Being black is their only crime

Thousands of Israelis are attempting to stop the deportation of African refugees 

African asylum seekers

Although Israel was an early signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it has never welcomed refugees who are not Jewish. It has admitted in total about 200 such refugees since its foundation,¹ the most publicised incident being Menachem Begin’s acceptance of 66 Vietnamese in 1977, who had been rescued by an Israeli ship.

In 2007, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted temporary residence permits to 498 Sudanese asylum-seekers.² However they were not given the right to reside and, as the number of African migrants increased to over 60,000 by 2013, the refugees were confronted with an organised and systematic campaign to drive them out. The vast majority were fleeing authoritarian regimes in Eritrea and Sudan.

As Lia Tarachansky explained when the refugees first arrived, they were welcomed by the Israeli public: “But when the government of Netanyahu decided to take a 90-degree turn on the treatment of the African refugees, what resulted was a full-out war against them.”³ Many had chosen Israel because they believed its propaganda that it was a democracy and also because it was easier to reach than Europe.

Most refugees have been living in poor and overcrowded neighbourhoods in southern Tel Aviv. Dozens squatted in a park across the street from the city’s main bus station for weeks on end. A handful of high-profile incidents, including an alleged rape of an 83-year-old woman by an Eritrean asylum-seeker in 2012, were blown up by Israel’s media into an attack on all asylum-seekers.
Israel has one of the highest rates of rape and sexual assaults in the world. According to the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel, one in seven Israeli women will suffer rape in her lifetime and one in three will experience a sexual assault.⁴ This, however, did not stop allegations against the refugees that were similar to those levied in Nazi Germany. Just as individual crimes by German Jews were attributed to the whole Jewish community, so the same is true of asylum-seekers in Israel.

In November 2010, the Israeli government approved a plan to build a massive detention centre, Holot, in the Negev desert to hold thousands of asylum-seekers and their families before deportation. Holot is the biggest prison for refugees in the entire developed world. Israeli police then embarked on mass racial profiling and went down the streets of Tel Aviv asking for IDs from anyone who was brown or black - and packed them off to this prison.

Netanyahu stirring up racial conflict in South Tel Aviv

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu was quite clear as to the reasons for his hostility to the refugees - they were a threat to the Zionist ‘dream’: “We must stop the mass entry of illegal migrant workers because of the very serious threat to the character and future of the state of Israel.”⁵ The very existence of a ‘Jewish’ state was apparently threatened by the presence of 60,000 refugees. In the racial fantasies of Netanyahu: “If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”⁶
As Lia Tarachansky pointed out,

the refugees are less than .001% of the population, and yet they are constantly being talked about as though they are threatening Israel’s Jewish majority - a demographic threat which is something that the state of Israel uses frequently against the Palestinian minorities in Israel.⁷

When Palestinians were expelled in 1948, this was said to be necessary to create a Jewish majority state. But, incredibly, those who tried to return were called ‘infiltrators’. Only the warped mentality of settler colonialism could label those who were indigenous to the land from which they had been forced out, and whose families had lived there for centuries, in such a way. But Israel is the most racist state in the world - a state where a plurality of Jews - 48% - want to see the deportation of Israeli Arabs. According to a poll published in 2007, 75% do not wish to live with an Arab in their apartment block.⁸

Sheffi Paz leads protest against asylum seekers

Nor does Israel comply with the biblical injunction, “You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy10:19). This most certainly does not form part of Zionist values. There are some 50 references in the Old Testament to befriending the stranger (or refugee), but Israel’s ultra-right rabbinical establishment is strangely oblivious to all of them.⁹ Zionism prefers the book of Joshua, which instructed the Israelites to wipe out the non-Jewish inhabitants of Canaan - every man, woman and child.

Israel is not a fulfilment of biblical prophecy about the return of the Jews to the Promised Land. It is a settler colonial state, the brainchild of evangelical Christians, for whom biblical and imperialist imperatives coincided. Yet Israel is only a Jewish state in that the settler population is racially defined as ethnically Jewish. Being Jewish means having as few non-Jews as possible. Israel’s Arabs are a barely tolerated fifth column, but black African refugees are neither Jewish nor white - hence they must go. This is the logic of Zionism.

The need for Jewish racial purity was what led to the ban on a book from the high school syllabus in Israel - Borderlife portrayed a relationship between an Arab and Jewish teenager. Another of Israel’s taboos is ‘mixed-race’ - ie, Arab-Jewish - relationships. The fascist Lehava group, whose ‘charity’, Hemla, is funded by the Israeli state, uses packs of its activists to hunt down and attack Arab males suspected of wanting to establish relationships with Jewish women.¹⁰

New moves

In 2013 Israel built a border fence with Egypt and Netanyahu’s government embarked on a series of measures whose purpose was to make life more difficult for asylum-seekers in Israel. It also began secretly pressuring Eritreans and Sudanese to leave for unnamed third countries.

The two countries chosen for deportation were Rwanda and Uganda. Netanyahu reached a corrupt and criminal deal with the dictator of Rwanda, Paul Ngame - although they are denying it now. Once the asylum-seekers reached these countries, they were abandoned and rendered stateless - and subject to deportation back to the country they had escaped from. Most of those who have already been forced out - up to 20,000 - live in a stateless limbo in Kampala or Kigale. Many have now been forced out of Uganda or Rwanda, making them vulnerable to blackmail and physical abuse at the hands of smugglers and security forces. Some have continued north to Sudan or Libya in an effort to reach Europe. A few have been captured and killed by Islamic State fighters or drowned in the Mediterranean.¹¹

Many refugees have settled in the south of Tel Aviv, where they have been subject to pogroms and violent demonstrations by racist Israelis. They are accused of having illegally entered Israel, because most asylum claims in Israel are not recognised.

It is one of the achievements of the Israeli state to have turned Jewish people - the victims of past pogroms - into pogromists themselves, all with the encouragement and support of the Israeli government. Culture minister Miri Regev has called refugees a “cancer” in Israeli society. When criticised for this, she apologised to cancer patients, for having compared them to asylum-seekers.¹²
Among the measures used to ‘encourage’ such asylum-seekers to leave is a 2014 law that allows Israel to confiscate - ie, steal - 20% of the income of refugees. These are part of the poorest section of Israeli society - people who have little or no access to medical or health facilities, who get no public housing or benefits.¹³ The confiscated money is deposited into a special bank account and theoretically the asylum-seekers will be able to access the money upon leaving the country. The Israeli bank, Mizrahi Tefahot, which won the tender to manage these accounts, informed its investors that the policy would improve its liquidity and reserve ratio, because the money will not be accessible to its owners, and the bank could use it to offset loans.¹⁴ In essence the African refugees, like Palestinian labourers, have paid taxes to the state of Israel, whilst receiving absolutely no services whatsoever.

The normal excuse for discrimination against the Palestinians is ‘security’, but even that excuse is missing here. People who are innocent of any of the things the Israeli state accuses its enemies of are still being treated as an enemy, simply because they are black and not Jewish.

When Israel’s supreme court ruled against detaining the refugees for longer than a year or forcing them out of the country, the government has simply ignored those rulings - and it has done this with the complicity of the Israeli Labor Party:

There’s a silent consensus about that on the entire spectrum of the Israeli Zionist political leadership. Even so-called centrist politicians like Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid and Yitzhak Herzog are all respecting the status quo of essentially ignoring the ruling of the supreme court.¹⁵

Celina Shapil 92 holocaust survivor

However, large numbers of Israel’s holocaust survivors, in whose name the state has committed so many war crimes, have spoken out against all this. Many of them are also kept in abject poverty in Israel.¹⁶ If there is one lesson that everyone can draw from the holocaust, it is that, if the west had taken in the Jewish refugees from Hitler, then far fewer would have died. Today the same forces that opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees in the 1930s - the America Firsters, the Daily Mails and the far right - support Zionism and the Israeli state. But many holocaust survivors perceive the contradiction between Zionism and the lessons of the holocaust. Zionism’s desire to create a Jewish state that is as ethnically pure and Jewish as possible is no different from the desire of Hitler and the Nazis to create an ethnically pure German state. But some non-Jews are more unwanted than others. In Israel today there are thousands of non-Jewish Russians who are not being deported. The difference is that they are white.

Avi Gabbay - Israeli Labor Party leader

Israeli Labor Party

What is most shameful is the role of the Israeli Labor Party, which abroad tries to present itself as progressive. Under its new, even more rightwing leader, Avi Gabbay, it is fully behind Netanyahu. The refugees from Eritrea are ‘bogus’, the party claims - no matter that every international body and human rights agency says that Eritrea is one of the worst police states in the world.
According to Jill Hoffman of the Jerusalem Post the Zionist Union parliamentary faction of the Labor Party voted 12-11 to back the government’s plan to deport refugees after Gabbay told the members of the Knesset: “This is not an issue of right or left. We would pay a price for arguing with the public.”¹⁷ This prompted Tamar Zandberg, a member of the Knesset for the left Zionist Meretz Party, to ask:

What has become of you? Are you the Zionist Union or the expelling union? Have you gone mad? In your tactics for wooing votes, you’ve abandoned your fundamental values and ability to tell right from wrong.¹⁸

Now, of course, Tamar is wrong. The ILP never had any anti-racist values. It was first and foremost a party of Zionist colonisation. It was therefore predictable that it would come out in support of Netanyahu’s proposed deportation of black African refugees.

We should be calling out those in Britain like the Jewish Labour Movement who are helping to drive the anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism witch-hunt in the Labour Party, but who refuse to condemn the behaviour of what the JLM describes as its “sister party” in Israel. ¹⁹ I have sent messages to both Jeremy Newmark, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, and Rhea Wolfson, who is a member of Labour’s national executive committee, as well as the JLM itself, asking them to condemn the ILP’s support for Netanyahu. But I have been met with silence. It is the JLM who has subjected Jackie Walker, a black Jewish anti-racist and former vice-chair of Momentum, to a scurrilous political lynching.

Rhea Wolfson is politically close to the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. She spoke at the Labour Party fringe meeting of the AWL front group, Stop the Purge,and she is on the editorial board of the AWL’s The Clarion magazine. Perhaps the AWL can persuade Wolfson to dissociate herself from the JLM’s support for the ILP and its stance on Israel’s refugees - and to do this in the most public way by resigning from the JLM. Wolfson should be congratulating those like the holocaust survivors who condemn the deportations, not keeping company with racists.

But holocaust survivors are not the only ones. On January 22, David Sheen, a Canadian-Israeli who has campaigned tirelessly in support of Israel’s refugees, wrote in Electronic Intifada that Israel was set to win its war on African refugees²⁰ and Netanyahu would be able to deport them. Yet in the space of a week it was claimed that Netanyahu’s plans were now in ruins.²¹

There has been considerable embarrassment among Israel’s more liberal middle classes against what has become an international scandal. Even Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has warned that this affair is making Israel even more of an international pariah. “It is particularly welcome that hundreds of Israeli academics have spoken out,” wrote professor Rachel Giora of Tel Aviv University in a message to me:

It’s really rare that I can feel proud of Israelis. Indeed recently there are many demonstrations and lots of published petitions against governmental policies. But today language turned into acts. Today Israeli pilots and crews announced their refusal to cooperate with the government on the deportation of African asylum-seekers to Africa. They won’t fly the refugees to their death! And they call on other airlines to join in.

Israel’s refugees can breathe a little more easily due to this refusal. And the signatures of several hundred professors and intellectuals to a letter calling on the prime minister to put a halt to the expulsion of asylum-seekers from Eritrea and Sudan are also a breath of fresh air.

B Michael, a contributor to the Ha’aretz newspaper, has compared the policy of Adolf Eichmann towards the Jews of Vienna with Israel’s policy of forcing out black African asylum-seekers.²² Eichmann’s policy of impoverishing, terrorising and stripping Jews of their rights was considered a massive success at the time in forcing the Jews out of Austria. Israel is only just learning how to accomplish the same feat. Israel’s refugee population of 60,000 has already been reduced by 10,000-15,000 through a combination of tactics, such as imprisonment in Holot, depriving them of the right to work, pogroms and racist attacks. Israel has learnt well, as B Michael said, from the Jews’ traditional enemies.

Although only a few weeks ago activists such as David Sheen were conceding defeat on deportation, according to Anshel Pfeffer, the wheels had been coming off the hastily drawn expulsion plan for months.²³ One of Netanyahu’s proudest achievements had been the border fence with Egypt. He described it in 2013 as “one of the greatest engineering feats ever achieved in Israel.”
Netanyahu and the far-right Zionists have used the poverty of south Tel Aviv’s existing Jewish working class residents as a rallying point for far-right activists - including members of the outlawed Kahanist groups. It was in May 2012, after ‘culture’ minister Miri Regev had made her “cancer” speech, that a mob of one thousand Israelis ran amok, attacking any refugee they could find. With record low unemployment rates and a growing demand for foreign workers, a plan to legalise the asylum-seekers and resettle them across Israel would have been sensible, but Netanyahu and the coalition government, with the support of the ILP, preferred incitement against the “infiltrators”.
A few thousand asylum-seekers were prevailed upon to leave “voluntarily”. Dozens of planes were to be chartered - the refugees given the stark choice of leaving voluntarily with $3,500 in cash or facing indefinite detention. But news of how they were mistreated upon arrival soon filtered back - and then no-one was prepared to volunteer any more.

But the high court refused to let the government incarcerate them for more than 60 days. However, it eventually backed down and approved deportation to “third countries” of any refugee whose asylum request was not pending. The interior ministry has made it almost impossible to request asylum - and of 12,000 requests just 10 have been approved.

Legal clinic Israeli law students

Wheels coming off

Only a few weeks ago it seemed all was over. But, even as the first notices were being issued to the refugees, the wheels were coming off. The Israel Prison Service, already suffering from massive overcrowding with Palestinians, had no space for the thousands of expected detainees. The refugees made it clear they would not accept the financial inducements and when the government threatened to deport them by force they ran up against legal obstacles.

No less important, the small circle of activists supporting the refugees had begun to grow rapidly. A series of petitions circulated, with the signatories committing themselves to hiding refugees in their homes if necessary. Thousands have signed the petitions and hundreds of people turned out for meetings on a rain-soaked Wednesday night in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which were organised by a group called Standing Together (Omdim Beyachad), to oppose the deportations. Thousands of Israelis are supporting the airline workers in their stand and Zazim, a new national organisation founded by university students, is holding protests and setting up information booths across the country.
The government’s backers in the media have derided these groups as anti-Israeli and far-leftists who did not care for the poor residents of south Tel Aviv. But still the protests grew,²⁴ with petitions signed by over 1,000 doctors and medical staff; and, perhaps most damagingly, a personal letter was sent to Netanyahu, signed by 36 holocaust survivors.²⁵

The publicity has already caused Rwanda to announce that it will not accept refugees deported against their will. How much one can trust this is another matter.

The timing could not have been better. The survivors’ letter was the main Holocaust-related news coming out of Israel just in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day! For once the occasion is being put to good use instead of being employed to justify Israel’s racism.

Then there is the case of Celina Shapil, who spent the winter of 1943 on the run from the Nazis - she crossed the borders of Poland, Slovakia and Hungary on foot through the snow at the age of 17.²⁶ Now 92, she was outraged at the government’s deportation plans and decided it was time to speak out:

I too have lived through a situation where the whole world was apathetic. I know what it feels like to be alone and feel like no one cares. It’s shameful we are the ones now doing this. It should not have to come to this so there needs to be public pressure. The government must change its policy.

As for the 36 survivors, they wrote to Netanyahu:

We - who know what it means to be a refugee, to be without a home or a country that would protect and defend us from violence and suffering - cannot understand how a Jewish government can expel refugees and asylum-seekers to a journey of pain, suffering and death.²⁷

This is why, far from being anti-Semitic, it is essential to compare Israel’s racist actions to those of the Nazis. It is only in this way that sections of Israel’s own Jewish citizens can be confronted with what Zionism means. What is sad is that it is left to those like the holocaust survivors, as young Israelis are overwhelmingly racist.²⁸ However, there are exceptions. Ella Navot, a 24-year-old sociology student at Tel Aviv University and one of the founders of Stop the Expulsion, said:

Deportation is like a red line for many people. Until now we could just sit at home and say, ‘Oh no, this is bad.’ And for the past few years people who care and follow the issue have been outraged, but this is the last straw.²⁹

Navot explained:

There are so many aspects to what drew me to this. I could talk about the fact that my grandmother is a holocaust survivor or about my parents, who are leftwing and have always advocated for human rights, but really what brought me to it is when I met the people themselves and started to understand the issue. They became friends and when one hears their stories one cannot ignore them.

The campaign launched last week, which called on Israelis to hide asylum-seekers if it becomes necessary, was inspired, its organisers say, by the story of Anne Frank.³⁰ The massive response to the campaign, now called Miklat Yisrael (Israel Refuge) took its organisers, including American-born rabbi Susan Silverman of Jerusalem, who came up with the idea, by surprise.
As for the 92-year-old Celina Shapil, who continues to mourn her parents and younger brother - all murdered in Auschwitz - she feels lucky to have been able to rebuild her life. But she hopes the African asylum-seekers will find refuge in Israel too. Otherwise, she warns, “We will go down terribly in history”.

Notes

1. www.haaretz.com/.premium-seeking-asylum-israel-oks-under-1-1.5252984.
2. www.haaretz.com/.premium-israel-hardens-vs-sudanese-1.5306418.
3. http://imemc.org/article/israel-begins-to-confiscate-20-of-asylum-seekers-incomes.
4. www.1202.org.il/en/union/info/statistics/general-statistics.
5. www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-migrants/israel-to-crack-down-on-illegal-migrant-workers-idUSTRE6AR17Q20101128.
6. www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/20/israel-netanyahu-african-immigrants-jewish.
7. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com
_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=
74&jumival=19084
8. www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,
L-3381978,00.html.
9. www.centralreformtemple.org/event/torah-
study-strangers-in-a-strange-land-jewish-views-on-immigration.
10. www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/01/novel-about-jewish-palestinian-love-affair-is-barred-from-israeli-curriculum.
11. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-agonizing-stories-of-refugees-israel-deported-to-africa-1.5626827.
12. www.timesofisrael.com/mk-apologizes-for-comparing-migrants-to-cancer.
13. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-law-forces-asylum-seekers-to-set-aside-fifth-of-salary-1.5481564.
14. See interview of Lia Tarachansky by Shir Hever: http://imemc.org/article/israel-begins-to-confiscate-20-of-asylum-seekers-incomes.
15. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option
=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=
74&jumival=19084.
16. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/12122754/Tens-of-thousands-of-Israeli-Holocaust-survivors-are-living-in-abject-poverty.html.
17. www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Party-leader-Gabbay-forces-Zionist-Union-to-back-expulsion-of-migrants-514743.
18. www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Party-leader-Gabbay-forces-Zionist-Union-to-back-expulsion-of-migrants-514743, Israeli Labor sells out African refugees, as ‘infiltrators’, http://mondoweiss.net/2017/11/israeli-refugees-infiltrators.
19. www.jlm.org.uk/about.
20. https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-set-win-its-war-african-refugees/23061?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=8846778102-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e802a7602d-8846778102-290649781.
21. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-anatomy-of-an-israeli-pr-disaster-1.5766754.
22. www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-historical-precedent-for-israel-s-asylum-seeker-expulsion-push-1.5730153.
23. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-anatomy-of-an-israeli-pr-disaster-1.5766754.
24. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/opposition-grows-to-israel-s-plan-to-deport-african-refugees-
1.5763832.
25. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-shoah-survivors-beg-bibi-don-t-send-asylum-seekers-on-death-journey-1.5766089.
26. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survivors-join-israeli-backlash-against-refugee-expulsions-1.5766648.
27. Ibid.
28. See ‘Zionism and holocaust abuse’ Weekly Worker November 30 2017.
29. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survivors-join-israeli-backlash-against-refugee-expulsions-1.5766648.

30. ‘Inspired by Anne Frank, rabbis in Israel plan to hide African asylum-seekers facing deportation’ Ha’aretz January 19 2018.

20,000 Demonstrate in Tel Aviv Against the Deportation of African Asylum Seekers

In the world's most racist state, Two out of every Three Israelis Support the Deportation of Black African Refugees

The anti-deportation protest in Tel Aviv on February 24, 2018. (Courtesy)

In what was an impressive demonstration, 20,000 people – refugees and Israelis – demonstrated on Saturday in Tel Aviv.  The equivalent size in Britain for such a demonstration would be about 200,000.

Nonetheless opinion polls in Israel show that about two in every three Israelis, in what is the most racist state in the world, support the attempts by Netanyahu and the government to deport the asylum seekers.

To date just 11 asylum seekers have been granted refugee status.  Compare this with some 90% success for Eritrean refugees in Europe.  Israel is simply refusing to process asylum applications.  Last week a court held that those who had escaped from the Eritrean army were entitled to refugee status.

Meanwhile Israel has begun to gaol refugees who refuse to accept deportation although it seems that the Israeli prison service, which is full with Palestinian prisoners, cannot cope with such a huge influx.

Below is an excellent video from Abby Martin on the anti-Black racism in Israel’s Jewish supremacist state.

It is surprising that the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel, who are so concerned about non-existent 'anti-semitism' in the Labour Party, have yet to condemn this racist attempt to deport refugees in order to safeguard Israel's Jewish majority and the support of the Israeli Labour Party for Netanyahu by their 'sister' party in Israel.

Tony Greenstein

Empire Files: Anti-Black Racism Reveals Israel’s White Supremacy

see also

Israelis and refugees come together in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the government policy jailing those who refuse to leave the country

Ilan Lior

Feb 24, 2018 

Around 20,000 Israelis gathered alongside African asylum seekers in Tel Aviv to protest against the Israeli government's policy of deportations and imprisonment of the asylum seekers.

The protest took place in south Tel Aviv, where most of the city's asylum seekers live, and local residents have long complained about their presence there.

Protesters carried signs reading, "No to deportation," "We're all humans" and "Refugees and residents refuse to be enemies."

Israelis and African asylum seekers protest against deportations and imprisonment, Tel Aviv, February 24, 2018.Meged Gozani

Togod Omer Adam, an asylum seeker from Sudan, spoke at the protest. "We did not choose to come here to south Tel Aviv. When people arrive at the border [between Israel and Egypt], they give you a one-way ticket to the central bus station in Tel Aviv."

He said that he understands the difficult situation this has created in south Tel Aviv, saying, "We are all victims in this story – the older Israelis residents and we, the asylum seekers. We all live here and for so long they have tried to make us fear one another."

Earlier this week, Israel began jailing citizens of African countries for refusing to leave of their own accord.

Israelis and African asylum seekers protest against deportations and imprisonment, Tel Aviv, February 24, 2018.Meged Gozani

On Tuesday night, all asylum seekers at the Holot detention center began a hunger strike in response. Earlier in the day, seven Eritreans who held at Holot were summoned for pre-deportation hearings. After they refused to leave the country for either Eritrea or Rwanda, they were immediately transported to Saharonim Prison, apparently due to fear they would flee.

Two of the men survived torture in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula en route Israel, but their asylum requests were denied.

In line with new rules issued by the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority, they will be held at Saharonim indefinitely unless they change their minds.

African asylum seekers prepare for Saturday night's demonstration against deportations and imprisonment, Tel Aviv, February 24, 2018.Meged Gozani

Hundreds of asylum seekers marched from Holot to Saharonim on Thursday in protest of the government's policies.

15,000 protest deportation of asylum seekers in Tel Aviv

Among the slogans: "Money for the neighborhoods — not for another Holot [Detention Center]" and "No expulsion, no Holot — rebuild the neighborhoods."

By MAARIV ONLINE

February 24, 2018 21:45

Some 15,000 demonstrators protested the expulsion of mostly Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers and migrant workers, many of whom were present at the protest, from Israel. The demonstration was organized by Residents of South Tel Aviv Against Deportation and led by Shula Keshet, a resident of the Neve Sha'anan neighborhood in South Tel Aviv.

Among the slogans were "Money for the neighborhoods — not for another Holot [Detention Center]" and "No expulsion, no Holot — rebuild the neighborhoods."

Israeli detention centre

Israel's migrant deportation plays on Jewish 'moral compass' February 6, 2018 (Reuters)

"I stand here shouting a scream that echoed a wound, rage and protest against the constant and longstanding abuse of the residents of South Tel Aviv," Keshet said. "Of trafficking drugs and trafficking women, into a crowded ghetto by channeling tens of thousands of people, migrant workers and asylum seekers here, into a violent space."

Omar Adam, an asylum seeker from Sudan, had a message for his neighbors in South Tel Aviv.

"I want to say something straight to my neighbors from the Shapira neighborhood who are here today," he said. "I know you do not want to — I know that you do not want me to have a bad thing ... The people of South Tel Aviv who are here today know that what is being said in the media is not reality."

Eric Sumner translated this report.

Three residents of South Tel Aviv attending the anti-deportation protest in Tel Aviv on February 24, 2018. Their headbands read "against the deportation." (Courtesy)

“Better a prison in Israel than dying on the way” – Israel’s Shameful War on its African Refugees

Even Alan Dershowitz, Israeli apologist supreme, says that the Deportations have ‘a whiff of racism’ about them

 Testimonies of refugees who left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda and received protection in Europe”

The proposed expulsion of Israel’s Black African refugees is proving highly embarrassing to the Zionists & Israeli apologists.  It demonstrates like little else the inherent racism in the ‘Jewish’ state.  It is impossible to argue that the refugees are a ‘security threat’ or the other excuses which are applied to the Palestinians.  

The only reason for the deportations is, as Netanyahu and the Right freely admit, because they are not Jewish.  Added to that they are not White.  Whereas one-third of the million Russian immigrants who came in the 1980’s weren’t Jewish they were at least White.

As Jonathan Freedland, the archetypal ‘liberal’ Zionist has been forced to admit, in an article Benjamin Netanyahu’s appalling betrayal of Jewish values,

‘the desire to be rid of these African newcomers has been mired in plain racism from the start. Recall that, in 2012, Likud’s Miri Regev, now the culture minister, referred to them as a “cancer.” She eventually apologised for the comparison — to people living with cancer.’

Of course Freedland is unable to make the connection between this 'plain racism' and the equally plain racism that pervades every aspect of Israeli society and the Zionist ideology that lies behind it.

African migrants protest outside Supreme Court

Freedland quoted the testimony of Emanuel Yemani, an Eritrean refugee who described his conversation with an Israeli immigration official. He was told that

“soon we’ll deport all of you, and you’ll sit under a tree, open your mouth and wait for a banana to fall, like a monkey.”

“But I’m a human being, not a monkey,” Yemani answered.

“Don’t you see yourselves, that you look like monkeys?” the official replied.

This is the sentiment that drives the expulsion of Israel’s African refugees.  But whereas such views are confined to the fascist margins of Western society , in Israel they are centre stage.  

Netanyahu was quite clear that the refugees pose a threat to Jewish identity. In May 2012 he told Israel’s cabinet meeting that:  

"If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state. This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity."

African refugees in Israel

By his logic, Netanyahu is correct.  Because what is a Jewish state other than a state with a Jewish demographic majority?  Contrary to nationalist myths, states do not have an ‘identity’ or values.  That is why the ‘British values’ that lie behind the Prevent programme are so much hot air. 

Below is an article on the economic imperative behind the expulsions.  There is a powerful lobby that wishes to replace the labour of the Africans with those of Filipinos who have no rights, either of residence or citizenship  and thus provide a pool of constant cheap labour.

I have included a number of articles below, on various aspects of this crisis, which is an important one in the stage of the further degeneration of Israel.

Profiteers for Expulsion:  Brokers Want Africans Out, Filipinos in

The brokers who bring 'Filipina' caregivers to Israel- and make them pay a hefty fee- don't want the asylum seekers corrupting their business models. This is hypocrisy at its finest

Nitzan Horowitz

Ha’aretz   Feb 05, 2018 1:00 AM

FILE PHOTO: A 'Filipina' caregiver and an elderly Israeli

Opinion 

MANILA – Millions of Filipino nationals work outside their country. It’s an important economic sector here; the money they send home constitutes 10 percent of the country’s gross national product. In some countries they work in construction, in others as cooks, while in Israel, as they well know here, “Filipina” generally describes the caregiver taking care of a frail grandparent or disabled child.

This Filipina cooks and cleans, does the shopping and pushes the wheelchair for the daily outing, and also bathes her charge and takes care of bathroom needs. She works all day and is also present at night – the equivalent of at least two full-time jobs. Yet very few Israeli households employ two Filipinas. As a result, their workday almost never ends.

For this work, which few Israelis would be prepared to do, she gets minimum wage (from which hundreds of shekels are deducted). And before the snide remarks about “for them it’s a lot of money,” everyone should ask himself if he would agree to do such work, under these conditions and for such a wage. Stories about Filipinas who became millionaires after five years of changing adult diapers in Holon are ridiculous exaggerations. That Filipina sends a substantial portion of her wages to her family, including children and the elderly, who have remained here. Sometimes it’s the main source of support for numerous people.

She will also have to repay debts. To whom? To the broker and the employment agency that placed her. According to the Kav La’Oved organization, the brokerage fees can reach $10,000 or more, a huge sum in the Philippines. At best it will be a year until the worker pays off her debts and can send money back to her family; at worst it could be three years. According to employees’ testimony, around half of the brokerage fees, which are illegal, end up in Israeli hands. Incidentally, the increasing demand around the world for Filipina nurses has created a serious nursing shortage in the Philippines, as 70 percent of Filipina nursing school graduates end up working abroad.

These employment arrangements through brokers are the force behind the expulsion of the asylum seekers in Israel. After all, their work is needed; there’s hardly a restaurant or a street corner where you won’t find an Eritrean washing dishes or sweeping. Most of us don’t want to do this “dirty work” either. This means that the thousands who will be expelled and left to their fate will undoubtedly be replaced by other foreign workers, but this time they will arrive through employment contractors who will take a fat cut.

These contractors are well-connected to politicians and senior government officials. When I chaired the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers, I was astounded by the vehement resistance to bringing workers to Israel through direct bilateral agreements. I quickly understood that interested parties wanted workers imported through brokers so they could make a fortune, and the government acceded to this.

Now they are talking about bringing workers from the Philippines to replace the asylum seekers at the restaurants and hotels. But Israel doesn’t have such an agreement with the Philippines. If such workers are brought in, it would contravene the state’s commitment to the High Court of Justice to employ workers only under agreements, and would encourage exploitation.

This is hypocrisy at its peak. This government, which is sowing fear of foreigners, is bringing in the most foreign workers. The more workers are brought in, the greater the number of those who will remain permanently in Israel – a completely natural process. Instead of accelerating the airlift from Manila or Beijing, the African asylum seekers should be given work permits so they can work in an orderly, supervised fashion, in accordance with all the rules. After all, they are already working and their employers are satisfied with them. I know this from conversations with hundreds of employers.

So enough of all this persecution, lies and incitement. These are human beings, they work hard, their work is needed and there’s no reason to bring other foreigners to replace them and enrich brokers with more illegal income.

A study conducted by three migration researchers

Shahar Shoham, Liat Bolzman and Lior Birger – presents a clear picture: promises made by the State of Israel both in court and personally to those leaving “voluntarily” about what awaits them upon reaching Rwanda and Uganda were not kept. Instead of access to official claims of asylum and work permits, upon landing in Rwanda their travel documents were taken from them. None of them could access application possibilities to claim asylum. Thus, deprived of any official documents, they were exposed to robbery, threats and imprisonment. They were forced to proceed on to life-threatening journeys across South Sudan, Sudan and Libya while seeking shelter. On their way they suffered trafficking in person, imprisonment, the threat of being forcibly returned   back to Eritrea, harsh conditions of hunger, violence and slave-labor in Libya’s torture camps, as well as a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Europe. They described a perilous journey permeated with an all-encompassing fear of death haunted by imminent death. Many witnessed the death of fellow travelers during the crossing of the Sahara Desert, in the torture camps in Libya and as they drowned in the Mediterranean. Among the dead were others who had those who left Israel “voluntarily.”

[In Rwanda] “Three days after our arrival, this man picked us up from the airport told us, ‘you must leave for Uganda’. I asked where are our documents and why must we leave? – He said that we must.”

(Gabriel, pseudonym, left Israel in October 2015 for Rwanda under the “voluntary leave” procedure of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority)

[In Uganda] “One man takes out a big knife, and tells us ‘Give us money or we’ll kill you’. They took everything we had, 3,500 dollars, clothes, cellphone, they take everything. […] And we don’t know what to do…”

(Dwight, pseudonym,  left Israel for Rwanda under the “voluntary leave” procedure of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority}

[In Sudan] They took us at night to prison. And I thought to myself: ‘Those who do not pay, we will send them back to Eritrea.’ If I return to Eritrea, what can I tell you? They’ll kill me. I was crying, I was like a crazy person.”

(Samson, pseudonym, left Israel in April 2016 and reached Rwanda under the “voluntary leave” procedure of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority).

[In Libya] “You’re locked inside. Eat and sleep there. 800 people in a small room. Everything is dirty, everyone is sick, boys, girls. I can’t talk about it. They beat you, threaten you, kill you quietly.”

(Samson, pseudonym, left Israel in 2016 for Rwanda under the “voluntary leave” procedure of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority. Now lives in Holland, where he was granted refugee status).

[In the Mediterranean Sea] “I saw 400 people inside… the water, they drowned. I saw people got in and all of them died on the boat. Nine boats went into the sea, we were before this ship, many children died, I remember. I don’t have the strength anymore to talk about it.”

(Johannes, pseudonym, left Israel in 2015 for Rwanda under the “voluntary leave” procedure of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority. Now lives in Holland, where he was granted refugee status).

Not only are the promises made to those leaving “voluntarily” not kept – this report concludes that the implementation of deportations to a “a third country” poses a grave threat to the mental wellbeing, safety and lives of men, women and children. To this day, this policy has cost the lives of many who reached Israel in the hope of finding shelter and did not find it there. It is impossible to read the testimonies brought forth in this report otherwise; they are a clear call to stop the looming deportation policy and regularize the status of asylum-seekers residing in Israel.  

This report is based on interviews conducted with Eritrean refugees who  left Israel under the “Voluntary” Departure program to Rwanda and Uganda. There – in contrast to the promises made to them by the State of Israel – they were not granted protection, forcing them to embark on a dangerous journey ending in Europe. This report focuses on the “Voluntary Departure” policy and how it affected the lives of those who left Israel under it. This policy has been implemented since late 2013 vis-à-vis Eritrean and Sudanese residing in Israel. In January 2018, shortly before the publication of this report, the State of Israel announced an escalation of the measures it implements against this population; one such measure is a plan to forcibly deport asylum-seekers to a third country, i.e., not their homeland.

The report is based on a qualitative research made up  of 19 interviews with Eritrean refugees who left Israel between 2014-2016. 11 interviews were conducted in Germany and eight in the Netherlands, the countries of residence of the interviewees, in which the overwhelming majority received refugee status.

This conclusion is in congruence with findings of previous reports published by Israeli and international NGOs that collected testimonies in African countries of those who “voluntarily” departed Israel. These testimonies were recently buttressed by a statement of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) about dozens of similar testimonies the agency collected in Italy. Taken together, several hundreds of testimonies have been collected.

Thus, the report confirms that the alarming patterns documented by previous reports have not changed. In addition, this report, for the first time, details additional stages in the journey of those who departed. Little information was available about these legs of the journey – and especially about what the interviewees experienced in Libya and during their crossing of the Mediterranean Sea– until their arrival in Europe.

The authors are independent researchers with years of experience working with refugee communities residing in Israel under the auspices of several NGOs: 

Lior Birger, a PhD candidate for Social Work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Fellow at the joint program of the Hebrew University and the Free University of Berlin -“Human Rights Under Pressure”. Shahar Shoham, a PhD candidate for Area and Global Studies at the Institute for Asian and African Studies , Humboldt University in Berlin and a grantee of the Hans-Böckler Foundation in Germany. Liat Bolzman, an M.A. student for Social Work and Human Rights at the Alice Salomon University in Berlin and a grantee of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany. “The harsh testimonies brought in this report clearly show the brutal ramifications of Israel’s official policy towards refugees,” say Shoham, Bolzman and Birger. “They prove that the promises made by Israel’s government to those leaving regarding what they are about to face in Rwanda and Uganda – are lies.

The people who testified us emphasized that although they have found shelter and protection in Europe, they feel obliged to expose the truth about the perilous journey they were forced to undertake. They said, furthermore, that ‘not another human being should suffer the horrors inflicted on us.’

We join the many voices of protest presently raised, and call upon the Government of Israel to revoke its decision, to truly and fairly examine the claims for asylum and protection, and to stop deporting asylum-seekers to places in which, instead of protection, expose them to violence, torture and the peril of death.”

Everything You Need to Know About Israel's Mass 

Deportation of Asylum Seekers

The government plan to send 20,000 back to Africa by 2020 has sparked anger and controversy, raising basic questions about Israel’s duty as a nation founded by refugees

Dina Kraft 

Ha’aretz Feb 07, 2018 9:56 AM

A demonstration against deportation by asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, in Tel Aviv, in December. Tomer Appelbaum

In a controversial move that has made the news domestically and abroad, Israel began sending out deportation notices to thousands of African asylum seekers this week. It is giving them a stark choice: leave the country or face going to prison for an indefinite period.

This is the culmination of over a decade of the government trying to get a handle on the issue. It calls the asylum seekers “infiltrators” because they entered the country illegally, and claims most are economic migrants. However, the Africans say they are fleeing persecution in their homelands and are entitled to refugee status.

In a country founded as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, the situation has raised a fundamental question: What is the Jewish state’s obligation to others, even if they are not Jewish? The issue is especially pressing today, with the world gripped by its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Asylum seekers in Israel: A Timeline.  Eliyahu Hershkovitz

The deportations are scheduled to start in early April, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which commemorates the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt.

Here we explain the key issues concerning the African asylum seekers in Israel, and why the matter has become such a hot-button topic both in Israel and for Diaspora Jews.

Who are these asylum seekers?

In the mid-2000s, with the African states of Sudan and Eritrea racked by unrest and violence – and, in the case of the Darfur region of Sudan, even attempted genocide – some citizens chose to flee.

They embarked on a hazardous journey that eventually led them from Egypt’s Sinai Desert into Israel, paying Bedouin smugglers to get them over the border and in some cases arriving with tales of torture and rape that they endured along the way.

The first to arrive, in 2005, were mostly fleeing ethnic violence in Sudan – in particular from Darfur. The fighting there has been described as an effort by the majority-Muslim Arab elite to wipe out ethnic African groups. Witnesses described scenes of torture, killings, rape and mutilation.

Eritrea, for its part, is considered a dictatorship. The United Nations has written of “widespread networks of informants, coerced by the state,” adding that “those suspected of treasonous behavior are subject to arbitrary arrest, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture.”

Many of the Eritreans in Israel say they were trying to escape the country’s compulsory army service. The UN says they would be in “great danger” if they returned to their native land as deserters.

How many African asylum seekers are there in Israel?

There are about 38,000 adult African asylum seekers currently in the country, according to figures from the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority, with a further 4,000 children. The authority says the vast majority of the asylum seekers, 72 percent, are from Eritrea. An additional 20 percent are from Sudan, with another 8 percent from other African states including Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, or other countries.

The flow of African asylum seekers in Israel reached a peak in 2011, when an estimated 1,300 were crossing the southern border every month. By 2013, there were about 60,000 in the country, but that number has subsequently fallen by about one-third due to deportations, refugee status being granted in other countries (including Canada and Germany), and the fact that some asylum seekers have accepted financial inducements from the state to leave the country.

Their arrival has been stymied in recent years by growing Islamic State-related violence in the northern Sinai peninsula, a route to Europe via Libya and the 242-kilometer-long (150-mile) fence Israel built along its southern border with Egypt and completed in 2014. Last year, the border authority said there were no illegal crossings into Israel via Sinai and the wave of asylum seekers is considered to be over.

What was Israel’s response to the asylum seekers?

As well as erecting the southern border to stem the flow, Israel has attracted criticism from UN refugee agencies and, increasingly, Diaspora Jews for its hard-line approach to the asylum seekers. They say the individuals in question are refugees, since they are fleeing war zones and seeking a safe haven in Israel. Israel, however, says that the majority are economic migrants, not refugees, and that they can therefore be deported.

The majority of the asylum seekers – some 15,000 to 22,000 – live in shared apartments in south Tel Aviv (Eilat and Jerusalem are other hubs), causing tensions in these already poor and overcrowded neighborhoods. Some south Tel Aviv residents have complained that they alone have shouldered the burden of living with the asylum seekers. There have also been accusations that the Africans were responsible for an increased crime rate, claims that have been refuted.

At various points, the government has suggested that the asylum seekers posed either security threats or a demographic threat to Israel’s status as the Jewish state. They have also said that Israel is not equipped to handle resettling them. Last month, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked wrote on her Facebook page: “The State of Israel is too small and has its own problems. It cannot be used as the employment office of the African continent.”

Many nonprofit organizations working with the asylum seekers say the government has employed harsh measures that suggest they are trying to make life difficult for the asylum seekers: They have no social, labor or health rights, and because they are not granted work permits, their job situation is often unstable. They perform mainly menial labor in restaurants and cleaning.

The government built a special facility in the Negev, Saharonim Prison, to house some of the illegal immigrants that it had detained. The prison opened in July 2007, and asylum seekers were sent there under the Prevention of Infiltration Law. Six years later, Israel opened another detention center in the desert, called Holot (“Sands”).

What is Holot and who’s being detained there?

The Holot detention facility was built specifically to hold African asylum seekers, at a cost of 323 million shekels ($94 million). It opened in December 2013 and although it is not a prison per se, detainees must report for a roll call twice a day, meaning they are unable to do anything other than hang around at the remote site. It is expected to close in March. The 900 men currently being detained there, all from Eritrea, have been told they must agree to deportation to their home country or another African state, Rwanda, or be sent to Saharonim Prison indefinitely. Officials have said Holot cost about 240 million shekels to run every year.

African asylum seekers outside the Holot detention facility in southern Israel, this month. It opened in December 2013 and cost of 323 million shekels ($94 million).Meged J. Gozani

How is Israel handling the Africans’ asylum claims?

The Interior Ministry is checking the Africans’ asylum requests, but critics say the pace has been slow and the processing itself has been problematic. Of the asylum seekers currently in Israel, some 15,400 have submitted claims for asylum since they were allowed to do so, the government says.

Activists helping the asylum seekers say the reason so many have not applied is that they do not trust the unit that examines asylum claims, and allege that less than a third of those claims have actually been reviewed. People complain that they spend hours in line (sometimes even waiting overnight in order to be seen in the morning) to apply for asylum, only to be sent away without being able to file their claim.

How many asylum seekers have been granted refugee status in Israel?

Out of the thousands of applications, to date only 11 asylum seekers have been granted refugee status, according to the population authority. Activist groups say the numbers refer to 10 Eritreans and one Sudanese person. That’s less than 1 percent of those who have applied, according to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Israel. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported last November that Israel had also granted humanitarian status to 200 Sudanese, most of them from Darfur.

By contrast, Canada has granted refugee status to 97 percent of the Eritreans who arrived there. According to Nancy Chan, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, “Between January and November 2016, 910 Eritrean refugees were resettled to Canada from Israel.” In Germany, meanwhile, government figures said 75 percent of Eritrean applicants were granted full refugee status there in 2016.

The asylum seekers have been in Israel for over 10 years – why are they suddenly big news now?

In December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to tackle the problem conclusively. A new plan was unveiled in January, whose first stage is set to be carried out over the next two years. The population authority says during this time some 20,000 asylum seekers will be given the choice of deportation or being jailed for an indefinite period.

The government is offering a $3,500 payment for those who agree to be deported back to Africa.

Asylum seekers started receiving their deportation notices on February 3 and have been given two months to decide which of the two options to take.

For now, deportation notices will not be issued to women, children, fathers of children, anyone recognized as a victim of slavery or human trafficking, and those who had requested asylum by the end of 2017 but haven’t gotten a response. The 350 or so unaccompanied minors who fled to Israel and studied in Israeli schools are expected to be exempt from the first phase.

The first deportations are expected to take place in early April, just as Israel is marking the holiday of Passover.

Israel says some asylum seekers already left voluntarily – what does this mean?

According to the United Nations, about 4,000 asylum seekers left the country between December 2013 and June 2017, under what Israel terms its “voluntary departure program.” However, the choice in these situations was often one between deportation or prison, with Israel also offering a financial inducement to leave the country and a free flight.

As party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, Israel is unable to return people to their homelands if their lives are deemed at risk. Consequently, it was widely reported in the Israeli media that it made secret deals with “third countries” in Africa last year to accept the asylum seekers. These states have subsequently been identified as Rwanda and Uganda. However, Rwanda’s deputy foreign minister said last month his country would only take in those leaving Israel willingly.

The then-young country of Israel, still reeling from the devastation of the Holocaust, played a key role in crafting the refugee convention – which marked the first time the international community convened to determine the responsibilities countries had to refugees.

Where will the deportees go?

They will be deported to what are called “third party” countries – in this case, believed to be Rwanda. In the past, some have also gone to Uganda. Rwanda’s deputy foreign minister stated recently his country would not accept any deportees leaving Israel against their will, but Israeli Interior Minister Arye Dery countered that it would.

Israeli activist groups have produced testimonials that deportees arriving in Rwanda, and then later as they move on, have suffered difficult experiences. Deportees were regularly robbed of the funds they arrived with, activists said. There have also been reports of rapes, people being sold into human-trafficking rings, and deaths as they tried to reach Europe on dangerous boat trips via Libya.

How does the Israeli government respond to accusations of racism?

The government says anyone who enters Israel illegally is subject to deportation, period. However, one of Israel’s most high-profile supporters in the Diaspora, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, told an Israeli TV channel last month: “The whiff of racism cannot be avoided when you have a situation where you have 40,000 people of color being deported en masse without being individualized and every single case considered on its merits.”

Other Israelis have pointed out that the asylum seekers don’t pose a security threat, their relatively small numbers would not disrupt the religious status quo and they help fill the low-paid jobs many Israelis prefer not to take – such as dishwashers in cafés and restaurants. The race question is also being raised because there are thousands of Eastern Europeans who have also entered the country illegally, but they are not being systematically targeted for deportation in the same way.

What has the reaction been to the deportation plan?

The African asylum seeker issue is a divisive one in Israel, and some politicians in the governing coalition have sought to appease right-wing nationalists with their hard-line approach. However, there has also been a surge of grass-roots activism against the deportations, both in Israel and the Diaspora, with protesters citing Jewish values and the biblical commandment to “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Diaspora dissenters also see in the plight of the Africans stories of their own families, who in many cases were refugees fleeing persecution.

There have been dozens of petitions against the mass deportation from rabbis and clergy in Israel and around the world, and in Israel from Holocaust survivors, artists, doctors, lawyers, academics, social workers and even airline pilots who said they would refuse to work on flights that would deport anyone. There have also been street demonstrations and even a campaign – inspired by Anne Frank – to hide asylum seekers from the authorities as a last resort. Hundreds of Israelis have signed up to hide migrants in the “Israeli Asylum” campaign.

And what do the asylum seekers themselves say they want?

In interviews with the media, many say they would like to return to their homelands once it is safe enough to do so. In the meantime, they would like to be given asylum in Israel or another country.

Eritrean finds home in Italy after trauma in Libya

Asmorom is one of around 80 refugees who undertook the dangerous journey to Europe via Libya, after being relocated by Israel.

By Barbara Molinario  |  21 February 2018   |  Français

Asmorom, 28, hugs a UNHCR cultural mediator outside Rome’s Termini train station.  © UNHCR/Alessandro Penso

ROME, Italy – Asmorom was just 18 when he fled Eritrea in 2007. It would take three years and many violent beatings by people smugglers for him to find a safe place to call home in Israel – only for his world to come crashing down once more.

Granted a temporary visa in Israel for four months, Asmorom was forced to continuously renew it. He also struggled to fit in. Without the right to work, he was vulnerable and exploited, ekeing out a living with odd jobs for meagre pay.

“I had no contact with the community,” he recalls. “I had no Israeli friends and was not given the opportunity to study and learn the language.”

Despite this, Asmorom struggled on in Israel for five years, until one day the authorities told him that his visa would not be renewed. This gave him three options: being placed in a detention facility for an undetermined period of time, being returned to Eritrea or being transferred to Rwanda.

“I was given no information.”

UNHCR recently appealed to Israel to halt its policy of relocating Eritreans and Sudanese to sub-Saharan Africa. This is after around 80 cases were identified in which people relocated by Israel risked their lives by taking dangerous onward journeys to Europe via Libya.

Knowing he would face imprisonment or worse if he was returned to Eritrea, Asmorom had little choice but to accept the transfer to Rwanda.

He was given US$ 3,500 by Israeli authorities as part of the relocation scheme. Then, once in Rwanda, he and the nine other Eritrean refugees he had been travelling with were met by local authorities and transferred to a hotel.

“I was given no information, my Israeli documents were taken from me and I received nothing, no papers, no explanation whatsoever on what was going to happen,” says Asmorom. “I was scared. The word on the street was that we were not safe in the hotel because everyone knew that refugees coming from Israel were carrying large sums of money. We stayed one night, and then the whole group decided to leave and run to Uganda.”

In Italy, Asmorom received refugee status and is currently enrolled in language school.  © UNHCR/Alessandro Penso

In October 2015, Asmorom was once more in the hands of smugglers, who took him from Uganda to Sudan. In Sudan, he married and stayed for a few months, but knew he could not stay without documents or security. In May 2016, he left his wife behind for her own safety and departed towards Libya.

“In front of me was the Sahara for the second time,” he says. “I knew very well I could die, but I wanted freedom and peace and decided to cross again”.

In the middle of the desert, Asmorom and the group he was traveling with were kidnapped and taken to Kufrah, Libya. He was forced to pay US$ 1,800 to get to Tripoli, and there asked for an additional US$ 5,500. When he could not pay, he was taken to a warehouse where 1,500 refugees and migrants were kept in one large room.

“It is difficult to describe the conditions we were kept in. Try to imagine 1,500 people living, eating, sleeping and defecating in one large room. The food we were given was simply not enough and my friends and I were already debilitated from all these years of trying to survive, from Israel and from the crossing.”

“It is difficult to describe the conditions.”

“We were ill and we were hungry. Two of my friends did not survive, I watched them die in the warehouse. This for me is very difficult to talk about – I still cannot sleep at night because of this”.

In October 2016, Asmorom finally made it to the coast and set sail for Italy. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea in a small wooden boat with 800 people on board almost felt easy compared to the ordeal he had been through for seven years.

The boat was rescued by an NGO and its passengers disembarked in a port near Naples, Italy. “The moment I arrived to Italy I knew I no longer had to live in fear,” says Asmorom. “I had gambled with life and survived.”

• See also: Eritrean artist draws hope from evacuation to Europe

In Italy, Asmorom received refugee status and is currently enrolled in language school, determined to find his place in society and hoping to be reunited with his wife. However, he says he will never be able to put what he has been through behind him.

“I would like for my friends names to be written down,” he says. “Ibra and Tesfalem were their names, they would be 28 today. It is only because I survived that their families were able to find out what happened to their sons.”

“So many people are unaccounted for. The families still call me today, as they could not get the bodies back, and for closure they ask me for information – Were they sick? Were they given food? Were they beaten? It is for them that I am telling my story and I would like for as many people as possible to know what has happened.”

The UN Refugee Agency in Geneva released a very important testimonial verifying Israel and Rwanda’s human trafficking system and deportation agreement עכשיו אף אחד כבר לא יוכל להכחיש: ישראל ורואנדה מפרות את החוק הבינלאומי וסוחרות בפליטים

Refugees in Israel - International Solidarity

Rwandan officials recently denied #Refugees4Sale deal with Israel exists. Yesterday, they denied that any deportees from Israel have arrived at Rwanda (other than several individuals coming on their own accord).

The UNHCR's publication yesterday verifies several serious claims against Israel and Rwanda:

1. Israel deports refugees to states of origin or to unsafe third states. This is the first time the UNHCR confirms that Rwanda is the third state. This is also the first time that the UNHCR states that Israel deports refugees to their state of origin, a blatant violation of the non refoulement principle of international law.

2. Israeli and Rwandan authorities collaborate in what the UNHCR calls a 'relocation scheme'

3. Israeli and Rwandan authorities are implicated in human trafficking. See this testimonial endorsed and verified by the UNHCR:

"Once in Rwanda, he and the nine other Eritrean refugees he had been travelling with were met by local authorities and transferred to a hotel.

I was given no information, my Israeli documents were taken from me and I received nothing, no papers, no explanation whatsoever on what was going to happen,” says Asmorom. “I was scared. The word on the street was that we were not safe in the hotel because everyone knew that refugees coming from Israel were carrying large sums of money. We stayed one night, and then the whole group decided to leave and run to Uganda In October 2015, Asmorom was once more in the hands of smugglers, who took him from Uganda to Sudan..”

UNHCR GENEVA IS EXPOSING ISRAEL AND RWANDA'S #Refugees4Sale Please share! Full UNHCR statement