African migrants to Israel is not a racial issue

In a forum article on Feb. 2, Israel is criticized for its plans to deport African migrants to Israel. Although the article makes several legitimate points, it is largely filled with errors of omission and commission clearly aimed to demonize the Jewish state.

First of all, there is no bounty, as suggested by the oped , on these migrants. In fact, the Israeli immigration service is overwhelmed by the number of refugees that it is dealing with and is hiring additional civil servants to deal with the backlog.

Secondly, this is not a racial issue. Israel airlifted over 100,000 Ethiopians and despite significant cultural differences is successfully integrating them into Israeli society. Many refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan have been given asylum. The Hebrew Israelites, an African-American group largely from the Chicago area, live in the Dimona area of Israel after having been deported from Liberia. Many Africans work legally in Israel, as do Asians. At the same time, about 25,000 illegal Ukrainian and Georgian migrants have applied for asylum and are subject to the same scrutiny as African migrants, belying the racist charge.

The author of the forum cites the fact that there are only 37,000 asylum seekers from Africa that Israel has to deal with, failing to point out that that would be equivalent to 1.5 million refugees for a country the size of the United States, a country with far greater resources than the tiny beleaguered Jewish state.

Having said all this, the fact remains that many Israelis, as well as diaspora Jews, oppose the Netanyahu governmentplans. We believe that it is unJewish. On 36 separate times in the Torah, God instructs the Israelites to welcome the stranger, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:34).” Furthermore, we remember that only a few decades ago, Jews fleeing the Holocaust were turned away from country after country, including the United States.

Accordingly, there is a ground swell of opposition coming from organizations such as ADL, Jewish Council for Public affairs,Rabbis for Human Rights,Hebrew Immigrant Assistance Society and other organizations. Petitions are being circulated and receiving thousands of signatures. Several weeks ago my wife and I joined a JCPA sponsored mission to Israel in which we visited South Tel Aviv, where many of the refugees live. We met with Eritreans, visited NGOs working on their behalf as well as a school where we saw African and Asian children singing lustily in Hebrew, the only language that many of them know.

Ironically, the aforementioned forum article is likely to be counterproductive, not so much because of its errors but more because the author has seemingly devoted his adult life to the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, so that people such as myself are reluctant to associate themselves with his points even when they have some legitimacy.