Ha'aretz Compares Israel’s Policy of Expelling Black African Asylum Seekers to Eichmann's Expulsion of the Jews of Vienna in 1938-9

B.Michael in his normally pungent and satirical style, compares the policy of Adolf Eichmann towards the Jews of Vienna to Israel's policy of forcing out Black African asylum seekers.  Eichmann's policy of impoverishing, terrorising and stripping Jews of their rights was considered a massive success at the time in forcing the Jews out of Austria.  Israel is only just learning how to accomplish the same feat.  Israel’s refugee population of 60,000 has already been reduced by 10,000-15,000 through a combination of tactics such as imprisonment in the desert camp at Holot, depriving them of the right to work, pogroms and racist attacks.

Israel has learnt well, as B.Michael says, from the Jews traditional enemies.  Just as the anti-Semites used every trick in the book to force out Jews so Netanyahu does the same to Black non-Jews.  But we shouldn't just blame Netanyahu. The Israeli Labour Party and its new, even more right-wing leader Avi Gabbay, is fully behind Netanyahu’s stance.  The refugees from Eritrea are bogus, no matter that every international body and human rights agency says that Eritrea is one of the worst police states in the world.

What is the crime that these refugees have committed that Israel is seeking to force them out and deport them to 3^rd world countries such as Rwanda, a breach of international law in itself?  Well there are two crimes that these refugees have committed.  Not only are they not Jewish in a Jewish state but they are also Black.  Faced with this double criminality, Israel really has no choice to act if it is to preserve itself as a Jewish state. This is why a Jewish State cannot be other than a racist state.  It isn't like England, a Christian state only in so far as the head of state is head of the Church of England.  It isn't even like the Islamic state of Iran where although the law is derived from the Sharia, the 20,000 or so Jews in Iran don't suffer any civic penalties as a result.

Is Israel being racist by forcing out these refugees?  According to its own criteria it’s just seeking to preserve its racial or ethnic purity.  Indeed just accusing the Israeli state of racism is itself anti-Semitic because the IHRA definition also states that 'claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour' is anti-Semitic.

David Sheen's video is particularly shocking in that it shows how members of the Israeli government, including its present 'Culture' Minister Miri Regev deliberately fanned the fires of racism and enabled a pogrom to take place against the Africans of Tel Aviv.

It used to be the case that Jews experienced pogroms in Eastern Europe.  It is Israel's unique achievement to turn Jews into pogromists.

The last of the three articles from Ha’aretz here is about a Kenyan Jew Kimani who was deported the moment he set foot on Israeli soil.  Normally people who have converted to Judaism, are admitted under the racist Law of Return.  That includes conversions carried out by the Conservative, Liberal or Reform strands of Judaism.  Ultra Orthodox rabbis have been trying to change this to only Orthodox conversions for years but they haven’t succeeded because this would cut off the vast majority of American Jewry at a stroke.  However Kenya’s small Black African Jews have far less political clout and unlike American Jews they are not White.

Of course there are some people who will say that none of this is racist but then there are some people who deny the Holocaust and even people who say the Earth is flat.

Tony Greenstein

Israel's push to expel 45,000 African asylum seekers and migrants borrows from Eichmann's 1938 playbook for expelling Austria's Jews

B. Michael Jan 11, 2018 11:03 AM

Sometimes even history’s sense of humor exceeds the boundaries of good taste. This time it’s no joke; it’s not even irony or sarcasm. It’s just a bitter, sardonic spit in the face.

On March 13, 1938, Austria was annexed to the Nazi Reich amid cheers and excitement. Slightly more than five months later, on August 26, 1938 the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration (the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) was opened, headed by a talented executive named Adolf Eichmann.

Its objective was to organize and expedite the expulsion of Jews from Austria. It bears remembering that in 1938, before the war, the Final Solution and the death camps, the Nazis “merely” wanted to purify the Reich of the stinking Jews swarming in it.

Eichmann, a disciplined and diligent manager, developed an efficient system for accelerating emigration: forbidding Jews to work, rescinding their rights, discriminatory and humiliating laws, confiscation of property, taxes, boycotts, exclusion, monetary incentives, turning a blind eye to acts by the racist rabble and of course, threats of imprisonment for those who refused to leave.

And it worked.

Within around three months Eichmann’s immigration authority expelled 45,000 Jews. Many others abandoned everything and fled for their lives, without availing themselves of Adolf’s services.

Most of those who remained were murdered.

The state founded by those fugitives now also has an immigration authority. It, too, is essentially an expulsion authority. It deals with exporting members of inferior races and religions. Recently it has been assigned the weighty task of expelling 45,000 burdensome blacks. They are burdensome because they aren’t white, and also a bit because they aren’t Jews.

They are non-Jews and blacks, which is really too much.

For years the Israeli expulsion network has been using against them the entire arsenal of abuses that proved itself in Eichmann’s office – forbidding them to work, denying them rights, passing discriminatory and humiliating laws, taxes, boycotts, exclusion, monetary incentives, turning a blind eye to the acts of the racist rabble and of course, threats of imprisonment for those who refuse to leave.

But it’s not working so well. Blacks, it turns out, are like crabgrass. They aren’t easy to uproot. There was no choice but to ceremoniously announce an “operation.”

The Population, Immigration and Border Authority is also seeking to hire workers; expulsion workers. Help wanted ads were published in newspapers, and one of the prerequisites is “experience in this field of endeavor.” There are lots of Jews with related experience, but most of them experienced it as expellees, not as expellers, and that’s not what’s required.

Nor is there any point in approaching veterans of the Nakba – when more than 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the War of Independence. They’ll deny it ever happened. It seems, therefore, that the best list of those with “experience” can be found in Yad Vashem. The immigration authority ought to look there.

This operation to deport refugees is a co—production of Interior Minister Arye Dery and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. They’ve allotted two years to the mission of expelling 45,000 shvartzes. How shameful! Eichman and his team at the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration expelled 45,000 Jews in a few months. Dery, Erdan and their team at the Central Bureau for the Emigration of Shvartzes need two years to expel an equal number of people. Oy vey, look how we fall short. We obviously still have a lot to learn from them. But we can at least say that we’re moving in the right direction.

Only Ms. History looks at us from above, with a malicious smile on her face as she sees the persecuted become the persecutor, the refugee become the expeller, the uprooted become the uprooter, the oppressed become the oppressor, the beaten become the beater, the trampled become the trampler. “It’s true,” she whispers to herself, “I really am repeating myself. But I find this role reversal exceedingly funny.”

I don’t find it funny at all. My parents were expelled from Vienna. My country is desecrating their memory.

B. Michael

Haaretz Contributor

Haaretz and Ilan Lior Jan 09, 2018 6:25 

Multiple African asylum seekers who were forcefully deported from Israel suffered abuse, detention and torture after they were made to take hazardous journeys when they were sent away from the Jewish state, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a rare statement released Tuesday.

The UN refugee agency's statement, which quoted a speech by agency spokesperson William Spindler, noted that the agency conducted research into the subject and highlighted 80 individual cases of people who risked their lives after they were relocated by Israel and then had to make hazardous journeys to Europe through Libya.

According to the world body, its staff conducted interviews with the asylum seekers in question to better understand their plight. "Feeling they had no other choice, they travelled many hundreds of kilometers through conflict zones in South Sudan, Sudan and Libya after being relocated by Israel," the statement recounted the difficult experiences of the asylum seekers as they were told to UN staff who interviewed them in Italy.

The interviews took place between November 2015 and December 2017 in reception centers and informal encampments around Rome. All the interviewees are adult men, and some are reported to have family members still living in Israel. They all came into the Jewish state via the Sinai area, and the UN statement said that "in every case they reported torture, mistreatment and extortion before reaching Israel." 

The statement went on to say that the men suffered "abuse, torture and extortion before risking their lives once again by crossing the Mediterranean to Italy"after Israel had sent them away.

The refugees also reportedly told UN staff that they were transferred from Israel to countries in Africa with very little money to support them later on their way, and that when they arrived they faced minimal accommodation and limited aid. "They reported feeling unsafe many experienced extortion and detention," the statement stressed.  

The statement also lamented the fact that while Israel has become a temporary shelter for tens of thousands of asylum seekers, "since Israel took over refugee status determination from UNHRC in 2009, only ten Eritreans and one Sudanese have been recognized as refugees."

The agency called on Israel to halt its planned deportation of thousands of asylum seekers, namely those who fled to Israel from Eritrea and Sudan and are now slated to be sent back to the African continent.

The UNHCR "is seriously concerned over Israel's plans announced on January 1st to forcibly relocate Eritreans and Sudanese to countries in Africa or have them face indefinite detention," the statement said. "At a time when UNHCR and partners in the international community are engaged in emergency evacuations from Libya, forced relocation to countries that do not offer effective protection and the onward movement of these people to Libya and Europe is particularly worrisome."

The agency extended an offer to help Israel in finding other possible ways to handle the situation, saying that it "stands ready to work with Israel to find alternative solutions for the protection needs of asylum seekers, in line with international standards. This includes resettlement out of Israel, as has happened previously."

Last week, Israel's Population, Immigration and Border Authority announced that it was launching its campaign to begin ridding Israel of its African asylum seekers, declaring that many Eritrean and Sudanese nationals will have to leave the country within the coming months or be incarcerated indefinitely.

There are some 35,000 Eritrean and Sudanese natives living in Israel, who have another 5,000 children who were born here. The overwhelming majority of the adults have temporary visas that they must renew every three months. The next time many of them come to renew their visas, they will be told it is the last renewal and that they will have to leave before the visa expires. The authority will propose that they either return to their countries of origin, or leave for Uganda or Rwanda.

Judy Maltz Jan 04, 2018

Plans to bring a first-ever group of Ugandan Jews to Israel on a Birthright trip are in jeopardy following the recent deportation of a member of their community.

The group of 40 Ugandans had been scheduled to arrive in Israel in late May on the free 10-day trip available to young Jewish adults from around the world. But Birthright officials are now concerned the group may be turned away upon arrival, just as 31-year-old Yehudah Kimani was, because the immigration authorities do not consider them Jewish.

The trip has been in the planning for two years.

The prospective participants all belong to the Abayudaya community, which has been practicing Judaism for more than 100 years. Its members, however, only underwent formal conversions over the past 15 years, most of them under the supervision of Conservative rabbis.

In late December, Kimani, who hails from Kenya but lived for a year among the Abayudaya while converting, was detained upon entering Israel and deported the following morning, even though he had a valid tourist visa.

On Wednesday, at a special session of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, an Interior Ministry official defended the decision to deport Kimani and insisted he was not Jewish despite his conversion.

According to officials at the Jewish Agency and world Conservative movement, following Kimani’s deportation, Birthright notified them of its intention to cancel the trip from Uganda, fearing a similar fiasco when the group arrived. Marom Olami, the young adult division of the world Conservative movement, has helped arrange details of the itinerary.

According to the officials, the Jewish Agency and world Conservative movement persuaded Birthright to refrain from any drastic moves at this point. Birthright officials responded that they would consider moving forward with the trip if two conditions were fulfilled: only Ugandans who converted after 2009 would be allowed to participate, and every participant would obtain prior approval from the Interior Ministry.

In response to a request for comment on Thursday, Birthright said: "Birthright Israel has received a request to bring a group of Jewish young adults from Uganda and is currently examining it."

The Abayudaya community is estimated to number between 1,500 and 2,000 members. Most were converted in 2002, before a smaller wave in 2008.

Only in 2009, however, did they join the world Conservative movement, and for that reason, the Jewish Agency only recognized the Abayudaya as an official Jewish community from that year. The assumption is that anyone who was converted after 2009 will have a better chance of entering Israel. (Kimani, however, was converted in 2010, and that did not prevent him from being deported.)

The status of the Abayudaya community has been under discussion between the Conservative movement, the Jewish Agency and the Interior Ministry for the past five years. The ministry still does not recognize members of the community as Jewish and, in response to queries over the years, has said it is still studying the matter. The ministry has the final say on who gets recognized as a Jew in Israel and who is allowed to enter the country.

Asiimwe Rabbin, a 28-year-old member of the community, applied last year to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return after visiting the country. Anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent or a Jewish spouse, or anyone who has converted in a recognized Jewish community (regardless of the affiliation) is eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return.

Last week, Rabbin received a letter from the Jewish Agency notifying him that, for the meantime, his request had been rejected because the Interior Ministry had still not recognized the Abayudaya community as Jewish. Any decision on the matter, the letter warned, “can take several years.”

Jewish Agency representatives met last week with Interior Ministry officials hoping to obtain guarantees that the Birthright group from Uganda would be welcomed into Israel. No agreement of substance came out of the discussion, and a follow-up meeting has been scheduled for next week.

Birthright has brought more than 500,000 participants to Israel from 67 countries since its inception in 1999. Several members of the Abayudaya community have taken part in other programs in Israel in recent years, but this would be the first time such a large group was coming.