Israel Tells African Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Leave or Be imprisoned
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Israel is a Ziofascist police state, Jews alone wanted, others denied or deported if arrive on their own.
Muslims and Black Africans are especially unwelcome, notably by Netanyahu’s regime, the most ruthless in Israel’s history, viciously hostile toward them.
Israel treats non-Jewish immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers like criminals.
Discriminatory laws target them, their fundamental rights denied.
Torture victims fleeing repression face enormous hurdles to gain entry.
Israel spurns international law with impunity, doing what it wants unaccountably. Protecting refugees and asylum seekers doesn’t matter.
Article I of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees calls them:
“A person who owning to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.”
Post-WW II, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established to help them.
To gain legal protection, they must be outside their country of origin, fear persecution, be harmed or fear harm by their government or others, and pose no danger to others.
Israel signed the 1951 Convention. Interior Ministry procedures and secret inter-ministerial determinations decide individual cases.
Compared to Western states, Israel accepts the fewest number of temporary or permanent refugees – ignoring its legal and moral responsibility to help.
Its 2012 Anti-Infiltration Law targets unwanted immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and their families.
They face three or more years imprisonment, terms indefinitely extended at Israel’s discretion. The law’s purpose is to deter unwanted people from arriving, making clear they’ll be treated harshly.
Nearly 30,000 refugees and asylum seekers from Eritrea, Sudan, and other African nations were given 90 days to leave Israel of be imprisoned – on orders by Netanyahu, interior minister Arye Dery and public security minister Gilad Erdan.
Initially, children, adults over 60, parents of minor children, ill individuals and victims of human trafficking will get a short-term reprieve if haven’t left the country as demanded.
Thousands may end up brutally detained. Fleeing homeland repression, they chose one of the world’s least hospitable countries, unwanted and abused on arrival.
Israel is a nation of asylum seekers, most arriving post-WW II. Unlike other countries, only Jews are wanted – others criminalized as infiltrators.
A hostile racist state shows no compassion for people Frantz Fanon called the “Wretched of the Earth” – conditions for them made more wretched on arrival.
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