Category: Israel and refugees

Eric Hoffer on the Jews and refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just came across this 1968 quote by Eric Hoffer, a formerly leading social thinker known as the Longshoreman Philosopher:

Eric Hoffer

The Jews are a peculiar people.  Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman.

Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel , the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one.

Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. We Since Hoffer wrote this millions more people have been driven out of their homelands.  And Israel is still the world’s favorite villain.  

I don’t know why Eric Hoffer has fallen off the public radar.  When I was in college 50 years ago everybody read him and his insights are still pertinent today.  He had little formal education but had a thirst for knowledge.  He was a wide reader and a profound thinker — a rare kind of self-made man in his time, a type even rarer today.  Wikipedia says of him:

He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work.

I think I’ll improve myself by rereading a couple of his books.  As I recall, he’s an enjoyable read.  He wrote so that ordinary people would understand him — that is, clearly.  In fact, many of his statements turn up as short quotes here and there.  Here’s a website full of them for your entertainment and enlightenment.

African migrant protests continue in Israel

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Netanyahu: They can either go to the new facility or go back to their home countries.

We reported on one of the protests here on Saturday.

Now The Times of Israel tells us that protests have continued.  There were many arrests.  The protestors don’t like the new law in Israel that requires that the migrants be detained in a facility each night until their asylum claims are processed, but are free to go wander around and protest during the day.  Emphasis below is mine.

Hundreds of African migrants, mostly Sudanese and Eritreans, and human rights activists marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday night shouting “freedom” and “no more prison,” in protest of the implementation of the Israeli government’s policy to detain illegal migrants.

The protesters demanded they not be sent to detention facilities in the Negev and that they be granted full refugee status.

According to some reports, the number of demonstrators reached over 1,500.

[….]

The demonstration came days after migrants staged marches, on two separate occasions, in protest of their detention at the newly established Holot facility in the south.

On Thursday, close to 130 migrants protested the arrests of their fellows, who were apprehended by police during a gathering in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday.

[….]

Since last Thursday, 480 African migrants, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, were transferred to Holot, which is located in the Negev desert and can hold as many as 3,000.

On Sunday, 250 migrants fled Holot for a sit-in in Jerusalem to demonstrate against rules keeping them in the detention center. Hundreds of migrants were arrested during the sit-in.

I’ll wager that all this protesting is not winning over the average Israeli.

The fact that the migrants are not happy with the new facility with small dining areas and recreation areas, a bed, food, freedom in the daytime, etc. says to me that they aren’t that destitute and are being egged-on by Leftists—members of the ‘human rights industrial complex’—which are eager to break down borders the world over.  Breaking down Israel’s borders would be a real feather in their caps.

The facility has an open-door policy in which residents are permitted to leave the site during the day but are required to return three times for a roll call. The Holot gates are locked between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. every night, during which time all residents must be behind its fences. Around a dozen migrants were to be housed in every dorm room, and each wing, with a capacity of 140 residents, has its own dining room and recreation areas.

Here is Prime Minister Netanyahu, as always, cutting to core of the issue:

“The infiltrators who were transferred to a special facility can stay there, or return to their home countries,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday.

See our special category, Israel and Refugees, for more.

UNRWA: Maybe the worst organization in the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In case you doubt that Israel is singled out by the United Nations, read this paragraph from Jordan Schachtel at American Thinker:

Since World War II, over 50 million people worldwide have been displaced as a result of armed conflict, yet the only group of refugees anointed by the United Nations for specific attention is the one composed of Palestinians.  On their behalf, the U.N. created an exclusive agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Most of the world believes the Palestinians are uniquely oppressed above all peoples.  In actual fact, it is their eternal refugee status and their own behavior that have doomed them to such sorry lives.  The article points out:

The Jewish population forced out of Arab countries was nearly double that of the number of Arabs who left after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War of Independence.

Most of these Jews went to Israel and were never classified as refugees by the UN.  They were simply absorbed into the population.  At the same time, Arab countries refused to take in the Palestinians who were called refugees.  They didn’t want them.  And strategic thinkers like the KGB realized that a continuing population of pathetic refugees would be a terrific weapon against Israel.  And they were right.

So the UN created UNRWA.  Here’s what Schachtel says about that:

UNRWA is currently the largest agency-subdivision of the United Nations, employing a staff of 30,000, most of whom are Palestinians.  From its creation in 1949 to the present day, the number of refugees recognized by the UNRWA has grown from roughly 750,000 to 5,000,000.

The agency now considers “refugees” to include not only the first generation of Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, but also their progeny, the children and grandchildren of the initially displaced population.  Given the U.N.’s liberality in designating refugees, it would not defy expectations if the next generation of Palestinians were similarly designated as such, or even if the policy continued in perpetuity.

Despite its purported mission, UNRWA has drawn attention for its ties to radical Islam, rather than its humanitarian relief efforts.  Credible information has surfaced linking UNRWA-funded sites to keeping suspected terrorists on payroll and unreported surrendering of ambulances and supplies to Hamas.

In addition to the refugee agency, the UN has created a number of committees and other entities to promote the Palestinian cause.  And the flow of money to UNRWA has funded all kinds of things of no benefit to the Palestinians, like Yasser Arafat’ Swiss bank account and the terrorist group Hamas.  All of this effort has certainly borne fruit.  Israel is hated more than ever before and more people are openly admitting that it’s not just Israel, it’s “the Jews” that they would like to get rid of.

Israel: Africans march, demand “rights,” turn violent, many imprisoned

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
On the road to Beersheva before the violence broke out.

Israel built a new detention center for mostly African migrants who are claiming they are legitimate asylum seekers (as opposed to economic migrants looking for work).  The facility (we told you about it here) is open for the inhabitants to leave during the day, but they must return at night.  It doesn’t look like it’s working out for hundreds who got into violent clashes with police and now are imprisoned 24-7.

From LiveLeak:

More than 100 African migrants/refugees left the newly instated open detention center in S.Israel and begun making their way to Beersheva in protest of the jailing of fellow refugees as well as governmental reluctance to respond to their asylum request.

The 130-strong march left the Holot detention facility for Beersheba Thursday, accompanied by police cars. The march eventually deteriorated and violent clashes with the police, as well as more then a dozen arrests, were reported.

According to the refugees, the protest was intended to demand the release of two of their compatriots who were arrested in a Jerusalem protest some two days ago. They further called from their asylum requests be reviewed individually.

Abdul, a Sudanese refugee, said “we are marching for our friends, for our freedom and for our rights. We request that the Israeli government examine our request individually, and treat us as refugees, not criminals.”

The two men whose arrest sparked Thursday’s demonstration are currently being held in the Saharonim Prison, a jail built to house asylum seekers held under directives which the High Court deemed unconstitutional.

The demonstration’s starting point – the Holot detention facility – was established as a response to the ruling and thus was built as an ‘open jail,’ from which asylum seekers can come and go during day time.

The demonstrators involved in clashes have now been sent to the real prison.

The cost of the Holot facility was roughly a million shekel and in light of the court’s ruling and recent events, it seems the State is adamant in its intent to deport African refugees who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Photo is from this account of events at Jews for Justice.

For new readers, this is our 136th post in our category entitled ‘Israel and refugees.’

Israel’s parliament passes new law to detain migrants; Amnesty fumes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Some countries, like Israel, want to save themselves and others, like Sweden, have a death wish.   People with a brain understand that no country can long survive an invasion of third world migrants, and Israeli leaders understand that better than most.

Israel’s ‘great wall’ with Egypt! EPA Photo

So, this news is no surprise to us.  Israelis believe that most of the migrants who have streamed into the country illegally in recent years are economic migrants and detention until they are all sorted out only makes sense.

Of course all over the world the amnesty lobbyists are demanding that ‘asylum seekers’ be free to move around and work in the country they have entered without permission.

From the Los Angeles Times:

JERUSALEM — In a controversial move decried by human rights organizations, Israel’s parliament passed a bill allowing migrants to be jailed without trial for a year.

Under the law finalized early Tuesday after a heated late-night debate, Israeli authorities will be able to jail new migrants for a year if they slip over the border illegally, and detain others already in Israel in a new holding facility indefinitely.

The law was intended to apply almost exclusively to African migrants who cross the border in uncontrolled stretches of open desert. In the past, most have come in from Egypt.

It replaces a previous law, ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, that allowed migrants to be jailed for three years. The court ruled in September that the law violated human rights. The new law attempted to address the court’s concerns by lowering the detention time.

The illegal aliens will be allowed out in the daytime, but must return at night (so they aren’t in a prison!):

The new “open” facility will hold about 3,000 detainees and provide services to discourage them from working. Technically, they will be free to come and go during daytime but must return to the remotely located center by night.

The government refers to the migrants as “infiltrators” because they enter the country without passing through controlled border crossings. Many of the migrants are asylum seekers, but very few are granted asylum out of thousands of requests reviewed annually by a Refugee Status Determination committee.

A new border fence is now slowing the flow in from Egypt, but get this:

 …an estimated 50,000 asylum seekers and undocumented migrants from African countries live in Israel.

Come to think of it, there is something kind of freeing when one is always labeled the ‘bad guy’ as Israel is.  In fact, poor Swedes are trapped in a ‘good people’ image they likely won’t break out of before it’s too late to save their unique race/culture.

For more, check out our Israel and refugees category with its previous 134 posts, here.

Photo is from this January 2013 story about the wall.