Warning: Politically Incorrect Posting ahead.
Despite my support for stopping Sudanese terror in Darfur, I am firmly against Israel accepting the oncoming tidal wave of Sudanese refugees.
Background: Over the past week, dozens of Sundanese refugees have illegally crossed over the border from Egypt into Israel. What started a year ago with a dozen Sudanese refugees seeking refuge in Israel has grown to approximately
1400, with
58 entering Israel illegally last week alone.
These refugees are coming to Israel via Egypt, where an estimated 3 million of them live.
Now, as much as I understand the plight of the Sudanese in Sudan and the dangers they face there, the primary reason they are smuggling themselves into Israel is for better economic opportunities (it can't be that great in Egypt).
That said, there's a world of difference between Israel providing refuge to those fleeing a murderous regime, and naively opening up it's gates to a Muslim community seeking economic advancement.
Israel is not a land of unlimited economic opportunity; in fact, the opposite is quite true. Israel's economy can not survive a massive influx of these refugees.
If you start accepting these refugees into Israel, it will only encourage more.
Israel is not based on "Give me your tired, your weak, your poor Moslem refugees" -- we try to deal exclusively with Jewish immigration. There are 22 Moslem countries who are more than capable of dealing with this issue, so that Israel's already burdened economy does not have to accept this problem as well.
And we have more than enough problems to worry about today which are not being addressed amply.
Hilel Halkin, a
contributing editor of the NY Sun criticizes Israel:
One cannot, as an Israeli, feel anything but shame at the way one's government has reacted to the influx of hundreds of Sudanese refugees, many of them from Darfur, who have recently crossed the border from Egypt into Israel.
Or perhaps one should say "has not reacted," because apart from stating its intention of returning them to Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert's government has done nothing while the penniless Sudanese whom have been rounded up by the army, whose patrols have found them on the Israeli side of the desert border between Sinai and the Negev; taken to the Negev's main city of Beersheba; dumped unceremoniously in its streets; and left to fend for themselves with what help they have been able to get from local authorities and volunteer organizations.
Halkin's shame at Olmert and Israel is totally misplaced, since his expectations are totally displaced from reality.
Israel isn't capable of dealing with it's own, self-created refugee problem of those evicted from Gush Katif.
Don't get me wrong; the people from Gush katif didn't flee genocide, but that Israel can't even get their act together for their own citizens, should be proof enough to Halkin that his criticism is off the mark.
Just today the
Jerusalem Post reports the following:
The majority of former Gaza periphery residents are in dire conditions, says a report published by an ad hoc parliamentary committee established to determine the aftermath of the 2005 disengagement.
Israel Radio reported Tuesday afternoon that most of the evacuees were still living in temporary housing and that hundreds of families were dependent on assistance from welfare services.
The report also found that the percentage of unemployed Gaza periphery evacuees was double their number before the disengagement.
The Ministry of Education estimated that approximately half the schoolchildren from evacuees' families did not return to normal functioning, that about a third of them needed extensive help in studying and that many of the children needed support and professional counseling.
Junior high- and high school pupils exhibited a decline in achievements and lower concentration span.
School counselors reported an increase in abuse of controlled substances, decline in the development of social skills and rise in suicidal thoughts among teenagers.
The report was published preceding a discussion on the disengagement evacuees' condition in the Knesset's State Control Committee.
Some might say that Israel has the moral imperative to accept Sudanese refugees, in light of the Holocaust.
To them I say, there weren't any Jewish countries back then to accept Jewish refugees. Today, we have only one, tiny country.
And we don't need to sacrifice it.
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael
The following was reported by the Nana news service in Israel (in Hebrew)...and appears here as well in English.
