Many American Jewish groups are angry with the Israeli government because it is now taking steps to remove tens of thousands of economic migrants who entered Israel from Africa before it had built its great border wall.
If US private activist groups want to pressure Israel that is their business, however, when one of those groups is paid millions annually from the US Treasury it becomes our business what they do. Of course it is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) I’m talking about.
Why are we paying them a dime to take care of the refugees they resettle in the US while they muck around in world affairs?
Where is Congress? Cut them off!
And, let me be clear at the outset (before I get broad brush anti-Jewish comments). HIAS is first and foremost driven by its Leftwing view of the world (a borderless world). Just as there are Catholics (Lutherans, Evangelicals etc) on the political Left and on the political Right, so too are there Jews on both ends of the political spectrum.
HIAS is NOT working here on behalf of Israel! (I hear all the time from readers who say that HIAS is working for Israel!)
Israel is in the same situation the US is in with thousands upon thousands of mostly economic migrants (not refugees) who got in to the country illegally and if permitted to stay would drastically change the country, for the worse. Anyone in their right mind knows that borders cannot be completely erased if a country wants to survive.
The difference is that since Israel is smaller it will die faster than we will if they do nothing about people like these:
Israel is said to be planning to begin deportations in the spring and the International Left (including HIAS) is haranguing the Netanyahu government in hopes of stopping it.
Here is The Jerusalem Post to explain what they are doing.
They want Israeli pilots to not fly the deportation planes!
(That is one of the mean tactics the mean Leftwing learned from Saul Alinsky to go after those who will hurt first—some poor pilot just doing his job.)
Amid growing reports that the government is planning to deport tens of thousands of migrants from Sudan and Eritrea to Rwanda in March, an online campaign has been launched to beseech Israeli pilots not to fly asylum-seekers to what many activists deem a death sentence.
The campaign, initiated this week by the NGO Zizim Community Action, calls on the public to send letters to the Israel Aviation Association and the Israel Pilots Association, which includes all the pilots in the country, to refuse to fly migrants to any dangerous African country.
According to the NGO’s CEO, Raluca Gena, the online campaign is the first step toward a series of activities against what they, and many other human rights organizations and Jewish communities around the world, are calling an immoral deportation.
[….]
Presently, approximately 35,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers live in Israel. Among their 13,764 asylum applications submitted since 2013, only 11 have been approved by the Interior Ministry as of July 2017 – 10 Eritreans and one Sudanese.
Outside of Israel, prominent leaders of the North American Jewish community sent a public letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday urging Israel not to imprison or deport tens of thousands of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers.
Rather, the leaders – who sent an initial letter regarding the controversial issue to Netanyahu in November – urged him to allow North American Jews to help resolve the matter.***
Signatories include Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees; Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street; and Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women. [This is a who’s who of American Leftwing Jewish groups.—ed]
“The government of Israel recently announced its plans to imprison or potentially deport tens of thousands of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers unless they leave voluntarily before April,” the letter states.
“The ultimatum follows a mounting campaign of escalation on the part of the Israeli government to pressure the roughly 38,000 African asylum-seekers remaining in Israel to self-deport. While Israeli authorities contend that the population in question – most of whom entered Israel between 2007 and 2012 – are economic migrants, HIAS and other rights groups argue that they are asylum-seekers and refugees deserving of protection.”
Israel does (or did) have a program where economic migrants who self-deported received a financial payments, but I don’t know if it is still in use.
More here.
***You should know that HIAS has been working with the US State Department to bring some of those so-called ‘refugees’ to the US directly from Israel. The numbers are small so far (9 this fiscal year), but if you think this story isn’t about you, it is!
They aren’t planning to bring more of them to the US and other western countries, are they?
See my complete HIAS archive by clicking here. And for more on Israel and refugees, I have a whole category on the topic here with 164 previous posts.