A compound of one-storey buildings deep in the southern Israeli desert is now home to some 400 African migrants who face the prospect of being held in custody indefinitely. The detainees in what the authorities call an “open” detention centre are allowed to leave for a few hours each day, but given its remote location…
Anne Heyman, a pioneering Jewish philanthropist who founded a youth village for victims of the Rwanda genocide, has died in a Florida horse-riding accident. She was 52. Heyman died after falling from a horse at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in the town of Wellington Friday morning. She was taken to a local hospital…
I was born and raised in Eritrea, where I was fortunate to be well educated. I studied business administration in college, and after graduation I taught high school math. At that time, I began helping opponents of the Eritrean regime flee the country. My life was at risk, and it became too dangerous for me…
They are normally behind the scenes, but now they are the ones making a scene. Tel Aviv is in the throes of a pot washers’ rebellion. In this city, you can eat in a fancy restaurant without ever encountering the illegal African immigrants who are most likely cutting your vegetables and cleaning the china. You…
More than 10,000 African migrants demonstrated outside Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, extending protests into a fourth consecutive day in a quest for recognition as refugees and freedom to work legally without fear of incarceration. Their presence in a Jewish state that took in survivors of the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two has stoked an…
(JTA) — They marched down Allenby Street today, past the market and the traffic jam of buses and cabs, their chants echoing around buildings and into courtyards. “What we want?” one man yelled. “Freedom!” hundreds chanted. “No more prison!” Most of them Eritrean, most of them men, the crowd swelled as it reached the beach…
Several thousand African migrants protested outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv on Monday, demanding freedom for compatriots jailed by Israel in a desert facility under a new open-ended detention law. “No more prison,” chanted the crowd that packed a Mediterranean beachfront promenade across from the U.S. embassy. Protesters also marched to the French, Italian, British,…
Hundreds of African migrants gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem protesting Israel’s policy of detaining asylum seekers were put on buses back to a detention facility. The protesters, holding signs reading “I didn’t choose to be a refugee,” “we are in danger, not dangerous” and “you were strangers in the land of Egypt,”…
