The Reform movement and Jewish refugee agency HIAS called on the Israeli government to re-examine its asylum policy for African migrants. In a news release issued Friday, North America’s Union for Reform Judaism, its Israeli counterpart and HIAS, took issue with Israel’s “anti-infiltration law,” which allows the government to detain asylum-seekers for up to 20…
More than 40 rabbis from all streams of Judaism will hold a prayer vigil and pre-Shavuot study session at the Holot detention center for African immigrants. The program, organized by leaders in Rabbis for Human Rights, and supported by the New Israel Fund, was scheduled for Wednesday outside the open-detention facility in the Negev Desert….
In the wake of the drowning death of hundreds of migrants from Libya trying to reach Italy, an Israeli government minister justified his country’s building of a fence to keep out migrants. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz in a post Monday on his Facebook page, called the deaths a “tragedy that shocks all humanity,” then added,…
Courtesy of Tekle Tekle journeyed half a year by foot across the Sinai from Eritrea to Israel. He traveled mainly at night, for fear of getting caught during the day. “It was a matter of life and death,” he told me when I asked him to recount his escape. Without a civilian judiciary or democratic…
Israel and Rwanda are discussing a deal in which the East African nation would take in illegal migrants from the Jewish state in exchange for favorable contracts. Under the proposed agreement, which has come under scrutiny by human rights organizations, Israel would send hundreds of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals, many of them asylum-seekers, to Rwanda…
Perhaps the most relevant Seder in Israel took place in the most isolated of places. The Holot Residency Center is located near the border with Egypt, an hour’s ride southwest from the city of Beersheba into the desert. This detention facility is home to people like Mutasim Ali, who fled the war-torn Darfur region in…
Asylum-seekers Detained in Israel’s Desert from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. Israel will begin deporting African migrants to third countries without their consent. The migrants, from Eritrea and Sudan, will be sent to a southern Israeli prison if they refuse, Haaretz reported, citing the Interior Ministry. Israel’s attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, approved the process, under…
The Muslim hero who hid shoppers from an Islamist gunman during an attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris will be given French citizenship, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday. After the gunman had already killed people during a hostage taking in the store on Friday, 24-year old shop attendant Lassana Bathily hid several people…
