Israel Minister Pushes Anti-African Crackdown

Image by getty images

By JTA October 30, 2012

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai has asked the country’s prime minister and justice minister to order the detention of migrants from Sudan.

Yishai made the request in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 28, despite the fact that Israel’s state prosecutor said in a court filing last week that the government has not approved a plan to arrest Sudanese asylum seekers, rejecting a petition by Israeli human rights organizations to prevent its implementation.

Yishai had announced in August that all Sudanese asylum seekers would be arrested and detained if they did not leave Israel by Oct. 15. The Jerusalem District Court earlier this month issued an injunction against the plan until a hearing is held on the issue.

“Reality and the scope of the problem necessitate the ability to use detention facilities, which were not constructed and budgeted in vain. We did not construct ghost towns, but rather facilities for holding illegal migrants before they are expelled from Israel,” Yishai said in his letter, according to Haaretz.

“My hands are tied as a result of rulings by various jurists who are not attuned to the distress of the citizens of Israel,” he wrote.

Migrants cannot be returned to Sudan, which is classified as an enemy state. Sudanese are not permitted by their government to travel to Israel, according to Haaretz.

On Monday, Yishai told a conference at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies that putting the African migrants into Israeli detention facilities will make them want to leave the country.

“With God’s help, it will be possible to continue this national mission and return every last infiltrator and migrant worker to their own countries,” Yishai said.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO