Israel Rejects Refugees

Netanyahu has announced an unspecified international deal to expel some 40,000 African asylum seekers from Israel. 

The Israeli prime minister said he had reached an "international agreement" that allowed his country to deport around 40,000 African refugees. It is unclear whether the African asylum seekers would be sent back to their homelands or a third country.

 Netanyahu's Cabinet also approved plans to shut down the Holot migrant detention center in southern Israel and gave asylum seekers a three-month deadline to leave the country or face deportation.

The Israeli government says the African migrants are "infiltrators" and not genuine refugees.

"The infiltrators will have the option to be imprisoned or leave the country," Israel's Public Security Ministry said.

"Instead of turning away refugees within its territory, Israel can and should protect asylum seekers like other countries of the world, instead of imprisoning them or deporting them to continue the journey as refugees," a coalition of human rights organizations in Israel said. They say that refugees from Sudan and Eritrea cannot return to their "dangerous" homelands.

Nationalism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism are widespread ideologies. People think it's perfectly okay for people belonging to minority groups to be abused, threatened and excluded – but only as long as they don't happen to be part of that minority themselves.

"All people are foreigners, almost everywhere.”