Comments on: Sudanese refugees, activists hope for change in policies

By: Has Israel Become the Arizona of the Middle East? « Hue In The World

Has Israel Become the Arizona of the Middle East? « Hue In The World — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:26:27 +0000

[...] international celebration of World Refugee Day fast approaching on June 20, 2012, thousands of African refugees in Israel hope for change and await UNHCR and the world’s intervention on their [...]

By: Kanadi

Kanadi — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:07:30 +0000

Sorry, Max, but that’s not exactly right. Israel is indeed violating international law by detaining these people without cause for extended periods, not processing their asylum applications, and not providing access to services. It is also notable that this was international law Israel was instrumental in drafting and bringing into existence in 1951. There is everything wrong with the latest court decision, the decision to essentially punish brutally those people already in the country to make it so bad for them that no one else will want to come. This from a country founded by refugees escaping conflict. Abominable!

According to Rueven Ziegler, a lawyer at the Israel Democracy Institute:

“Sixty years after the drafting of the refugee convention, Israel, one of its initiators and a state party since 1954 has not incorporated it into its domestic legislation. More fundamentally, it acts in contravention of some of its basic principles, which require conducting individual refugee status determinations without regard to the nationality of the asylum seekers; refraining from punishing border crossers if their intention was to submit an asylum application; restricting detention to the minimal necessary period and persons, based on an individual risk assessment; and guaranteeing access to social services, a fortiori, whilst the asylum application is assessed.

Sudanese and Eritrean nationals are currently ineligible to submit asylum applications. Concurrently, Israel recognises that it cannot deport most of them back to Egypt (from which they have crossed into Israel), since Egypt may return them to their respective countries of origin, where their lives or liberty may be in danger. As noted above, they are issued ‘permit 2(a)(5)’ which denies them access to social security and nonemergency medical services, and does not entitle them to work. Many ‘permit 2(a)(5)’ holders are held in detention for lengthy periods. The construction of the planned detention centre will facilitate the expansion of these detention policies. Similar permit and detention policies apply to individuals whose asylum applications are pending. Such policies are untenable both from a legal and from a humanitarian perspective. It is imperative that Israel follow its obligations under the refugee convention.”

Read the whole thing here: http://www.idi.org.il/sites/english/ResearchAndPrograms/ConsititionalLaw/Pages/AMatterofDefinition.aspx

By: max

max — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:24:20 +0000

Roee, your post correctly reflects the fact that sending these people back to their home implies much pain to the people.
You also correctly don’t claim that these people followed the law when entering Israel, or that Israel is violating international law when sending them back.
So the bottom line is that while Israel fails its duty because it didn’t process the requests for refugee status within a reasonable time, there’s nothing wrong with the latest decisions of the court and handling by the immigration authorities – in essence, the court’s decision about these people is that they shouldn’t stay in Israel.
Whether or not these decisions will impact the flow of African trying to get to Israel is unknown, and irrelevant to the topic.

By: Kanadi

Kanadi — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:13:19 +0000

http://accessdeniedblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/fortifying-the-boundaries-of-deservingness-israeli-government-steps-up-policies-of-exclusion-towards-irregular-migrants-nora-gottlieb/

To those who claim that the asylum seekers here are not true asylum seekers but, as the disgusting euphemism puts it, labour infiltrators: Israel has given them group protection according to recommendations by the UNHCR. This means that it is assumed that they have legitimate asylum claims until proven otherwise, based on the situations in the countries from which they come. In Canada, where I’m from, more than 95 percent of Eritrean asylum seekers, when their cases were assessed, were found to have legitimate refugee claims. If you think that most people here are not refugees but labour migrants, tell your government to prove it! If Israel developed a system by which asylum claims could be reviewed and decided upon, according to its commitment to the international refugee law it ratified but then never incorporated into its national law, then we’d actually know.

But Israel does not want this. It doesn’t want to develop any regulation that might designate someone a refugee who is not Jewish. THIS is the problem, that Israel refuses to deal with the problem because of its ethnic nationalist neurosis. Even those 200 were not actually granted “refugee” status, only temporary residency outside any refugee law. Israel doesn’t have ANY refugee law. Why? Because making official policy regarding “refugees” who aren’t Jewish opens up a whole new can of worms…

Israel also has close economic and political ties to Eritrea, from where 65 percent of asylum seekers come. Is it not somehow just that Israel take in people fleeing from a brutal totalitarian regime that Israel itself has helped prop up?

By: Rehmat

Rehmat — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:03:27 +0000

New Nazi Germany!! I wonder why Bibi called Angela Markel the Israel’s “best friend” among the EU countries??

Or maybe it’s German Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass who in his poem called Zionist regime the greatest threat to Israel – rather than Islamic Republic of Iran.

Or Flecia Langer, who in 2009 praised Iranian president Dr. ahmadinejad for standing-up to Israel and its western poodles at the UN anti-racism conference in Geneva: “What Ahmadinejad said in Geneva is the truth”.

Or Dr. Wilfried Murad Hofmann, German diplomat, author and former Director of Information NATO in Brussels converted to Islam in 1980s.

But for the Hasbara ignorants – Sudan doesn’t have Jews whose ancestors helped German Nazis but the Jewish terrorist militia IRGUN did.

http://rehmat1.com/2010/02/22/dr-finkelstein-banned-in-berlin/

By: caden

caden — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:53:59 +0000

Shaun is right, all the government needs to do is print up all the 972 columns that deal with this. And airdrop them in Africa. Nobody in his right mind would then go to the new Nazi Germany. Which going by the WW2 allusions I see from the writers here must be the case.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:34:05 +0000

“The condition in Sudan is harsh. Economically. Politically. Here it is different. And I myself came here because I need to change my life for the better.”

You should read 972 more often. Then you will see that Israel certainly does not offer better political or economic conditions…

By: Kolumn9

Kolumn9 — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:01:38 +0000

Ah yes, the typical ‘Israel can not morally afford to expel them’. This is a wonderful rhetorical device given that it has no objective definition. Regardless of the actual objective costs of any policy apparently Israel is can not morally afford any policy other than that advocated by the extreme left. Can I get a numeric objective figure for Israel’s moral purse and how much the expulsion of infiltrators is going to cost? What is the currency? Could Israel compensate for such a cost by say, building renewable power generation facilities to save the world from imminent ecological collapse? How about by sending aid to Africa? Does Israel’s moral purse ever get thicker and if so can Israel then actually afford policies that the extreme left doesn’t like? I suppose I need a course in moral economics since the discipline for now appears to be rather vague.