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Vol. 82/No. 6 February 12, 2018
Israel: Protests hit gov’t moves to deport Africans
ActiveStills/Oren Ziv
Opposition is growing in Israel to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
plans to force 38,000 Eritrean and Sudanese refugees to leave the
country. Pilots, flight crews, rabbis, doctors, professors and Holocaust
survivors have spoken out against the moves.
Claiming they are “illegal aliens” and criminals, Netanyahu pushed a law
through the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in December giving the
African refugees the choice of imprisonment or deportation, likely to
Rwanda or Uganda. Those who agree to go now would get $3,500.
More than 1,000 refugees were joined by Israeli supporters to protest in
front of the Rwandan Embassy in Herzliya Jan. 22, above.
“The protests let the Israeli population know more about the issue,”
Noureldin Musa, a Darfur refugee who works as a cook, told the Militant
by phone from Herzliya Jan. 26. “If I am sent to Rwanda they will send
me back to Sudan to die.”
Three El Al airline pilots who say they will refuse to fly planes that
are used to deport refugees have been widely covered in Israel. “I have
joined many of my best friends by declaring that I will not fly refugees
to their deaths,” wrote El Al pilot Ido Elad. Nearly 150 flight crew
members took out a front-page ad in Haaretz Jan. 24 to support them.
The El Al workers have contacted pilots at Turkish Airlines, Royal
Jordanian and Ethiopian Airlines asking them to do the same.
“Do the Jewish thing,” said 36 Holocaust survivors in a letter to
Netanyahu, “and allow asylum seekers to live.”
— SETH GALINSKY
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