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From: Semere Asmelash <semereasmelash_at_ymail.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 10:34 AM
Subject: (Aljazeera)Uganda: Doing Israel's dirty work
To: "dehai_at_dehai.org" <dehai_at_dehai.org>
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/uganda-asylum-israel-dirty-work-201445141832792192.html
Uganda: Doing Israel's dirty work
Why is Israel sending asylum-seekers to Uganda?
Last updated: 13 Apr 2014 08:07
Belen Fernandez
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at
Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
While contemplating potential locations for a Jewish homeland over a
century ago, Theodor Herzl - the father of modern political Zionism -
proposed Uganda as a temporary refuge for persecuted Jews.
Ironically, Uganda is now on the receiving end of other persecuted peoples,
this time African refugees who have sought asylum in Israel only to be
imprisoned in detention facilities and then returned to the African
continent.
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in a February 2014 article titled
"Israel secretly flying asylum seekers to Uganda", harsh conditions in the
detention centres plus nominal financial compensation have facilitated the
deportation of many migrants under the guise of "voluntary departure".
The article quotes the Israeli director of the Hotline for Refugees and
Migrants on this non-solution to refugee plight: "[I]t is known that Uganda
deports asylum seekers to their countries of origin."
Also quoted is the organisation's assessment that "'[v]oluntary departure'
is the result of heavy and illegal psychological pressure on detained,
isolated and desperate asylum seekers, which more than once has included
threats and lies". Haaretz furthermore points out that "[t]he position of
the UN High Commissioner on Refugees is that people cannot be considered to
be acting of their own free will if the choice they have is between
detention and being sent back to their country".
Outsourcing inhumanity
The reason for the disingenuous rendering of a "voluntary" exodus of
refugees is, of course, to prevent an already precarious demographic
balance in Israel from tipping in favour of non-Jewish non-whites. After
all, granting rights to such sectors would only jeopardise the perpetuation
of Israel's ethnocracy-disguised-as-democracy.
Other Israeli methods of dealing with the apparent surplus of Africans in
the country have included political incitement to anti-African violence and
the forcible injection of Ethiopian women with contraceptives.
As Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen noted, between November 2012 and
May 2013 the Jewish state had approved only one asylum application from a
population of approximately 60,000 non-Jewish African asylum seekers in
Israel. The applicant happened to be an albino.
"When Israel rounds up and deports African refugees, it makes a mockery of
the millions of Jews who died during World War II because no one would
grant them shelter," Sheen has remarked.
But what does Uganda stand to gain from participating in outsourced
inhumanity? A 2013 Vice magazine report details the perks of the
arrangement: Weapons discounts and military training for African countries
willing to take on Israel's dirty work.
To be sure, Israel's long success in oppressing Palestinians and other
Arabs makes its expertise quite marketable among abusive states. Uganda's
interest in Israeli weapons is perhaps less than surprising given the
behaviour of its own army and security forces, often characterised by
torture and other human rights violations.
Back in 2003, Haaretz ran a story on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's
visit to Israel for the purpose of "arms shopping", an excursion that was
said to have been "arranged by an arms merchant, Amos Golan of the Silver
Shadow company, who represents IAI [Israel Aircraft Industries] and other
Israeli defence industries in Uganda". Highlights of the itinerary included
an air show of pilotless drones.
Neoliberal polities committed to the wellbeing of the arms industry over
the wellbeing of humans naturally can't be expected to waste time helping
refugees find refuge. Quite auspiciously for said industry, the Israeli
regime insists on referring to African asylum seekers as "infiltrators",
which connotes criminality and facilitates the illusion of a steady stream
of enemies that must be combated.
Uganda's denial of the existence of any deportation agreement with Israel
renders accountability for human life even less of an option.
Territorial entitlement
The Vice magazine article notes that, as of September of last year,
approximately 40,000 of the African "infiltrators" were from Eritrea, "a
country with one of the worst human rights records on Earth".
The author goes on to comment, with well-directed sarcasm, that "[t]hese
people aren't coming to Israel because they fancy upping their matzah
intake or living on Palestinian land illegally; they're genuinely trying to
escape persecution and find a way to survive".
Indeed, Israel enjoys a bit of a monopoly when it comes to the practise of
setting up shop on other people's territory.
The appropriation of Palestine in 1948 - the year of Israel's spontaneous
foundation - incidentally set the stage for a less amicable period in
Israeli-Ugandan relations. In 1976, members of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine and the German Baader-Meinhof gang hijacked an Air
France flight from Tel Aviv and diverted it to Uganda's Entebbe airport in
an attempt to secure the release of prisoners held in Israel and other
countries. The Israeli military then staged a bloody hostage rescue mission
that was condemned by the UN Secretary General as "a serious violation of
the sovereignty of a United Nations member state".
Now, under the current deportation agreement, Uganda is enlisted in none
other than a mission to secure Israel's own borders, which are under threat
from "infiltrators" apparently so indistinguishable from one another in
their blackness that they can be repatriated to any old place in Africa.
Ugandan complicity in the dominion of a worldview predicated on apartheid
and ethnic cleansing is itself a serious violation - not of borders but of
human dignity.
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at
Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
*Inside Story* <
http://www.youtube.com/show/insidestory>: The plight of
African migrants in Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH1YpgWQy0k
Received on Mon Apr 14 2014 - 10:30:17 EDT