HIAS Slams Benjamin Netanyahu for Anti-African Stance

By JTA October 10, 2014

Asylum-seekers Detained in Israel’s Desert from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo.

HIAS, a U.S. Jewish organization dealing with refugees, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for seeking the continued detention of asylum seekers.

Netanyahu on Tuesday asked ministers to draft new legislation that would allow the government to work around a Supreme Court ruling in September that struck down much of an earlier law legislating indefinite detention for Africans seeking asylum in Israel. He also said he would keep open the Holot migrant detention facility in the Negev.

In the HIAS statement issued Wednesday, HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield expressed disappointment that Netanyahu was circumventing the Israeli Supreme Court soon after his address to the United Nations General Assembly describing Israel as the only country in the Middle East that protects human rights.

“‎While Netanyahu’s fence has succeeded in reducing the inflow of migrants into Israel to a trickle, he is squandering yet another opportunity, handed to him by the Supreme Court, to celebrate freedom and treat asylum seekers with the hospitality and dignity worthy of a Jewish and democratic state,” Hetfield said. ‎ Netanyahu has called the refugees from Sudan and Eritrea illegal work immigrants and not asylum seekers.

According to HIAS, the refugee recognition rates around the world for Eritreans and Sudanese is between 70 and 80 percent while in Israel, it is less than one percent.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO