Last week, Isabel Kershner, The New York Times’ estimable Israel correspondent, wrote an article about the Netanyahu government’s decision to either expel Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to third countries or indefinitely lock them up. The article ran under the headline, “Israel Moves to Expel Africans. Critics Say That’s Not Jewish.” “Like much of the…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, likened African migrants in Israel to the “Dreamers” at the heart of a contentious U.S. immigration debate and suggested that deporting them would make Israel appear racist. “African refugees, who seem like the Dreamers in the U.S. — young people who by dint of…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Yikealo Beyene’s story is — up to a point — perfect feel-good fodder for a Saturday morning talk at synagogue. As a refugee from Eritrea, he read Anne Frank’s diary in his native tongue and translated it, teaching the tale to kids in an Ethiopian refugee camp. He sought out Israel for…
A group of American Jewish leaders sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a letter Monday urging him to rethink plans to deport tens of thousands of African refugees — and to do the “Jewish thing” and recognize them as refugees “deserving protection.” “We are asking Israel to do the right thing, the Jewish thing, to be…
I recently received an invitation from the Consulate General of Israel in Chicago to visit Israel. I should have felt proud. I should have felt honored. I should have felt something. But I didn’t. Imagine, a trip to the Holy Land, the land promised by God to Abraham: I’d wanted to go for so long,…
Over the past few weeks, the government of Israel has initiated a number of measures designed to bring an end to their African asylum seeker problem. The plight of tens of thousands of Africans, mostly Sudanese and Eritrean, who over the past decade have sought asylum in Israel after escaping dictatorship, war and genocide, is…
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