Asylum seekers in Israel
The Australian Reform Zionist Association has written a letter of complaint to Shmuel Ben-Shmuel, Israel’s ambassador to Australia protesting the treatment os asylum seekers in Israel.
President Barbara Ford and Administrator Steve Denenberg wrote the following:
Dear Ambassador,
We write to you on the eve of Pesach, the festival where we celebrate our escape from persecution to liberation, horrified that the Jewish State can treat refugees and asylum seekers so badly. During a recent visit to Israel to participate in meetings of the World Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency we were invited to visit the Holot Detention camp in the Negev to meet the young men who had agreed to go there in order that the processing of their applications for asylum would commence following years of living in limbo in Israel.
We were distressed and greatly saddened to hear the stories of these young men who were seeking temporary refuge and asylum in the one country in the region that they believed would understand their plight. However, they have been treated terribly by the Government of Israel, receiving little practical help; being refused work permits; and then, after years of their applications being ignored, they were duped into travelling to this terrible camp where they have remained without hope or support, even after the flow of such people was halted.
Today we learned that the treatment they are receiving has become even worse and that they are effectively being deported to countries where they have no connections, and where they face persecution and worse. We met and spoke with these people and know that they have no desire to make Israel their permanent home. They all long to return to their homelands, as soon as the situation there will allow them to do so without fear of torture, imprisonment or death.
As ardent supporters and defenders of Israel we always speak of Israel’s many achievements and gifts to the world. However, we hang our heads in shame that, as a Jewish State, Israel cannot display compassion to strangers seeking refuge “reach out to the stranger for you were strangers in Egypt.”
On behalf of ARZA, and all Jews who support Israel as a democratic and caring nation, we ask you to convey our feelings of shame and disappointment to the Prime Minister and Government, and our request that they change direction and provide help and succor to these people seeking refuge.
On a personal note, we offer greetings to you and the wonderful staff of the Embassy and hopes that you will have a Pesach filled with peace and happiness,
A blatant, if liberal (!) abuse of so called Jewish identity by these blind and mushy brains activists on behalf of devil knows who !!!
Your intentional misrepresentation of realities on the ground, claiming that Israel would have abandoned or not providing care to people who are supposed to be checked for and PASS vital security checks proves, once again that you have abandoned any rationale in the way you present Israel to the whole world.
Steve Danenberg get your priorities right; it is obvious that you and your mob have serious problems understanding Israel’s precarious situation mainly in respect of some of the PEOPLE it houses, enemies or potent enemies of the State you pretend to care for.
As the most prosperous and, indeed, democratic country in the region and well beyond, take the WHOLE bloody Africa, if Israel is perceived as a soft target for refugee invasion, we are properly STUFFED, to say the least.
Too much for YOU to take in, I suppose…..
Yes we were strangers in Egypt…. my history books must be missing or skipped some things!!! History also tells us what happens when these people are taken in and I think it wise to be cautious. So many are not refugees but have the intent to stay and put a claim that they have a connection to the country. Israel is doing it’s best in a very difficult situation, how about letting us take care of ourselves? No one else will. Let the UN take these people, preferably not build another 600 illegal buildings and house them there. ARZA shame on you! We are a caring nation, but do we really have to annihilate ourselves to prove this.?? No matter what Israel does, we are always in the wrong according to the world at large, we don’t need this from within our own people.