oh historic irony you are so silly....
http://972mag.com/asylum-seekers-tra...ut-food/55182/
Asylum seekers trapped on Egypt-Israel border go 6 days without food
A group of some 20 Eritreans has been trapped for six days between the Israeli and Egyptian fences in Sinai. Soldiers have been ordered to give them some water but no food. Activists who went there last night and this morning were driven away by soldiers.
Israeli fence along border with Egypt. (Yuval Ben-Ami)
UPDATED: IDF Spokesperson has responded that it will start providing the group of Eritreans with food. (See bottom of post for official comment.)
The group fled from Egypt to Israel, crossed the Egyptian fence into Israeli territory, and was then stopped by the fence Israel has been erecting precisely in order to stop asylum seekers such as these (in addition to the illegal smuggling of arms and drugs) from entering Israel. As
Haaretz reports, soldiers have been ordered to prevent the group from crossing the new fence, and for six days now have only given the asylum seekers little water and fabrics for protection from the sun – but no food. Two of the women who reached the fence were pregnant, and one of them has reportedly already suffered a miscarriage during the long stay in the sun.
According to
Haaretz, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Wednesday that “every day there are people stuck there. If there were no fence, and if we weren’t steadfast, there would be a million people here. Don’t ask what we would do with a million refugees here – excuse me, migrant workers.”
A small group of Israeli activists took a car from Tel Aviv to the border Tuesday night, carrying substantial amounts of food for the asylum seekers. Upon arrival the activists were able to contact some Egyptian soldiers on the other side, who confirmed the asylum seekers’ presence in the area. Egyptian soldiers have been known in the past to shoot at asylum seekers near the border, and Egypt is notorious for having returned refugees, including from Eritrea, to their countries of origin.
The activists moved on, only to run into an IDF patrol. Soldiers confirmed the earlier reports that they were only allowed to give the people behind the fence water, not food. None reported disobeying the order. The commander of the force showed the activists a closed military zone order, and sent them away after taking the food they brought and promising to check with his superiors if he is allowed to bring the food to the starving people. A second group of activists went to the border this morning and was also turned away. The IDF spokesperson unit has not yet responded to the question of whether or not the food was transferred. (See UDPATE below)
Meanwhile the International Committee of the Red Cross is starting to get involved, and Israeli experts on international law warn that stopping asylum seekers from entering the country and making their claim for asylum is a breach of binding treaties to which Israel is a signatory. Israeli NGOs are now preparing to file an urgent petition to the High Court demanding the asylum seekers be allowed into the country.
My own estimation is that Israel will not let the asylum seekers die in the absurd prison in which they are caught. Eventually they will be let in. The cynical point of this extremely cruel behavior echoes what Interior Minister Eli Yishai continues to emphasize: that the aim of Israeli policy is
to make life unbearable for the asylum seekers, who cannot be deported due to a severe risk to their lives in their countries of origin – mainly Sudan and Eritrea – and therefore should be dissuaded from attempting to enter Israel in the first place.
As the majority of asylum seekers in Israel come from Eritrea, and as the state offers them collective protection from deportation without checking their individual refugee claims while at the same time forbidding them from working, it is worth mentioning that the global recognition rate for Eritreans as refugees stands at 93 percent. Those making the journey from Egypt to Israel are at serious risk of being kidnapped by a sophisticated smuggling network for ransom, torture, rape, organ harvesting and death. Just today,
Human Rights Watch published a detailed account of the atrocities committed by the smugglers, and called on Egypt to crack down on the networks.
As Eritrean activist and asylum seeker Isayas Teklebrhan recently said in a demonstration outside the newly built
desert jail for asylum seekers: “We did not go through all this to find a job in Tel Aviv. We took on all this suffering and anxiety to find dignity and life. To find hope. Because once hope is dead you die with it as a human being… We plea for your mercy, we plea for your protection, we ask you as humans to humans – for dignity.”
[
UDPATE 20:32: IDF spokesperson unit response:
Following the directives of the political branch and the the decisions of the Israeli government IDF forces are working to prevent illegal entry into the Israeli territory on the Western border. Construction of a fence along the border is in these days being completed. On the Western side of the fence, facingEgypt, stays in recent days a group of foreigners whose entry intoIsraelis prevented thanks to this fence. For humanitarian reasons IDF forces are offering the foreigners water through the fence."
An IDF source also added that as of today asylum seekers will also be offered food.]
Here is a a video report by Lia Taranchansky for
The Real News.
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Zionism killed Judaism's soul.