own area and then talk to me,” Sefardi haredi Shas MK Eli Yishai fumed. He also insisted that African refugees have destroyed southern Tel Aviv with crime and with their lifestyle and said he would continue his efforts imprison all of them, despite the High Court's ruling.

Haifa Man Who Threatened To Burn Ethiopian Jews Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison

In one of those incidents, Benny Lugasi reportedly put a table, chairs and boards in the entryway of the building and set them on fire. He tried to stop residents from putting it out, and told them, “I’ll bring a knife and finish you off ... You Sudanese, I’ll burn you, I’ll show you what’s what.” In another, he threatened to "burn all the Ethiopians in the building.”

Israel To Ship African Refugees To Uganda

Israel has made a deal to ship African refugees – which Israel continues to illegally label "migrants" and "infiltrators" to Uganda. Uganda – which has a bad human rights record – is taking them in exchange for military and other aid.

Israel Denying African Refugees And Foreign Workers Gas Masks

Mass deportations of Eritrean refugees is also planned for after Rosh Hashana despite international law and treaties Israel signed which prohibit it. Even foreign workers hired to take care of elderly Israelis denied gas masks. IDF says if crisis develops, it will distribute gas masks to them. "The foreign population is mainly in big cities, in houses without a safe space, and their exposure to injury is huge. But Israel isn't even taking care of its own citizens right now. So it's important that first thing's [are done] first."

4 Israelis Arrested For Savage Hate Crimes Against African Refugees

The men, all in their early twenties, were arrested Monday. They allegedly attacked Africans walking in South Tel Aviv, beating them with bottles and sticks, “using great cruelty,” police reportedly said.

Israel’s Government Allegedly Uses Deception To Deport More African Refugees

Many, if not most, haredim in Europe in 1939 would have been unable to fluently speak, read or write their native country’s language, and they would have known little of their native country’s history or its government structure. The same is true for many hasidim in today’s New Square, as well. Yet the Government of Israel is using similar tests to change the classifications of African refugees in a bid to skirt international treaties and deport them back to the countries from which they fled, often in terror.

Israel Opens Health Clinic For African Refugees, Then Makes Arrests Of Refugees Just Outside It

After Ichilov Hospital got caught last summer trying to separate African “migrants” from Israelis in its clinics and wards, a Health Ministry committee decided that an urgent care clinic should be opened to serve the African refugees. To its credit, the Health Ministry followed through. The clinic opened last week in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. And then Israel's immigration police used the lure of the clinic to arrest refugees the clinic serves.

As Kahanists March Against African Refugees, Israel’s Prime Minister Stays Silent

Dozens of local residents and right-wing activists from across Israel demonstrated last night after learning that an 83-year-old Jewish woman was raped in the backyard of her apartment building near Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station.

Shas Anti-Refugee Campaign Video Drips With Barely Concealed Racism

The Sefardi haredi Shas political party prepared an election campaign video commercial made to inflame fear and hatred of African refugees in the hope that would push voters to vote for Shas and its anti-refugee policies in the upcoming elections.

OUTRAGE: Man Who Firebombed Occupied African Refugee Kindergarten And Homes To Get No Jail Time

The attempted murder by arson of dozens of men, women and children will bring an estimated sentence of only 6 months of community service. Is it open season on African refugees in Benjamin Netanyahu's quasi-democratic Israeli state?

Vizhnitz Hasidim Shocked By Sudanese Workers Sleeping Arrangements

Vizhnitz hasidim were reported to be “shocked” to discover yesterday that a secluded “sanctified” room used by the previous two the Vizhnitz Rebbes, the author of Imrei Chayim and his son the author of Yeshuot Moshe, had been “defiled” by Sudanese workers.

Let Them Eat Sand: Israel Moves To Close African Refugees’ Businesses Due To “Threat” Refugees Pose To Israel

"We have no other way to make a living. This is pure racism...some people, if denied the possibility to work for a living, will turn to crime.”

Jail All African Refugees, Haredi Interior Minister Says

"They've painted us as if, heaven forbid, [we were creating] refugee camps," Interior Minister Eli Yishai complained yesterday. "The facilities are almost finished and now I'm in a battle with the human rights organizations and the [state’s] prosecution. I don't agree that it's impossible to return [people] to Eritrea and northern Sudan, and if I did accept this there would be hundreds of thousands more.…"

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.

Living Conditions In Israel's Refugee Detention Center "Unreasonable," Social Affairs Ministry Says

The Social Affairs Ministry is objecting to the Defense Ministry's handling of the refugee detention center being built in Ketzot near the border with Egypt to hold what Israel call "infiltrators" and what the rest of the world calls "refugees" and "asylum seekers."

Israel, Racism, Xenophobia – And Daycare

Outside the real estate agent's office, Blessing and her husband stood together with the journalist and biographer Yael Gvirtz.. "People were running in the street with bottles of beer in their hands, and were trying to get others to join their demonstration against the foreigners," Gvirtz recalls. "A couple of times they said to me, 'Give us these two.' They were standing there, holding a bag of money in their hands, looking at each another. Blessing's husband said, 'We have to decide what to do: we can take the small amount of savings that we have and save ourselves, or we can stay with the children.' It took them two minutes to decide in favor of the daycare. They were two human beings who made the decision of their lives. It was then that I said we have to help them as much as possible."

Israeli Zionist Orthodox Woman Stirs Online Flap After Calling African Refugees “Animals”

A right wing Zionist Orthodox went to South Tel Aviv on a “safari” and took pictures in which she posed near African refugees who she referred to as “animals.”

Eilat Backs Down, Agrees To Enroll African Refugee Children In Public Schools

Israel’s Ministry of Education and the City of Eilat agreed Sunday to admit African refugee children into the city’s schools after Israel’s High Court of Justice reportedly harshly criticized them during a hearing Thursday. For four years, the city, with the backing of the Ministry of Education, had refused to enroll the children in any of the city’s public schools for the past four years.

Israeli City Refuses To Enroll African Refugee Children In Its Public Schools

Despite a court order, the Eilat is refusing to enroll African refugee children in the city’s public schools.

Is Female Genital Mutilation A Valid Reason For Gaining Refugee Status In Israel?

Should a family be granted asylum in Israel because if deported back to the Ivory Coast the family's daughter will be forcibly circumcised?

Hundreds Of Holocaust Survivors And Their Children Protest Israel’s Mistreatment Of African Refugees

“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?"

Pregnant Woman, Husband Injured In Anti-African Jerusalem Arson

A pregnant woman and her husband were injured early this morning after a fire was set at the entrance to their Jerusalem apartment. Both husband and wife are African refugees from Eritrea.

Elderly African Refugee Attacked And Beaten In Jerusalem

A 68-year-old refugee from Eritrea man was reportedly seriously injured by drunk youths who beat the man on Agrippas Street near downtown Jerusalem early Friday morning. A 23-year-old man who tried help the man fend off his attackers was also beaten.

Video: Progressive Jews Demand Israel Stop Its Mistreatment Of African Refugees

"We, members of the global Jewish community, are appalled and outraged by Israel's abominable treatment of African migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Itself a nation of refugees, Israel should know better than most the torment and horrors endured by those fleeing persecution at the hands of brutal regimes and recognize the responsibility of the Jewish people to those whom we are in the position to help.…"

All African Refugees Requests To Convert To Judaism Have Been Denied

All requests from African refugees and “illegal” migrants from Africa to convert to Judaism in Israel have been rejected over the past year, an anonymous source in the Prime Minister's Office says.

127 South Sudanese Refugees ‘Voluntarily’ Deported

Israel uses threat of indefinite imprisonment, small financial inducements, to force out refugees.

Deport African Refugees, Jail Israeli Human Rights Activists, MK Says

Calling human rights activists “hypocrites” who “would be the first to put haredim and settlers on buses and transfer them," Kadima Party Knesset Member Yulia Shamalov Berkovich told a Knesset committee that, “all human rights activists should be imprisoned and transported to camps we are building” [to hold the African refugees Israel euphemistically calls “migrants” and “infiltrators”].

SHAME: Israelis Riot, Loot, Attack, Stone African Refugees

Dozens of protesters tried to move from the Hatikva neighborhood, where the rally was held, towards Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, where most African refugees live. They were stopped by police. Protesters attacked a car passing by carrying African immigrants, smashing its windows. Shops associated with the African community were vandalized. As of midnight Israel time, activists in Hatikva are still reporting looting and occasional attacks on Africans.…

Inform On Jews Who Rent Apartments To African Refugees, Haredi Rabbis Say

Rabbis in the Israeli haredi city of Bnei Brak told Jews that it is forbidden to rent apartments to African refugees. But the rabbis went further than they had in previous rulings by also ruling that the Jewish law of mesirah, which forbids informing on a fellow Jew to non-Jewish or secular authorities, does not apply in this case.

African Refugees Firebombed In Tel Aviv

Four homes and a kindergarten that serves African refugees were firebombed last night in south Tel Aviv. The homes were were occupied and damage was done, but the refugees were able to escape unharmed.

Deport African Refugees, Haredi Interior Minister Says

The government aims to deport tens of thousands of foreigners who crossed into Israel illegally, Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared at a conference organized by right-wing groups earlier this week.

Send African Refugees Back To A Near Certain Death, Rabbi Says

“The people of Israel brought the concept of compassion into the world. We are noted for our compassion even by our enemies; Hitler specifically pointed out that we introduced such concepts, and they hated us for it. But excessive compassion can also have negative consequences. We have many of our own vulnerable people who we need to help and absorbing these illegal immigrants entails huge financial obligations. From a demographic, economic and security perspective we just can’t absorb these numbers of people coming in – and we have to return them either to where they came from or to another country.”

Video: Tel Aviv – A Day In The Life Of A Sudanese Refugee

He sleeps in a park with other refugees. He has no job, no food and no shoes. He is hungry and afraid. The government demands huge fines from employers who hire these people. The High Court stayed that law but employers are still afraid the government will punish them if they hire African refugees. The government wants to keep African refugees in a detention center but hasn't managed to finish preparing it, even though it has been working on it for months and it won't be much more than a tent city once it is finished. On the day the world commemorates as Holocaust Remembrance Day, here's a video portrait of a day in the life of a Sudanese refugee asylum-seeker who thought Jews or all people would help him.

Rights Report Finds Problems With How Israel Treats Refugees, Non-Orthodox Jews

The United States Department of State's annual report on Human Rights finds problems with how Israel treats its Arab citizens, how it treats West Bank Palestinians, how it seems to ignore or respond slowly to settler violence against Palestinians – and how it treats non-Jewish refugees and non-Orthodox Jews.

NGOs Slam Israel Government Decision To Build Holding Facility For Refugees

Non-governmental organizations expressed their outrage following reports this week that the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority was building a detention facility to house illegal residents of Israel and their children – mostly refugees from Africa – as they await deportation.

African Refugees Brutalized En Route To Israel

Refugees describe horrific ordeals including systematic rape, gang rape and torture at hands of Beduin smugglers.

Bnei Brak Moves To "Shame" Landlords Who Rent To African Refugees And Other Non-Jews

Haredi city's new whistleblower hotline invites neighbors to report and "shame" homeowners who rent homes and apartments to African refugees and other non-Jews.

Today's African Refugees Like "Midianite Raids On Israel In Biblical Times"

Some protestors said the refugees "chase our daughters," while others called the Africans "beasts" and claimed they "spread diseases, drink and steal." "Those who say I'm racist can go to hell in their black-free buildings and neighborhoods."

Haredi City Moves To Out Landlords Who Rent To Sudanese Refugees

One Bnei Brak official said the city is considering the possibility of revealing the landlords' names "so the public will learn the identity of those whose personal monetary interests outweigh the harm caused to the general population."   

Shas Pol: Expel "Filthy" Refugees From Tel Aviv

Shas councilman leads campaign against renting apartments to foreign migrants, refugees. City Council chairwoman: Campaign racist, illegal.       

Israel to Expel Foreign Workers, Refugees to be “Like Every Other Nation,” Shas Head Says

Foreign workers and refugees will face a "massive expulsion," haredi rabbi Eli Yishai says.

Letter From Tel Aviv: My Hero The Sudanese Refugee

Blacks, Jews and the State of Israel.

Will Israel Grant Asylum To Fascism?

A draconian new law would punish doctors and aid workers for helping asylum seekers, even those fleeing genocide. Refugees, doctors and aid workers alike could face 20 years in jail.

Israel Journal: Fighting For Israel's African Refugees

"My grandmother would be spinning in her grave if I wasn't doing this."

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:

Egypt Arrests and Deports Sudanese Refugees Sent Back to Egypt by Israel

Remember when Ehud Olmert decided to deport Sudanese refugees to Egypt, promising that these poor people would not then be arrested or harassed by Egypt and would not be sent back to the Sudan? Remember how human rights activists inside and outside Israel doubted Olmert's word just as they doubted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's? Remember how some of us argued that these deportations were against core Jewish values?

Sadly, it seems we were correct. Ha'aretz reports:

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is investigating whether Egypt broke its promise not to deport Sudanese refugees back to their country of origin after they had illegally crossed into Israel, UNHCR's Cairo spokeswoman told Haaretz.

The investigation, which also involves Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry, revolves around 48 Sudanese refugees whom Israel deported to Egypt two months ago.

The spokeswoman, Abir Atfah, said her organization asked the Egyptian authorities to allow the UNHCR to meet the refugees, who were deported back to Egypt on August 19, but this effort failed. Atfah believes the 48 refugees were arrested as soon as they entered Egypt.

"Some of the refugees deserve recognition as asylum seekers. We are very troubled by the possibility that they were deported back to Sudan," Atfah said. She added that 23 of the refugees had asked to be recognized as asylum seekers.…

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem is trying through the embassy in Cairo to gain information about the group of refugees, a ministry official told Haaretz. Ministry officials said they have so far been unsuccessful.

One Sudanese refugee who is in Israel said a relative of his who had been deported to Egypt told him over the phone she was detained in Egypt for three weeks until she was flown to Sudan. She was questioned by the Sudanese authorities and then released, he said.

The Zionist Dream Fulfilled

The ethically-challenged Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has a plan. Refugees fleeing persecution in Africa who reach Israel will be sent back to Africa and housed in camps. Olmert is said to have reached a deal with Ethiopia to host those camps, but Egypt is another country mentioned as a host, and Egypt has a long and brutal history of abusing and sometimes murdering these refugees.

As bizarre as this brainstorm of Olmert's is, his understanding of the condition of these refugees is even more insane:

Olmert arrived in a particularly combative mood to Wednesday's special cabinet session on the state's failure to deal with the refugees. "Of all the thousands who have infiltrated, only 498 are refugees," he said, "and not one more. The remainder of those who are entering the State of Israel are job-seekers or traffickers in women or other kinds of criminals or people who have absolutely nothing in common with refugees. They have nothing to do with us. What is their connection to us?" Olmert said.

MK Ran Cohen, chairman of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers, who arranged the special session, criticized Olmert for ordering the refugees to be put in prison - like criminals.

"What is this preaching of yours? A group numbering dozens arrives at night, what exactly should the state do? Put them up in hotels, bed-and-breakfasts? " Olmert replied, noting that he was speaking proudly and without apology.

Olmert acknowledged that many of the infiltrators were from southern Sudan, but said that they were labor migrants who had no connection to the war in the area. According to a statement by Moked, the Hotline for Migrant Workers, the main reason that only 498 people, all from Darfur, have been recognized as refugees is that the status of the remainder has not been checked.…

Olmert has promised to provide asylum to only 498 recognized refugees from Darfur, and perhaps to a few more in the future. But there is no cause for relief; Olmert said they will receive temporary, not permanent residency, and that status can be withdrawn anytime.

Most of you know that tens of thousands of Christians in Southern Sudan have been attacked or murdered by Muslims and many others have been sold into slavery. Darfur is not the only part of that sad country to see mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

If I did not recognize the absolute need for Jews to have a state and a power base in the world, I would advocate cutting off aid to Israel. And by this I mean both governmental funds and private donations.

Early Zionists wanted Israel to be a state like any other, for it to bring about the normalization of the Jewish people. Rabbis – even Zionist rabbis – opposed this idea. Jews should be a light onto the nations, they said, and Israel should be a special place radiating holiness.

Today's rabbis overwhelming support Olmert's closed-door policy. They advocate turning away even the most desperate of refugees. And they use the same rationalizations as Olmert – the refugees are not all from Darfur, they are not all fleeing genocide, they are too different from us, they will take away money from our own poor, etc. They use the excuses the West used during the Holocaust, and they do so without a trace of shame.

Olmert and the rabbis have opted for an Israel that radiates racial purity, not an Israel that radiates holiness.

We have reached the fulfillment of the Zionist dream. Israel truly is a state like any other.

For that we should all be ashamed.

Genocide and History – Is Israel Repeating the Errors Made By Britain, America and the West in 1938?

Gershom Gorenberg writes:

…[Some 1,700 Sudanese have entered Israel from Egypt in recent years, according to Eytan Schwartz of the Committee for Advancement of Refugees from Darfur, a coalition of Israeli groups. Of those, Schwartz says, 500 are from Darfur, most of the rest from southern Sudan [and therefore are predominantly Christian]. The refugees fear mistreatment -- or worse, repatriation to Sudan -- if they are returned to Egypt. Meanwhile, the trickle is growing. As Schwartz points out, Israel is the only Western democracy that can be reached overland from Sudan..…

As a country of 7 million, it's true, Israel can't solve the Darfur refugee crisis. Then again, the Israeli population is now about one-twentieth that of America just before the Holocaust. If it is enough for Israel to let in 500 people fleeing genocide, then the U.S. could have met its responsibility by taking 10,000 Jews. In fact, 50,000 Jews came to America between 1933 and 1941, according a Yad Vashem scholar. That was insufficient refuge.

The underlying issue is that, pragmatically, Israel can claim it must protect its interests…. It can argue that refugees pose a security threat. It can reject refugees in order to maintain its ethnic balance. But if it does those things, it has no grounds to speak about Western countries who turned away Jews in 1938. [Because those were the very same claims made by Western democracies in 1938.]

The claims of history demand a different policy. For a start, Israel might announce how many Darfur refugees it will take in the future. Since even more refugees are likely to arrive, it could invite Western countries to a conference at which they will make their own pledges to take those fleeing Darfur. Room for that parley could be found at the wide campus of Yad Vashem.

What I find most interesting about the debate swirling around Israel's response to the Sudanese refugees is the number of Orthodox and right wing Jews who oppose granting asylum or refuge. Yet these same people decry America and the West for its indifference to Jews during the Holocaust.

The lesson here, I think, is that the choices made by governments in (or about to be in) a state of war with home countries of refugees are rarely easy. Israel should do as Gorenberg suggests, taking in as many refugees as possible and, at the same time, facilitating placement of many others in Western countries.

It may be that Israel itself only takes in a few thousand of these unfortunate people – but Israel can play a much larger and beneficial role by shaming western countries to step up and do their share. Using the moral bully pulpit granted to us by the horrendous suffering of the Holocaust, we can do a tremendous amount of good for these poor people fleeing genocide and murder.

"Never Again!" needs to be more than a fund-raising slogan, both for those who need refuge and for those, ourselves included, who find it expedient to close our eyes to their needs.

[Hat Tip: Warren.]

Israel To Grant Citizenship To Darfur Refugees

Bowing to pressure from Jewish groups outside Israel and from activists inside the country, Israel has decided to grant Israeli citizenship to a few hundred refugees from Darfur. The exact number – Israel calls this its "quota" – will be determined in negotiations between Israel and the United Nations. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit explained the government's decision, reached after months of refusing to aide the refugees:

"Israel, with its history, must offer assistance," he said. "It can't stand by and shut its eyes. But a quota must be set."

The Associated Press noted that it was not clear what would happen to those refugees who do not receive citizenship. Israel has previously tried to expel African refugees to Egypt – even those refugees fleeing genocide. Egypt is said to mistreat the refugees.