US taxpayer-funded resettlement agency has it nose
(again) in Israel’s business, by
Ann Corcoran 1/15/18
Many American Jewish groups are
angry with the Israeli government because it is now taking steps to remove tens
of thousands of economic migrants who entered Israel from Africa before it had
built its great border wall.
If US private activist groups want
to pressure Israel that is their business, however, when one of those
groups is paid millions annually from the US Treasury it becomes our business
what they do. Of course it is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) I’m
talking about.
Why are we paying them a dime to take care of the refugees they
resettle in the US while they muck around in world affairs? Where is Congress? Cut them off!
And, let me be clear at the outset
(before I get broad brush anti-Jewish comments). HIAS is first and foremost
driven by its Leftwing view of the world (a borderless world). Just as there
are Catholics (Lutherans, Evangelicals etc) on the political Left and on the
political Right, so too are there Jews on both ends of the political spectrum.
HIAS is NOT working here on behalf of Israel! (I hear all the time from readers who say that HIAS is
working for Israel!)
Israel is in the same situation the
US is in with thousands upon thousands of mostly economic migrants (not
refugees) who got in to the country illegally and if permitted to stay would
drastically change the country, for the worse. Anyone in their right mind knows
that borders cannot be completely erased if a country wants to survive.
The difference is that since Israel
is smaller it will die faster than we will if they do nothing about people like
these:
Protesters in front of the Knesset.
So what do you think? Do you believe these people who got in to Israel
illegally are going to be beneficial for the country going forward?
Israel is said to be planning to
begin deportations in the spring and the International Left (including HIAS) is
haranguing the Netanyahu government in hopes of stopping it.
They want Israeli pilots
to not fly the deportation planes!
(That is
one of the mean tactics the mean Leftwing learned from Saul Alinsky to go after
those who will hurt first—some poor pilot just doing his job.)
Amid growing reports that the government is planning to deport tens of
thousands of migrants from Sudan and Eritrea to Rwanda in March, an online
campaign has been launched to beseech Israeli pilots not to fly asylum-seekers
to what many activists deem a death sentence.
The campaign, initiated this week by
the NGO Zizim Community Action, calls on the public to send letters to the
Israel Aviation Association and the Israel Pilots Association, which includes
all the pilots in the country, to refuse to fly migrants to any dangerous
African country.
According to the NGO’s CEO, Raluca
Gena, the online campaign is the first step toward a series of activities
against what they, and many other human rights organizations and Jewish
communities around the world, are calling an immoral deportation.
Presently, approximately 35,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers
live in Israel. Among their 13,764 asylum
applications submitted since 2013, only 11 have been approved by the Interior
Ministry as of July 2017 – 10 Eritreans and one Sudanese.
HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield speaking at
anti-Trump rally that HIAS organized in New York last February. Rep.
Keith Ellison was a keynote speaker. More than half of HIAS’s budget is
funded (involuntarily) by you from the US Treasury.
Outside of Israel, prominent leaders of the North American Jewish
community sent a public letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday
urging Israel not to imprison or deport tens of thousands of Sudanese and
Eritrean asylum-seekers. Rather, the leaders – who sent an
initial letter regarding the controversial issue to Netanyahu in November –
urged him to allow
North American Jews to help resolve the matter.
Signatories include Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the global Jewish
nonprofit that protects refugees; Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director
of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director
of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of
J Street; and Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.
[This is a who’s who of American
Leftwing Jewish groups.—ed]
“The government of Israel recently
announced its plans to imprison or potentially deport tens of thousands of
Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers unless they leave voluntarily before
April,” the letter states.
“The ultimatum follows a mounting
campaign of escalation on the part of the Israeli government to pressure the
roughly 38,000 African asylum-seekers remaining in Israel to self-deport. While
Israeli authorities contend that the population in question – most of whom
entered Israel between 2007 and 2012 – are economic migrants, HIAS and other
rights groups argue that they are asylum-seekers and refugees deserving of
protection.”
Israel does (or did) have a program
where economic migrants who self-deported received a financial payments, but I
don’t know if it is still in use.
You should know that HIAS has been
working with the US State Department to bring some of those so-called
‘refugees’ to the US directly from Israel. The numbers are small so far
(9 this fiscal year), but if you think this story isn’t about you, it is!
They aren’t planning to bring more of them to the US and other western
countries, are they? See my complete HIAS archive
by clicking here. And for more on Israel and refugees, I have a whole category on the topic here with 164 previous posts.
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