by Balila Haki, Btselem activist
Tel Aviv, December 29 – I do not know how to make my organization’s position on this matter any clearer. Our assertion, born of dedication to moral sensitivity and global awareness, is and remains that people who have traversed much of East Africa to reach Israel, a country so profoundly unjust that it maintains racial Apartheid, persecutes non-Jews, and disenfranchises people o color, must not be sent out of the country, but, according to the dictates of human rights, stay there. Because Israel is oppressively racist, and keeping the migrants in an oppressively racist country is what upholding human rights demands.
So racist is Apartheid Israel that tens of thousands of Africans each year try to make it here, traveling through Egypt and other countries on the way, but deciding not to remain in those countries because they are oppressive and dangerous, and they mistreat people from other countries. Once the unfortunate migrants make it past the human traffickers and the smugglers, suffering untold abuse and extortion along the way, they wind up in Israel, which as everyone knows perpetrates the worst crimes of all, and we cannot tolerate Israel flying the migrants out to some other, less racist, country. Because it’s all about doing the right thing, for us human rights organizations.
Any attempt by Israel to deport those who entered and remain there “illegally” only cements the country’s status as a bigoted hellhole that thousands of migrants risked their lives to reach. Imagine the desperation of people who decline the relative enlightenment of Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, and elsewhere to seek a life in Apartheid Israel. They could stop anywhere along the way to make a life in a place far less problematic than Israel, but they do not, presumably because racist Israel forces them to keep going, with its promise of a better, safer locale for earning a living, which is all a chimera because Israel is a racist country – did I mention that yet? – that wants to do nothing but persecute and expel minorities, and obviously the humane thing to do is keep those unfortunate migrants in Israel.
We and our other NGO allies will continue to fight to keep migrants in Israel and not allow them to be flown to, for example, Europe, where treatment of migrants is far more humane than anything Israel has to offer. It’s the only way to uphold the rights of the migrants.
From PreOccupied Territory, here.