No Excuse For Israel's Denial Of Asylum Seekers' Plight

Refugees’ fear of arrest, torture, and death should be sufficient justification for their inability to return their countries of origin. So why is the Israeli government refusing to grant African refugees asylum status? A personal story.

By Guy Josif and Anna Rose Siegel

For the past three weeks, tens of thousands of African refugees in Israel, along with Israeli activists, have participated in demonstrations, hunger and labor strikes, and continual political engagement in opposition to intensified efforts by Israeli officials to detain refugees without due process. In response to these actions, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that these people are not refugees, but rather “people who are breaking the law and whom we will deal with to the fullest extent of the law.”

This statement reflects the destructive denial by Israeli officials of the very real persecution experienced by Africans who have escaped to Israel. To deny refugees’ experiences and then construct policy based on this denial is to rub salt into refugees’ very real psychological and physical wounds. And, I can tell you, it is painful.

I understand the pain felt by refugees in Israel, because I was a refugee there myself. Although, I am now one of only a handful of refugees who have relocated from Israel to the U.S., I was one of the nearly 55,000 who live in limbo on a daily basis while applying for a status that grants temporary protection from deportation, but no other rights.

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which Israel signed and ratified, defines a refugee as a person who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted…is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to think that my story (and countless other stories of other refugees in Israel) does not fit this definition.

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http://972mag.com/no-excuse-for-israels-denial-of-asylum-seekers-plight/86093/