Israel launches nationwide sweep to detain and deport African reugees
Shmarya Rosenberg
Dozens of African refugees were rounded up yesterday and detained in a nationwide sweep conducted by Israel’s Immigration Authority’s special Oz Unit.
Israel plans on deporting the refugees.
The sweeps will continue for a period of weeks with the goal of detaining and deporting 1,500 South Sudanese.
115 people were arrested during the Oz Unit sweeps yesterday. 105 are South Sudanese.
At least 25 more refugees have been arrested so far today.
Also caught in the sweeps were illegal immigrants from Nigeria, China, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
The raids took place after the Jerusalem Administrative Court granted the government’s request to suspend the "collective protection" status granted to South Sudanese refugees, an act akin to sanctioning their deportation.
Israel’s haredi Interior Minister, Eli Yishai of the Sefardi Shas political party, told Ynet that the sweeps were “not meant to be against the infiltrators, but rather to preserve the Zionist and Jewish nature of the State of Israel…[the operation's primary goal is] to return the infiltrators from Eritrea and South Sudan to their countries, despite the difficulties mounted by the so-called human rights groups.…What we witnessed today was just the beginning of the battle for the future of Israel. I'm certain that the court will also sanction the deportation of infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan, who pose the main threat."
Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz, who is the head of the Kadima political party, claimed the migrants “are not refugees."
"They came illegally to look for work and do damage to Israel," Mofaz claimed. "The 1,500 to 2,000 who come in monthly must be stopped. The [Sinai] fence must be completed. The next goal should be to return them to their country of origin…”
"I went to South Sudan," Likud MK Danon said yesterday. "It's a country you can live in." Danon went on to call deported South Sudanese refugees “crybabies.” "We cannot let them bring Africa to Israel," Danon added.
Another Likud MK, Miri Rege – who last month called African refugees a "cancer" during an anti-refugee demonstration in south Tel Aviv that degenerated into a mini-pogrom against African refugees there – told the Knesset yesterday that Israel had been "captured" by the refugees.
Aid workers criticized the government, noting that the refugees had fled war zones, and that their lives will be in danger if they are deported.
The men arrested yesterday were sent to a regular Israeli prison. The women and children were transferred to the Saharonim refugee camp. At one time approximately 1,000 refugees from Darfur were imprisoned there.
Six families that agreed to leave Israel voluntarily were released to prepare for their scheduled flights to Africa.
There are 1,500 South Sudanese in Israel out of a total of 60,000 African refugees there.
35,000 of those refugees are Eritrean and 15,000 are from northern Sudan. Under International law, Israel can’t legally deport them.
Eritrea’s government has been recognized by the United Nations and the international community as a tyrannical regime that is a systemic abuser of human rights. Sudan has no diplomatic relations with Israel and is officially an "enemy state.”
To get around this, Israel tried in the past to deport Eritreans and Sudanese to other countries but was not successful.
Yishai wants to disregard International law and deport these refugees anyway.
Speaking to Ynet about yesterday’s arrests, an aid worker complained that that Israel had not reviewed the status of those refugees it detained. Instead, Israel just decided to send them back to their home country “like sheep to the slaughter.”
Mainstream American Jewish organizations have been largely silent about Israel's mistreatment of African refugees and the insistence of many of its politicians that International law does not apply to it.
Many of the same reasons Israel gives for wanting to deport African refugees were made by governments that denied entry to Jewish refugees from Europe during the 1930s and early 1940s. Many of those asylum seekers were murdered in the Holocaust.
Some of these arguments also parallel the arguments made by the ancient Egyptians about the ancient Hebrews in the biblical book of Exodus. The arguments were used then to enslave the Hebrews.
[Sources: Ynet (a,b); the Jerusalem Post (a, b, c, d.]
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