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piqer for: Globalization and politics Global finds
Freelance journalist based in Istanbul. Keeping an eye on Turkish politics and development.
How Israel Is Discarding African Refugees In War Zones
"For decades after its founding in 1948, Israel welcomed refugees from outside the Jewish faith."
Now, it's being accused of getting rid of African refugees by luring them with visas, work permits or a refugee status in some African nations. This long read tells the story of those asylum seekers who agree to leave Israel and are left to their fates.
Between 2006 and 2013, 65,000 foreign nationals reached Israel. Some lived in parks, others in poor and overcrowded neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. The Israeli government struggled to accommodate the newcomers, and the media coverage fueled unease among Israelis.
"By 2012, a leading Israeli politician was denouncing the asylum-seekers as 'a cancer in our body'."
After 2013, Israel made life harder for asylum seekers and began pressuring Eritreans and Sudanese to leave for third countries in secret. They also created a detention center for asylum seekers in the middle of the dessert, where they can be held legally for at least one year.
Israel has ignored requests of information by the UNHCR on the issue, but this year-long investigation by Foreign Policy reveals this opaque system and suggests there is a level of government knowledge about this issue in at least Israel, Rwanda and Uganda.
I resent the insinuation that Israel is responsible for caring for the victims of Africa's failed states. Israel is a country the size of New Jersey and is surrounded entirely by enemies. To think that such a country is capable of absorbing hundreds of thousands of refugees from foreign cultures without tearing apart the social fabric and destroying the country economically under a financial burden it is not capable of shouldering is short sighted and unrealistic...both are common attributes of Leftists. All the goodwill in the world to help those less fortunate will be of no use if, in trying to help those less fortunate you destroy your own house and with it the ability to care for your own family, let alone others.