Monday, September 02, 2013

The Racism of Israel

Out-sourcing dignity and compassion.

There are about 65,000 African asylum seekers spread around Israel. Some work illegally and theIsrael’s chief of police has advised that they should be permitted to work legally. Israel plans to soon begin deporting up to 50,000 migrants from Eritrea and Sudan back to Africa via Uganda, officials said.  There are "rumours" that Uganda agreed to the arrangement in exchange for a deal for money and weapons. This appears to be a very similar policy to Australia’s - to pay a poverty stricken third-world to take on the burden of refugees. According to a report in the Maariv newspaper Israel was willing to pay $8,000 a head to absorb migrants. Israel declines to even name Uganda as the African country involved  and Bill Van Esveld, who monitors the Middle East for the Human Rights Watch, said: “If ... even the country is secret how is one to know minimum guidelines are being followed with basic protections for these people?”

 Many or most of the Eritreans in Israel fled indefinite military conscription or forced labour. Because of the harsh conditions in Eritrea, Eritreans have a more than 80 per cent asylum recognition rate worldwide. But Israel has not granted refugee status to even one of the 36,000 in the country. The refugees, many of whom live in slum areas, are seen as a threat by many Israeli residents, and right-wing politicians outbid one another on who can be tougher on the issue.

 Many or most of the Eritreans in Israel fled indefinite military conscription or forced labour. Because of the harsh conditions in Eritrea, Eritreans have a more than 80 per cent asylum recognition rate worldwide. But Israel has not granted refugee status to even one of the 36,000 in the country. Under Sudanese law, anyone who has visited Israel faces up to 10 years in prison. Sudanese officials have said the courts will apply the law.

Miri Regev, a member of the Israeli parliament, told  Israeli protesters against asylum seekers that  "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body".

Danny Danon of the ruling Likud Party  said the only solution to the problem would be to "begin talking about expulsion...We must expel the infiltrators from Israel. We should not be afraid to say the words 'expulsion now'"

Netanyahu, the prime minister has said that "illegal infiltrators were flooding the country" and threatening the security and identity of the Jewish state. "This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity."

Fundamentalist rabbis have signed an open letter warning Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews, saying those who do should be "ostracised." The letter instructs that "it is forbidden in the Torah to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a foreigner," and anyone who sells property to a non-Jewmust be cut off!!"

Recent guidelines instruct Israeli officials told asylum seekers  that if they do not agree to be sent home, they face years in detention.
“It doesn’t matter how Israel dresses this up, this is using the threat of prolonged detention to force Eritrean and Sudanese nationals to give up their asylum claims,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israel should end its unlawful detention policy and release all asylum seekers while their claims are fairly examined.”

Israel  admitted that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent. Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has been questioned by some rabbis. In December 2012  a documentary by Israeli journalist Gal Gabai, titled Where Did the Children Disappear to, revealed that, in the past decade, the birthrate among Ethiopian immigrants had decreased by 50%, writes the Jewish Daily Forward. She discovered that women were denied proper family-planning counseling or an outline of birth control methods from medical staff, while others were informed that their entry into Israel would be blocked if they refused to take the contraceptive, notes the Guardian. Many had no idea what they were being injected with.  They are taking advantage of women who are weak because they are new to the country, do not understand the language and who traditionally respect authority. Either its intention was to do good, to prevent poverty and to help with the adjustment to Western urbanized living or it was an economic calculation to reduce immigration and absorption costs.” “This story reeks of racism, paternalism and arrogance,” Gabai told viewers 

Tel Aviv,  Israel's most liberal city decided that they would implement a policy of separate kindergartens for African and Israeli children. Separate but supposedly equal child-care for three-to-six year olds.  Last year, some parents in the prosperous and fashionable Sheinkin area of central Tel Aviv opposed a visit from 35 black children for a joint Hanukkah at a local kindergarten. According to a Ynet report, a group of parents started a chain of racist emails, with one claiming they needed to know if the African children had been immunized in order to “protect” their own children. Jewish residents reject angrily the accusation that they are racists. They point out that the infrastructure and amenities in their impoverished neighborhoods are already overburdened.  Although it is puzzling why the municipal decided to build segregated kindergartens, rather than simply more kindergartens for everyone to resolve the neighborhood's existing problems of overcrowding and lack of infrastructure rather than endorse racial segregation.

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