http://honestreporting.com/african-refugees-in-israel/
Newsweek Singles Out Israel on African Refugees
by Daniel Pomerantz 25 JUL 2016
In a sloppily written diatribe, Newsweek’s Jack Moore singles out Israel for criticism with regard to the wide-ranging African refugee crisis.
First, Moore unfairly criticizes Israel for approving less asylum applications than other Western countries, while he omits the critical context that Israel is a tiny country, with limited resources. In fact, on a per capita basis Israel is facing over three times the number of asylum claims as Europe.
(The population of Europe as of 2015 is 743,122,816 with 1,321,560 asylum claims which yields .0018 asylum seekers per capita. For that same year, Israel’s population is 8,412,000 with 46,437 African asylum seekers which yields .0055 asylum seekers per capita.)
In addition, Europe has been attempting to close its borders in an effort to keep African refugees from entering in the first place. Furthermore, while a portion of African asylum seekers are true political refugees, a great many are actually economic refugees, in search of better jobs, but not actually in fear for their lives or safety. Moore, of course, mentions none of this.
Moore then claims that refugees face a high risk of violence in Israel: yet rather than bringing facts or figures to support his claim, he references one extreme and unusual example of a criminal attack, and then covers up that the attacker was promptly arrested and prosecuted in accordance with Israeli law.
The situation in Israel that Moore attempts to address lies in stark contrast to Egypt, where asylum seekers have been legally shot by the official military, and live under such dire conditions that their goal is to leave Egypt and reach Israel: the only modern, Western democracy in the region.
There is no question that the African refugee crisis is a serious problem, and that many nations around the world, including Israel, are struggling to deal with it: often inadequately. In fact, there is plenty of entirely fair criticism that one could make about all the nations involved, without even needing to twist the truth as Moore does.
Yet paradoxically:
*Moore has no words of criticism for the governments of Eritrea, Sudan or any of the African countries who created a refugee crisis in the first place.
*Moore does not criticize Egypt, Jordan nor any other North African or Middle Eastern countries: for failing to help and instead exacerbating this crisis and sending thousands of additional Africans fleeing toward Israel.
*Nor does Moore criticize other Western countries who, compared to Israel, are shouldering a much smaller proportion of this burden relative to their size and populations.
Instead Moore singles out Israel, and only Israel.
And in order to do so with any kind of impact, Moore covers up context, twists facts, and takes isolated bits of information drastically out of context.
Instead of writing like a responsible journalist, Jack Moore writes like an activist with an agenda. There is a place for private agendas in this world, but that place should not be in the pages of Newsweek.
http://europe.newsweek.com/israel-yet-approve-single-asylum-request-2016-15000-wait-482640
ISRAEL YET TO APPROVE SINGLE ASYLUM REQUEST IN 2016 AS 15,000 WAIT
The country continues to reject Eritrean and Sudanese applications in the country.
BY JACK MOORE
Israel is yet to approve a single asylum request filed in 2016, despite thousands of African asylum seekers waiting for an answer from the government, some for years.
A Freedom of Information request submitted to the Israeli government by national newspaper Haaretz and rights group Amnesty International shows that Israel continues to reject almost all of the asylum requests that it receives.
The findings come in spite of the Israeli High Court of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office criticism of the state’s lack of urgency in dealing with the requests, of which 15,000 remain. Israel reportedly has the lowest asylum acceptance rate in the Western world, with less than 0.15 percent of asylum claims accepted since 2009.
The Israeli state routinely refers to African asylum seekers who have arrived in the country as “infiltrators” and has implemented an initiative that would deport asylum seekers to third countries, specifically Rwanda and Uganda.
But Israel has reported thousands to their home countries instead of these “safe” third countries, according to another Haaretz freedom of information request in August 2015.
Some 42,000 Eritreans and Sudanese live in Israel, with many traveling to the country for better economic opportunities, but also to escape persecution and human rights abuses in their home countries, rights groups say.
These minorities also face the threat of discrimination and violence upon arrival in Israel. In 2014, an Israeli man stabbed an Eritrean baby in the head with a pair of scissors, claiming that God had told him to kill a black baby. The Israeli government ruled that the man was insane and therefore was not classified as a victim of a hate crime. But Israel did not offer the family the relevant humanitarian status to remain in the country for their child to receive vital medical care.
In August 2014, the Israeli ministry, then under the stewardship of Gilad Erdan, banned more than 1,000 African asylum seekers from entering the cities of Tel Aviv and the port city of Eilat.
New Interior Minister Arye Dery appointed two lawyers in March to oversee his advisory committee on refugees, which sat idle for eight months, to help with the 15,000 cases.
Still, by July, 14,644 cases remained outstanding, 43 percent from Eritrean and Sudanese nationals. Israel has only approved two asylum cases in the last year and a half, one that was filed four years ago, and only seven cases of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants since 2009.
Received on Mon Jul 25 2016 - 04:04:28 EDT