THINK-ISRAEL |
It’s not a war on immigration that lies ahead of us, but a war over the continuation of the Jewish majority in Israel.
When we published an article in 2007 about the nightmare facing Israel from Africa, many were shocked. Today, this vision has become a reality (Then, 400 infiltrators stole over the border from Africa each month; currently, about 4,000 come here illegally every month).
I realize today that I too was naive back then, when I wrote the article. I did not see the depth of the picture unfolding before us. Then I thought that the primarily reason for the infiltration was to improve the lives of the Africans who came here, as it is with the migration from Mexico to the United States, but now it appears that the image is unique to Israel.
The truth is that millions of Africans would like to immigrate to Israel to improve their lives, but it turns out that in Israel there are those who want to exploit this to change our country’s demographic balance. After they failed to let in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into this country, these people now expect a migration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Africa to Israel. It’s not a war on immigration that lies ahead of us, but a war over the continuation of the Jewish majority in Israel.
A number of associations, NGOs and others have encouraged this African immigration to Israel. They begin by directing the emigration from the countries of origin, preserving it, preventing it from running into obstacles in the Sinai Peninsula, and providing it with a warm home in Israel. They have spread and continue to spread the rumor in Africa that Israel is a paradise, and that it can be reached by foot.
These are not migrant workers who stand before us, and not refugees, but a majority of African Muslims who come here to settle, and never leave.
The numbers: According to official data of the State of Israel, the rate of Muslim immigration from Africa is about 1,000 a week (this was the situation last month), and nearly 4,000 per month (which is double the numbers from a few months ago). Since there is no one who knows exactly how many of these infiltrators we now have here, the estimate is that there are between 80,000 and 120,000 of them in the country.
South Tel Aviv has become a small Sudan, the infiltrators in Eilat already constitute about 20 percent of the population, and this is also the situation in certain neighborhoods in central Israel – Pardes Katz in Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, suburban Petah Tikva, Sderot and Rishon Lezion. They have even reached the Galilee already.
Everywhere, on the side of the roads, you can spot the newcomers. They are surveying their new country, surveying its wealth, their wealth.
Go see the astonishing sights in Eilat, a city occupied by infiltrators that is nightly flooded with dozens and hundreds of new infiltrators.
They arrive in Eilat and in the morning go to the Interior Ministry office, where they receive permits to stay from the State of Israel, on behalf of Interior Minister Eli Yishai, and hence are free to begin working anywhere in the country.
And what is the plan hatched in secret by those organizations of “human rights?” When the numbers reach a quarter of a million or half a million, and we’re getting there fast, the organizations will turn to the High Court of Justice and to the United Nations, demanding that Israel grant residency to these “immigrants” and even citizenship, as is customary in the West.
With that, the percentage of Muslims in Israel will jump immediately to between 30% and 35%, with all the demographic implications that you can imagine.
Being residents, then citizens, the Africans will naturally be able to bring their family members, and the numbers will double. For those who did not want the Jews in Uganda, Uganda will now come to Israel. Being a small country, these processes will occur very fast, faster than in Europe.
Now we understand that the Muslim infiltrators from Africa (the migrants from Sudan are all Muslim, and most of the Eritrean migrants are, too) are not weak, but rather their Israeli absorbers. They are not the ones being threatened, because they are not war refugees, but rather Israel is being threatened.
The “human rights” organizations have easy access to the media, and they do not hide their desire to see Israel as a state of all citizens and no longer a Jewish or Zionist state, and from this perspective, the Muslim migrants from Africa suit their cause very well. These organizations bear direct responsibility for the new plague that has befallen Israel. They direct the migration, organize it, preserve it from the authorities, help the migrants get permits and papers, empower them, teach them how to stand up to the authorities, how to conduct demonstrations that will touch the sensitive nerves of the Israelis, and even made them a newspaper, in African languages, which is funded by the UN.
These organizations have helpers, those with economic interests, profiting at the expense of the new slaves, such as hoteliers, who employ them for pennies (especially in Eilat, which therefore becomes an African city), and the construction industry that profits from this new form of slavery developing in Israel. Do these organizations for so-called “human rights” agree with the new slavery being created here? I don’t.
These measures require urgent attention, before we lose control:
1. Start an immediate return of the infiltrators to their homelands. About 85% of the migrants come from Eritrea, which has full diplomatic relations with Israel, and has announced that it would “embrace” the migrants back.
Several thousand have arrived here from South Sudan, which is a new country that has full diplomatic relations with Israel, and its government is ready to accept its citizens back immediately. The allegations we hear from the NGOs that Sudan is in a “war” are groundless, since this country is very big, and the conflict is taking place in a very small part of it. In any case, the military conflict in the Abay district ended this week, when the Sudanese government announced it would pull its troops out.
2. We have to promise that all who return to their country of origin in the first two months (the flight, in any case, is funded by the state) will receive a grant of $2,000. Anyone who returns two months later will receive $1,000, and those next in line will receive $500, and finally, nothing.
This will do the job.
3. Meanwhile, we must open the temporary transit camp that has been promised by the government to be built in the South, and send thousands of migrants there.
4. At the same time, the distribution of automatic visas by the Interior Ministry to every infiltrator must stop.
5. In addition, within four months, the employment of migrants in the hotel, construction and cleaning industries must stop, and heavy fines should be imposed on those employing them. Thus, there won’t be any motivation to get here.
After reading this article, no one can say in two-three years, “I did not know.”
Dr. Guy Bechor received his PhD, from Tel Aviv University and serves
as head of the Middle East Division at the Lauder School of Government
at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. His specializations are Arab civil law and the politics and history of the Arab Middle East.
Contact him by email at gbechor@idc.ac.il
This article is from the May 31, 2012 issue of the Jerusalem Post
(http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=272251).
It was translated by Moria Dashevsky. It was originally published on Dr. Guy Bechor’s website, www.gplanet.co.il
The last two photos are not part of the original article.
Editor's Addendum:
It is curious that Israel is taken to task for expelling illegals -- as if other countries don't. Nurit Greenger in an essay entitled "Illegals From Afar" makes some cogent points that puncture the media's image of a people -- the Jews -- once in dire need of refuge themselves who now won't extend a helping hand to other people who have more recently been forced to flee their homes. These are excerpts from her essay, which was submitted June 17, 2012:
The time has come for Israel to recognize and thus separate compassion from her needs for security and social stability. These invaders impede Israel's security and social stability and therefore, all of them, without exception, must be deported. Paying thousands of dollars to some Bedouin thugs to bring them to the threshold of the state of Israel and from there just cross the border, illegally, is not the right way; such entry is considered illegal by international law and it is unfair to the citizens of the country who wish to preserve their sovereignty.
First, it is a matter of security. No well managed country will allow people to enter its border illegally. If these people want to work in Israel they need to apply for work permit from the Israeli embassy or consulate in their country, not just break into the country, as a thief in the night, and expect not be apprehended.
If it was a matter of obtaining political asylum they could have applied for such status in the legal way: enter the Israeli embassy in their country and ask for political protection and then allow Israel's authorities to decide if the state wishes to cooperate in their case. But no, they found a sucker country to impose their presence, to invade and stay, no question asked.
Then, there is a matter of health. Since these infiltrators did not go through an immigration process, they also did not go through medical check-up and the result, they brought along with them diseases that were long been contained and Israel no longer deals with them. They have reduced the health standard of the country.
Additionally, with their lack of education, they are bound to reduced the quality of the education standard's poll.
And then there is the crime factor. People who have no legal status, who work under the radar, at a minimum wage, cannot make ends meet and live up to the host country's survival standards, and thus will, automatically revert to crime and that is exactly what has happened and is happening; crime in the towns where these infiltrators set foot and stayed went out of control. In essence Israel has invited crime into her midst.
None of these people were under any immediate danger, as people under immediate danger do not have thousands of dollars to pay for their flight, rather they run as fast as their feet can take them with just the shirt on their backs. None of these people were running away from their homeland; it was all planned. These people, claiming hardship, found the thousands of dollars, needed to pay for the journey to reach Israel's border. From where does so much money come into the hands of such poor people? Perhaps Israel's enemies are paying them these sums to infiltrate the country so they can establish an army from within and in time be able to assist Israel's enemy to strike the country, as they plan?
ISRAEL HAS A KNACK OF INVITING IN TROUBLE. In 1993, with signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel invited into her land the terrorist Yasser Arafat and his 10,000 terrorist troops and their supportive families, and thus opened the door to Arab terrorists to embed and, at close range, operate against its citizens.
In the conflict the Arabs have with Israel, her deeply seated quest is to maintain the state's Jewish nature. When 100,000 non-Jewish infiltrators enter the state, illegally, and that flood continues, how can Israel expect to maintain her Jewish character? Moreover, most of these infiltrators are Muslims and Islam sees Israel as their land. So in essence Israel has allowed the enemy to invade her and slowly take over.
In 2012 the USA deported at least 400,000 illegals. In Europe the authorities deport such people as well. No one shouts that the USA or the Europeans are racists for deporting people of dark skin. I once stayed in hotel nearby Orly Airport, Paris, France. There, each night, the French authorities were bringing people, appeared to be from African countries, for deportation. These people were kept overnight at the hotel, in an assigned floor under guard, and in the morning they were put on planes bound for the countries from where they came. There was no news coverage, just daily routine deportation.
THE BIBLE INSTRUCTS JEWS TO TREAT, THE STRANGER WITH KINDNESS -- also the orphan and widow; sources: Exodus 22:20, Deuteronomy14:28, 16:9-14, 24:17-22; Ruth was a Moabite and the great grandmother of King David; she was a non-Jew, a stranger, who joined the Jewish nation and married the Jew Boaz.
According to the Bible, the biblical stranger is the one who comes to live among the local residents for a long period of time. Every humane society is measured by its relations with the weak in her midst. In a society where there is no welcoming of the weak, when the strong "devours" the weak, we can say that the law of the jungle rules. But this is not the case here. These people snuck in and invaded the country, without permission, and were treated with kindness and support. In return, with time, they acclimated and became confident and their thank you gesture to the host country, in which they live illegally, was to create intolerable social circumstances. They simply cannot remain in Israel.
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