It seems that Israeli Prime Minister nixed his own deal with the UN before the ink was dry on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (aka HIAS)‘s crowing e-mail to its followers.
I received Mark Hetfield’s e-mail at 3:28 p.m. yesterday, but sometime later yesterday the New York Times reported that the deal was off.
I was planning to post on the Hetfield e-mail anyway this morning, but now the story gets even juicier. My focus would have been on the outrageous idea that 16,000 Africans who broke in to Israel over the years would be resettled as refugees in WESTERN COUNTRIES. Which countries? The US! Surely Europe can’t handle one more needy African!
***Update*** Canada in the cross hairs, see here.
(Readers need to know that we (the US) are already bringing rejected asylum seekers from Israel to be placed in Anytown, USA. 71 arrived between Oct. 1, 2017 and February, 28, 2018. Hundreds more have come in recent years probably all resettled by HIAS.)
Below is Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society yesterday. We previously questioned why HIAS, one of nine major federal resettlement contractors, was mucking around in Israel’s business in the first place.
Then here is the New York Times sometime after that e-mail went out.
By the way, after the original flood of illegal aliens entering Israel, the Israelis built a very successful wall.
JERUSALEM — In a head-spinning turnaround, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced on Monday that he had reached an extraordinary deal with the United Nations refugee agency to resettle thousands of African asylum seekers in Western countries. Within hours Mr. Netanyahu suspended the deal after coming under heavy criticism from his coalition partners.
The flip-flop appeared to reflect Mr. Netanyahu’s fear of losing support from those partners or from his right-wing constituency, who call the asylum seekers infiltrators and want them gone. His opponents on the left described the prime minister’s behavior as an embarrassing and cowardly surrender under pressure.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is battling for his political future under the cloud of multiple corruption scandals and faces possible charges of bribery, had apparently failed to consult with most of his own conservative Likud Party colleagues or coalition allies before announcing the migrant deal.
[….]
The agreement with the United Nations was meant to replace a contentious Israeli plan that had offered the migrants a stark choice: forced deportation to Africa or prison. That plan fell through after Rwanda, the African country meant to receive the deportees, announced that it would accept only those who left Israel voluntarily.
In the afternoon, in a televised news conference, Mr. Netanyahu triumphantly announced the new deal, under which the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees committed to persuading countries in the West to take at least 16,250 migrants over five years, while Israel would grant official status as temporary residents to most who remained.
Estimates of the population of African asylum seekers in Israel, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, range from 35,000 to 39,000.
But the agreement to let many stay in Israel drew harsh criticism from some of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition allies, who were taken by surprise. Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the far-right Jewish Home party, said the deal would “turn Israel into an infiltrator’s paradise.”
Mr. Netanyahu backtracked.
[….]
The plan was to be carried out in three phases, with the first 6,000 migrants expected to leave over the next 18 months.
William Spindler, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, said there was no agreement in place with other countries to take any of them. He said that the agency would need countries to come forward with offers, but that “we are confident we will be able to find places for these 16,000 people.”
More here.
The UN is confident! I’m not! A major part of the deal requires WESTERN COUNTRIES to take 16,000 —- which countries?
And, why should Israel’s, or Malta’s, or Australia’s illegal aliens be our problem!
Refugees, asylum seekers, migrants are the problem of the country they have escaped to—-they are not the US’s problem—and if the President is serious about reforming the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, simply disallowing resettlement from first world countries is something he can do at the State Department level!
See my category, ‘Israel and refugees’ with 169 previous posts archived here.
I’ll try to remember to put this at the end of every post….