Israel makes life hard for its Africans
Israeli security officials recently arrested around 240 African migrants as part of a new clampdown on illegal immigrants in the country. The move is due largely to increasing pressure on the government from extreme right-wing groups who blame African immigrant communities for rising crime rates, even though official government figures state the contrary.
It’s no secret that the presence of a large, non-Jewish population in a Jewish state causes great unease. Just this year, the Israeli parliament passed a law that allows for the detention of anyone who sneaks into the country along the border with Egypt.
In November 2010, Israeli Minister for Finance Yuval Steinitz blamed foreign workers for a rise in unemployment and a “widening of social gaps”. The mayor of Eilat, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, recently called them a “burden on the welfare authorities”, adding that they “consume alcohol and have introduced cases of severe violence”.
Rising tensions over the growing number of illegal immigrants in Israel exploded into violence in May when a protest in south Tel Aviv turned nasty, with demonstrators smashing African-run shops and property, chanting “Blacks out!” Sounds like racism to me.
There is an estimated 60,000 strong population of Africans in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, but also from Nigeria, Ivory Coast and the Philippines. Of this number, some 1,500 are from South Sudan.
It should be noted that most of the illegal immigrants are South Sudanese. Israel has no diplomatic relations with Sudan, which has been accused by Israel of supporting Islamic militants. South Sudanese immigrants had been granted a ‘temporary’ stay in the country, but on 7 June a court approved the deportation of South Sudanese immigrants who had entered the country illegally.
It should also be remembered that the presence of an immigrant workforce in the in Israel is due largely to the invitation by the Israeli government in the 1980s. The Palestinian uprising against the state had caused a shortage of workers that was resulting into an economic crisis; foreign workers filled the gap.
According to Israel Drori, a professor of economics at the Tel Aviv University, the number of foreign workers was supposed to rise and fall according to supply and demand, but the government proved unable or unwilling to effectively regulate the process.
Meanwhile, as part of the Israeli government’s measures to combat illegal immigration, a bill was proposed in the Knesset that would have punished employers of illegal African migrants by up to five years in jail with fines of more than $120,000. The bill failed, however, after it was opposed by some members of the parliament.
While it's difficult to fault a state trying to protect its borders, isn’t this the same state that once had its people scattered all over the world? Isn’t this the same people that once had to depend on the kindness of other countries for them to survive? If masses from an unstable home seek refuge with such a people, shouldn’t they be accommodated?
It seems they would rather the problem didn’t exist.
Olajide Jatto is a software engineer and writer based in Dublin.
