Jewish Perspective on Asylum Seekers

Katie, one of our 10 month Coexistence track participants, recently had the following to say about asylum seekers in Israel:

Unlike many of the people in our program, I don’t work directly with African refugees. I can’t call them my students, my neighbors or my friends. My experiences have largely come from observation, conversation with my fellow participants, and my commute to and from the Secular Yeshiva. Watching young, unemployed African men crouched on the side of Har Tsyion, waiting for day labor contracts to come their way, raises a plethora of issues, but first and foremost, it raises the issue of what a Jewish State should be.

As a Jewish national home, does Israel have the room and resources to provide for the thousands of Africans who have fled conflict and settled throughout the country? The Talmud teaches that “Jews are the compassionate children of compassionate parents. One who is merciless toward his fellow creatures is no descendant of our father Abraham.” Does deporting young Sudanese refugees back to uncertain and possibly dangerous situations or interning them in a holding facility in the Negev fit in with this Talmudic understanding of a core Jewish value?

I could share with you terrifying anecdotes about the labor exploitation, xenophobia, and deportation of asylum seekers. This is a country that absorbed more than a million Russian olim within the span of a decade. Can it not provide paperwork and justice to a few thousand with no home to return to? Disentangling the issue of undocumented asylum seekers from the heated rhetoric oftentimes used to discuss it is a necessary step in order to truly begin to seek justice for the young men on the side of the road.

A Tough Time For African Asylum Seekers

Anna is a 5 month Community Service participant and University of Pittsburgh graduate originally from Maryland. Anna wrote an opinion piece on the state of African refugees in Israel for a recent Tikkun Olam newsletter.

I recognize that the drastic influx of asylum seekers poses a great challenge for the Israeli government.  However, I have been highly disappointed by the way in which the Israeli government has treated those escaping violent, targeted persecution over the past decade.  The government has used detention as the default course of action.  And, in the past few months, I have become exponentially more frustrated by proposals to limit asylum seekers right to work and to build a prison facility to house those currently living civilian lives in Israel.

African asylum seekers have been entering Israel in record numbers in the past few years.  In 2009, about 300 people entered Israel from Egypt each month.  In recent months, political and community leaders have articulated increasing hostility towards asylum seekers living in Israel.  Across the country, asylum seekers have been illegally denied work and housing.

In December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed that a detention center be built to house about 10,000 individuals entering Israel from the Egyptian border.  The Prison Service would run the detention center, but Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch has stated that the Prison Service lacks the knowledge and experience necessary to address this civilian population.  This plan would also severely limit the movement of asylum seekers, in a manner that is both unjust and in violation of international Treaties to which Israel is party. It would prevent these asylum seekers from having any contact with Israeli society and force them to live as if they were incarcerated criminals.  Meanwhile, the Israeli government started to construct a barrier that will seal off parts of Egypt.  This barrier will make asylum seekers more susceptible to attack on the Egyptian side and cost many their lives.

As a democratic state and a state founded as a safe haven for those escaping persecution, Israel is obligated to treat its asylum-seeker population much more justly than afforded by the newly proposed policies.  Furthermore, Israel is a signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, but the government has not yet adopted substantive asylum legislation and the asylum process is marked by unclear policies and procedures. Asylum seekers have limited to no access to basic services such as health care, housing, education, vocational training and employment.  When one looks at the conditions of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals living in Israel, it is easy to forget that asylum seekers once governed this country.