By Judith Gelman
Darfur is a “big” issue in the American Jewish community. In many cities, you can locate synagogues by the green “Not on Our Watch” banners out front. We rally and write letters. Congregations raise money to purchase solar cookers through Jewish World Watch, so that women need not go outside the refugee camps, risking rape to gather firewood for cooking fuel. We are doing quite a bit, from afar. What we don’t do is interact with the refugees.
Almost none of us have been to Darfur and no Darfur refugees come to the US. For us, dedicated as we are to stopping the genocide, this is unfortunately a somewhat abstract issue. Because we have no refugees in our midst, the “crisis” easily slips for months out of the media’s sight and the public eye.
Not so in Israel. No green banners raise public attention to the refugees’ plight, but the average Israeli is much more conscious of the complicated issues involving the refugees because they have something we don’t—actual refugees. Virtually every issue of every newspaper contains pictures of small large-eyed children and their stick-thin parents. Interviews with people helping the refugees and with the refugees themselves are a staple on the nightly news. Israel is now home to hundreds fleeing this genocide.
The refugees get to Israel by foot. They walk north from Sudan into Egypt and, if not turned back or imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities, some cross the Red Sea and then trek across the Sinai desert. At the Israeli/Egyptian border, they elude armed patrols to crawl under the border fence. Once on the Israeli side, they know they are no longer in mortal danger.
From our vantage point, the Darfur crisis looks much simpler than it does in Israel. First, only about 30% of the Sudanese crossing the border are from Darfur. The rest come for a variety of reasons—there are economic refugees seeking jobs and Christian Sudanese from the South fleeing the other, older Sudanese conflict. Israeli security must be vigilant lest terrorists enter, masquerading as refugees. Plus, permanent asylum for Muslim refugees jeopardizes Israel’s goal of maintaining a Jewish majority and remaining a haven for persecuted Jews.
At present, there are over 1,500 Sudanese refugees in Israel, with 450 from Darfur. Recently, the government indicated its desire to return new refugees to Egypt. However, without an agreement from Egypt not to return the refugees to Sudan, expulsion from Israel could amount to a death sentence. And, after Egyptian police killed 27 refugees during a demonstration in December 2005, refugees also fear life in Egypt. Under pressure from human rights groups, the Israeli government has apparently given up on its plan of expelling new refugees, but has yet to come up with another one.
Until recently, Israel jailed new refugees for “illegal entry” while their status was clarified, a process which takes months. A few weeks ago, the Israeli government began releasing refugees from detention and, together with new refugees, simply dumping them in the parks in Beersheva. Day after day, student social workers from Ben Gurion University took it upon themselves to find temporary shelter, clothing and food for these impoverished and often disoriented people. Coverage in Israeli newspapers and TV news brought the plight of the Darfur refugees to the center of the Israeli public’s consciousness again. Donations of clothing and food flowed in from throughout the country. But private initiatives are insufficient to help hundreds of malnourished people, emotionally scarred by witnessing the destruction of their villages, homes and families.
Some Israeli NGOs stepped into this breach to help. Ameinu’s partner AJEEC, the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, helps house refugees in the Bedouin towns of Rahat and Kseifa. The Hotline for Migrant Workers is diverting its scarce resources away from serving the victims of sex traffickers and foreign workers who have lost their visas in order to provide legal advocacy for the Sudanese refugees. Kibbutzim, including Sde Boker in the Negev and Maagan Michael north of Tel Aviv, give shelter, food and work to dozens. Kibbutz Eilot near Eilat houses 170 refugees, most of whom work in nearby hotels, and provides daycare for the 40 young children among the group. The Jewish Agency for Israel recently agreed to house 58 refugees in its Friedman Student Village Ibim near Sderot. Still, this problem is too big to be solved piecemeal by NGOs.
In the past few days, the Israeli government began setting up a “hospitality center” of air-conditioned trailers next to Ketziot Prison in the Negev to house the refugees until a more permanent solution is found. But it is unclear what that solution will be. Surely, Israel has a special obligation to help the victims of genocide. But how far does that obligation go? Being only a “walk” away, Israel faces the prospect of receiving an unending stream of Sudanese refugees, from Darfur, from the Southern conflict and also those in search of work and a better life.
My organization, Ameinu, has called for the Israeli government to accept asylum seekers currently in the country and to commit itself to taking a specific number of additional refugees each year that conflict lasts. We believe Israel should do its share. But it can only do so much. Americans should call on our own government to accept refugees fleeing the genocide. We should call on every Western and Islamic country to accept refugees as well. A side benefit of giving asylum to these desperate people is that it would raise the profile of the conflict.
So far, there are 450 Darfur refugees in Israel. These numbers illustrate how many refugees a sample of countries would need to accept to do as much in proportion to their populations:
Australia—–1,390
Canada—– 2,275
France——-4,090
Germany—-5,590
Indonesia–16,020
Japan——–8,660
Norway——–300
Pakistan—-11,250
Saudi Arabia-1,465
Turkey——-4,845
Qatar————45
U.S.———20,520
U.K.———- 4,160
We can quibble about adjusting the numbers for each nation’s per capita income. The point remains; Israel should do its share. But how can its share be so large and the obligations on other nations be nothing at all?
Judith R. Gelman is chair of Policy and Advocacy for Ameinu, the US affiliate of the World Labor Zionist Movement. She also serves on the International Council of New Israel Fund. She recently visited some of the Israeli NGOs supporting Sudanese refugees.
