All right. Good afternoon. So let me just introduce the speaker.
The microphone. I take it back. Oh, yeah. So stealing is one thing.
Yeah, I know. We practice it. Okay. So, good afternoon.
Welcome, everybody. I'm delighted to profess to to introduce to you Professor Galit Sabar, who usually teaches African studies at Tel Aviv University.
Currently, she's the president of the Grouping Academic Centre among us.
So among the many issues that Professor Tabar has studied.
I will note the following these are the most, I guess, intriguing to me that I found in the long list of publications and works you've done.
She's written about Ethiopian Jews struggle to reach Israel, about religion and politics in Africa,
and the role of religious organisations in the HIV AIDS prevention education efforts in Kenya.
More pertinent to the topic of today's talk since the late 1990,
she is focussed on African labour migrants in Israel with a special emphasis on their socio
religious organisations and their complex relations with Israeli society and politics.
Following the massive deportation of the early 2000s of undocumented migrants migrant labourers from Israel,
Professor Sabar has expanded her research to include homecoming patterns.
And since 2006 her research has focussed on African asylum seekers, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea,
who have started entering Israel at the time via the border with Egypt, which has since been largely sealed.
The title of her talk today is African Migration to Israel.
Chronicle of War of a Failure Foretold Prophecies.
Somebody, thank you so much. Thank you very much, Professor. Go and thank you for coming today.
It was very tempting for me to start talking about the recent events, about the whole issue of deportation.
The new government decision to deport African asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan to a third country because
Israel does not want to hold the African asylum seekers and because it's on the news and it's a very heated debate,
it was tempting to start with it. However, I thought that it wouldn't be right.
I think that in order to get a fuller picture and a broader understanding of the complexities entangled within the deportation,
the right thing to do, especially within an academic forum,
would be really to go back in a very methodological way, in a systematic way,
and to look at the historical and social context of the whole issue of non-Jewish migration to Israel, specifically African migrants.
And then at the end we would reach what's going on today and really have a better understanding.
So that is just a general comment.
The second general comment would be on the way that I've conducted my research on non-Jewish migration to Israel over the past 20 years,
and it has mainly been qualitative research methodologies, open ended and in-depth interviews,
focus groups and a lot of being in the field and with the field.
As Professor Younger said, for many, many years my research has focussed on the religious lives of African migrants and most of them are Christians.
I believe that I am the Israeli that has the most hours in African churches as a Jew in Tel Aviv,
and I remember about 20 years ago when our eldest son was about eight, my father called on a Saturday and he said, Where's Imma?
Where's Mom? And my son said, She's in church. And you can imagine my father almost getting a heart attack, you know.
So what is important for me was to try and study the people and the phenomena and the questions
in the most intimate way I could as a research and yet keeping a critical analytical way.
Now, several years ago, I think it was about three years ago, after being in the field for over 15 years,
it just started that Eritreans and Sudanese who came to seek asylum.
Israel started to go back because they were pushed back by the Israeli government.
And I think I was the first one to go and to try and see what's happening with these returnees.
And this is just one quote that I think is very rich and worth reading it together.
Before coming, I thought that Israeli people will understand me because they too suffered.
But, you know, after being in your country for so many years, I know that you don't really know or you refuse to know.
So now I'm here in Kampala. No work, no future.
I wish to come back to Israel. I have many Israeli friends.
I can't go to my home. I'm a dead man. If I go back now,
I think it's very clear from this very short quote that there is a clear distinction
in the eyes of many African asylum seekers between the government of Israel.
This this very big institution or constituency and the people of Israel.
He has lots of friends. He wants to go back. And yet the state of Israel, in spite of the history of the Jewish people in the state of Israel,
has pushed him out and to try and really understand this dichotomy between what they feel towards the people of Israel and towards the
state of Israel and the way that they understand the Jewish history was really interesting for me studying African migrants in Israel.
So what we will try and do today briefly is go over several issues.
The numbers that we are talking about, the countries of origin, the legal status, social life and whatever time will permit us.
So let's start really with numbers.
And although I'm a qualitative research researcher and numbers usually confuses, I think to start with, it's really important.
Early 1990s, there were no non-Jewish African migrants, and I specifically say non-Jewish African migrants,
because I'm not speaking today about Ethiopian Jews or North African Jews for that matter, both coming from the African continent.
So we're really speaking about non-Jewish African migrants to Israel.
So there were none in the beginning of the 1990s. That's not too long ago.
Okay. Now, as you can see, nine years later, we have 20,000 African labour migrants in Israel.
And when the number reached a high level, Israel started to deport these African labour migrants back home.
We will see later on where they came from if we go fast.
2004, we've got only 4000 African migrant workers.
Now we see a new type of migration to Israel no longer migrant workers but asylum seekers.
And as of the end of 2005, up until today, about 60,000 African asylum seekers entered Israel and now we are at the second stage of deportation.
So within this period of time, from the early 1990s, up until today,
two waves of two distinct groups of non-Jewish African migrants and two waves of deportation.
So now let's go a little bit into the legal status when we are speaking about the state of Israel.
So obviously, I'm sure that in this crowd I don't have to elaborate on the law of return,
which is really the basic of of what constitute the migration legal frame to Israel.
And if you want to shortly say any and every Jew around the world has the right to migrate to Israel,
not only has the right to migrate to Israel, but upon arrival gets full citizenship and and a big welcome hand.
Okay. However, the very,
very limited avenues for to gain citizenship for non-Jewish migrants parallel or just a few years after the law of Return was created,
then the law of entry was created regulating the rights of non-nationals who were not Jewish to enter and reside to Israel.
Now, although I'm not going to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when we look at these laws,
we have to keep that bear that in mind that this is the general context that these laws were created,
that trying to rescue the Jews after the Second World War and creating a safe home for
the Jewish people and vis a vis the Palestinians to create a clear border between us.
And then now, in 1954, because of the tension between Israel and.
Jordan mainly. And the entry of the infiltrators, the Palestinian what they were called infiltrators from Jordan.
We had the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law.
Now, what's interesting is that when the law was created in the mid 1950s, it was purely seeing Palestinian terrorists infiltrating Israel.
However, nowadays, when we are speaking, the African asylum seekers are called infiltrators.
Okay, so unless you really have the historical background, you realise how hard it is to, to people that do know the history,
to hear these asylum seekers being named infiltrators and to think where did this term come from?
Now at the same time that all these basic laws were constructed, Israel also signed,
accepted the Geneva Convention, the Refugee Convention, and the protocol of the Refugee Convention.
And again, all this is tied basically to post World War events.
Okay. So now we have the legal background and now let's look at the recent history of the state of Israel.
Now, up until the early the late 1980s, early 1990s, Israel didn't have international migrant workers.
Now, look around where we are now in England.
International migrant workers was a phenomena that started after World War Two.
And that's true to Germany with the Turks. It's true France with North Africans, it's true to all countries around the Western Hemisphere.
However, Israel, although the economy was modern, didn't have international labour migrants.
It had Palestinian workers and they were replacing the cheap labour.
However, they came to work in the morning and went back to their homes in the evening.
So we didn't have the whole complexity of international migrant workers like the Auguste Albert in Germany and in other places.
Once the Palestinian uprising, the first Palestinian uprising erupted in the late 1980s, the intifada,
all Israeli governments decided to close the borders to to to prevent the entry of Palestinians from coming to work in Israel.
And there were two major fields that were truly hot.
It was construction and agriculture, and there was an acute shortage in human labour.
Now, parallel to the intifada, at the same time, in the early 1990s,
we had the blessed influx of about a million migrants coming from across the South.
So on the one hand, you have a shortage of manpower in construction and agriculture, and you have to think, where are you going to get the workers?
You have the Russian new migrants coming, but there wasn't a clear shift of the new migrants into these fields of work.
No, there was a third solution. And the third solution was to bring international migrant workers.
So it's a very, very recent phenomena in the history of Israel.
Now, what's interesting to see is once the borders were open in 1990, we had the first year we had about 4000 international migrant workers.
But within six years, you can see how wonderful the Israeli thought that this is.
You know, why not bring Thai workers or Philippine workers or Chinese construction workers?
They're much cheaper. They work harder.
They have less demands. Okay. And they're not Palestinians and they're not Israelis.
So everybody thought this was a big party that we are going into.
So you can see that within a very, very short time in migration history and in labour migration history.
In less than a decade, Israeli Israel had about a quarter of a million international migrant workers.
Now, this you know, Israel was at the time about 6.5 or 7 million people, a quarter of a million of workers.
That's 10% of the workforce were non Israelis, non-residents, non Palestinians.
Okay, once this started, we have to realise that once a country opens its borders and issues visas,
others with no visas opt to enter either on tourist visas or pilgrim visas and overstay their visas, thus becoming non documented and illegal.
Now, once the numbers reach this very high, that's where we can see the 20,000 African labour migrants, which I mentioned before they came once.
Israel has changed once Israel opened its borders. Africans came as well.
And we have what I mentioned before. But that would be the second wave, and we will come to it a bit late.
So now let's look closely at the wave of the first African labour migrants.
Most of them came from Ghana and Nigeria. Approximately equal numbers, men and women.
Most of them lived in and around Tel Aviv and worked as house cleaners, restaurant workers.
You know, the the triple D works, the dirty, the the demeaning and the dangerous works.
They were young. They were very highly educated. They were the strong members of their families from Ghana and Nigeria.
And what was truly impressive that in the heart of predominantly white and Jewish Tel Aviv,
there was vibrant and amazing life of the African Christian community.
In the heart of that were women's groups and sports clubs and kids nurseries and Sunday schools
and political active groups vis a vis the Israeli government and their governments back home.
And at the heart of this rich community were these African independent churches.
Now, you would think that they came to the Holy Land, so they would go to the existing churches,
the Catholics, the Protestants, either in Tel Aviv, in Jaffa and Jerusalem.
But no, that wasn't their type of Christianity. They they were strong enough.
They had funds. They had energy. They had all the social means that they need in the social capital that they needed.
So they created their own churches. And in the mid 1990s, late 1980s, we had about 50 in the five zero independent African churches only in Tel Aviv.
I think this is an amazing phenomena to think about.
If they really recreated a Christian discourse within the Holy Land and we could see that throughout their stay in Israel,
they really juggled in between three worlds, the world that they left,
the world that they are right now, i.e. Israel and the world that they wanted to go to,
which was either Europe or U.S., where they could get a permanent status, you know, citizenship and so on.
So it was really, really interesting to study that community.
However, once the numbers of all the international migration migrants reached this high level of a quarter of a million,
amongst them 20,000 Africans, the Israeli government started the first deportation and most of the African labour migrants were deported.
Most of them, the only ones remaining were those who came from countries where Israel could not deport to Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia,
where they had a civil war and they got some kind of protection or due to their
children that were born and raised in Israel and out of a humanitarian gesture,
the government of Israel in 2005 decided to give about 160 children and their immediate relatives a permanent residency in Israel.
That was the first time in the Israeli history that this was given to non-Jewish children that were born in Israel,
raised in Israel, that Israeli was their culture.
So the government gave them. And it's interesting.
Sorry. It's 900. Yeah, 160 African children.
And what was interesting to see is how history really has its way of of of being created.
Because just parallel to this one time humanitarian gesture of giving these foreign children an Israeli citizenship,
that's when a new wave of migrants started to come to Israel.
Now, it's not directly related, obviously, but when we look at the general picture of the history of non-Jewish migration to Israel, it is related.
Now this cohort of of African migrants were African asylum seekers and they started to come, as I said, December 2005 up until very recently.
And that's a whole different group of people. Now, many people speak of Africa as a country.
It's Chimamanda Adichie. The famous writer says it drives her crazy that people relate to Africa as a country.
So obviously I don't 54 countries and they're very, very distinct.
So the first cohort, as I said, were Nigerians and Ghanaians, mainly from West Africa, and these are mainly Eritreans and Sudanese now,
whereas the Ghanaians and Nigerians flew into Israel via the Ben-Gurion Airport with a proper visa.
These cross. By foot to Israel through the lax border with Egypt or the no border with Egypt.
Okay. So Israel.
Well, Israel is the country the only western or so-called western country that has a border with the African continent that people can walk through.
And that's exactly what happened. So we can see how close it is and we can see the numbers that over the years,
over 50,000 African asylum seekers came from Eritrea and about 13,000 from Sudan, both from South Sudan and from Darfur.
The Eritreans were mainly men and the Sudanese.
It's also predominantly a male dominated migration.
I'm sure as people living in England you're very, very well aware of the whole migration cycles that everybody is speaking about them these days.
And the one from Northeast Africa is just but one route of Africans trying to seek asylum in Europe crossing the Mediterranean to Spain and Greece.
Okay, so we are the far eastern side of this very, very big migration path towards, you know, better life that Africans are seeking to find.
So it's not something unique to Israel. Absolutely not.
So we have to look at that, at the focus, at the what's happening in our side of the world.
But we are part of a much, much larger movement.
Now let's go back to numbers. So when the first African asylum seekers started to arrive, there were less than 3000.
That's nothing. But look at how fast the numbers grow.
And within one year, 2011, over 17,000 men, women and children crossed from Egypt to Israel.
Now, that's big. If you think about it.
It's thousands every month that just keep on entering Israel.
Okay. And the numbers are accumulating. And the total was about 65,000 African asylum seekers within a period of about six years.
Okay. Now, if we look, then we can see that the vast majority were from Eritrea, 70%, 20% from Sudan.
And if we compare between migrant workers, African migrant workers, that's the green line on the right hand side, that was close to nothing.
That was a few thousand, and the vast majority became African asylum seekers.
But for a lot of Israelis, they were all Africans, they were all black.
Okay. There was no distinction between the various people, the various reasons for coming there, social and historical reasons for coming to Israel.
Why we're speaking. We can see that from 65,000.
The remaining 37,000, i.e. between 2006 13.
When when the border between Israel and Egypt was completed, there was no more entry.
Okay. You can see that it dropped down. And last year, there were like five people who managed to cross the border.
So no new asylum seekers are coming into Israel since 2013.
However, 20,000 have already gone.
And the quotes that I started with is one of those 20,000 who left Israel before or prior to what we're witnessing right now.
So when we look at the legal status, I just put on the right hand side,
just so you don't have to memorise what we spoke before, this is the legal framework of non-Jewish migration to Israel.
But what was going on with these asylum seekers? Now, anybody who knows the Israeli history with refugees, let me take you just for a moment back.
And here again, we have to put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the table.
The United Nation that handles refugees around the world has one main agency for refugees.
It's the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
However, the only refugee people that the UNHCR does not handle are the Palestinians.
They have their own you, UNrun refugee or their own organisation.
So the State of Israel really never had.
To deal with the issues of refugees because you UNWRA was dealing with Palestinians
and others did not come to Israel throughout our 70 years of independence.
Everybody remembers when Menachem Begin was the Prime Minister.
There was this ship of refugees coming from Vietnam with 60 people on board.
So we welcomed them then during the Yugoslavian war.
We had some Bosnians youngsters coming, nothing less than a few hundreds came to Israel over the years.
So once these Eritreans and Sudanese started to arrive to Israel, there was no system within the state of Israel of dealing with refugees.
So the United Nation did that for us for several years.
And what the state of Israel decided to do after jailing them for a short time was to give all those entering and seeking asylum,
a group temporary protection, which means you cannot deport them, but they do not get the rights of refugees.
And that means they cannot work. They don't have social benefits.
They don't have health insurance. The main right is that they cannot be deported.
Okay. Now, when you think about it and you all know the refugee convention of refugee status is is something that is examined on an individual basis.
A person goes in and his or her story is examined not because they come from a certain country they automatically get,
but they have to be persecuted personally. Now, here, what the state of Israel said.
If you come from Sudan, you get a group protection or if you come from Eritrea.
So we're not really trying to understand your personal story.
So that is actually the status of the thousands of thousands of African asylum seekers that live right now in Israel.
Now, what's interesting to see that from 2006 onwards, politics of identity were really in place.
And for the first time in the history of Israel, an African refugee sector was developed and it was developed first by their own initiative.
They initiated groups and associations, and they knew that the discourse of human rights,
but also the Israeli civil society, extended an open hand to this new African refugee seekers.
One of the main issues that developed was due to the fact that most of the African refugees,
about 50% of the live in the slums of Tel-Aviv in the southern parts of the city,
the southern parts of the city, the slums of Tel Aviv, were the weakest Jewish population lives.
So what really happened is what happens all over the world in neighbourhoods of refugees or neighbourhoods of newcomers,
the lower or the low class of the locals meets the new migrants.
And there's a lot of tension and friction over resources, over space, over legitimacy and so on.
So that's really one of the main issues that are now on the table where we can see that there is a clash between two underprivileged groups,
the local, the Jewish Israelis and the others, the African asylum seekers.
What's truly interesting, because I'm I have a broad perspective because I've been studying African migration to Israel for almost 20 years is to see
the difference between the discourses and the whole conduct where the first cohort of African migrants from West Africa,
the labour migrants, they hardly spoke about their rights to migrate to Israel.
They hardly used the Jewish history in order to gain legitimacy in Israel.
They didn't do that.
However, the new cohort of of African asylum seekers really knows the history of the Jewish people, uses it in its plea for asylum,
and also very, very well acquainted with the rights that they are supposed to get through the Refugee Convention.
So it's interesting to see that. Another interesting thing to see is the political organisation of African asylum seekers in Israel.
In the past,
through three or four years they managed to rally huge demonstrations with thousands and thousands of asylum seekers and also thousands of Israelis.
This is one of the issues that the Israeli civil society is really being split, but very, very active, pro and against the very, very active.
And for people who know the Israeli civil society, which usually is very indifferent.
To most issues in other places are very interesting.
It's it's at least intriguing to learn about it.
I think the 2012 is really the changing point.
First of all,
the group protection on South Sudanese was lifted because South Sudan became independent and thousands of South Sudanese were returned home.
The border was the border was completed, as I said before.
And the state of Israel constructed a new prison in the desert called Whole Lot, which literally means sand.
And people who started entering Israel or refused to exit Israel were sent to unlimited time to Holland.
So people who were seeking asylum were facing a dire situation.
Either you go to a third country, i.e. Uganda, Rwanda, you don't go back to your own home or you're going to prison to an unlimited time.
And this is the dilemma that most of them are facing right now.
And parallel to the legal decrees that the state of Israel issued in order to stop new ones from coming and to
encourage those who were to to leave was instigating a hate debate hate debate against what was called infiltrators.
And because, as I said before,
infiltrators that are symbolically related and linguistically related and ideologically related to Palestinian terrorist.
Once you use this word in the Hebrew language,
immediately there is a whole world of association that rises that truly is not linked to issues of asylum seekers and refugees.
So as we're speaking right now from February 1st, 2018,
the option for young men with no family that come from Eritrea and Sudan is either
to leave to Rwanda and Uganda with $3,500 or to be jailed it unlimited time.
And this really raises a lot of moral questions, legal questions,
questions about the identity of the state of Israel and where are we going with the situation of African asylum seekers or asylum seekers in general.
Thank you for openness, of which is going to ask us to tell us what happens to them when they get to these third countries.
That's the quote that I started with is is a quote of one of the Eritreans who went to Uganda and has no life there.
I mean, I'll go back and I'll ask the question, why would you deport an Eritrean to Uganda?
Because he's black and they're black because you have good relation with the president and you can sell these
people and pay $5,000 per person to the Ugandan government or the Rwandan or whatever government would agree.
What is the the ideology and ideology behind it or the legal frame behind it?
That's something that I really don't have an answer. But what I do have an answer is they are sent back not to their immediate death.
That would be really a demagogic way of saying it. But they're sent to a country that is poor, that is struggling with its own issues.
It has at least Uganda and Rwanda have over a million refugees within their country.
They have no net of support. They have no extended family, a very weak civil society, not very competent UNHCR officers.
So how are they going to manage? And that's a huge question.
And what our research has shown, the one that I started and a lot of my students have kept going on with this research,
is that a lot of them just go back into the refugee cycle and try and migrate via Libya, the Mediterranean to Europe.
Some make it and some die en route.
So that is, you know, what's really happening.
Let's turn to the question, though.
Why do the well-educated initial migrants go to Israel?
I mean, like surely they would have a good time. But only it would have had good prospects in their own country.
No one is in the when the end is not what you should to do with infiltration of law.
You mentioned enemy states, but these aren't any mistakes, are they?
Okay, I'll start with your first question.
It it's a huge enigma in many ways and a very simple question in other ways.
Let's say someone I met, Ghanaian doctors, MDs that made in Ghana between 200 and $300 a month coming to Israel.
They would make between a thousand and 1500 per month as house cleaners.
So it was truly within this first batch of of migrants.
It was a, you know, a classical labour migrant that you just improve your your financial status.
And that's between a doctor and a housecleaner.
Now, let alone when you think about a housewife or someone who is only has a bachelor degree that comes from Ghana, Nigeria.
So the gap between what he made back home and what he can make working as a housecleaner in in in Tel Aviv or in London.
You know, this this huge amount of money is is is a great attraction for them.
So that's for your first question. The second question about the infiltration law in Sudan,
where at least 20,000 asylum seeker claims from came from, is considered an enemy country to Israel.
So the infiltration law does apply to them. However, it doesn't apply to Eritreans and definitely not to people who seek asylum.
Yeah. What's the language? The language.
These moments come with other languages. They come with Israel in another language, and then they're going back to a country of another.
No, it's true. Well, most of them do manage either with English in Israel or they study basic Hebrew.
They study basic Hebrew. And those coming from Eritrea that speak Tigrinya,
they can communicate with Ethiopian Jews that came from the northern part of Ethiopia and also speak Tigrinya.
But most of them either learn very quickly Hebrew or they speak in English.
Yeah. Now when they go back to when they knock back, when they are deported to Uganda, Rwanda, you're right.
Again, it's either English or. No, Uganda and Rwanda.
It's English. Yeah. No need.
Now, two questions. First of all, I remember when I lived in the South until I mean, I used to hear all these people around me speaking.
And the 111 day I heard Nigerian Nigerians speak and rant about their neighbours.
Spoken English. I could finally understand what's going on around me.
And I realised that the relations between subgroups are transposed and others are not always perfect.
Right. So since then, I've been wondering what's what's really the relations.
That's I mean, I mean, obviously it varies and but it's there is anything anyway to summarise.
Yeah, that's that's okay. That's a really, really, really interesting and intriguing phenomena.
When the African migration African migrants were few, hundreds and few thousand, there was very much an African identity.
Okay. They came from the African continent.
We had churches that had Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, which were French speaking, Sierra Leone and others.
But once the community grew, there were fractions based on nationality and then based on ethnicity.
Okay, that would be one thing. Then when the African asylum seekers came,
then on the one hand there was this black African identity and on the other hand we are not they, they are others.
So you would see that. But you know, you see that amongst Jews.
You see that amongst, you know, veteran migrants versus new migrants, upper class migrants versus lower class migrants.
So these divisions did appear. However, now, when when there is this these African infiltrators, it, you know, said to hospitals, bye bye, bye bye,
some politicians or right wing activists, then they don't make a distinction and everybody that is black is hurt, including Ethiopian Jews.
Okay. So, yeah, she had another question.
I thank you so much for your time, but since I got here, I actually saw it's all so personal that I,
I got to to discuss this issue with many, many students who are working on the migration and migration studies and refugee studies here.
And, and, you know, I could put in a great story in a much broader framework.
And and it is clear that other countries, such as Italy and Greece are facing problematic situations as well.
And it seems as if so.
I was wondering if you could say a few words about how Israel is positioned and reaction to Nazi Germany and,
you know, strong countries were able to accept refugees.
But yeah, if we we're in February 2018, Israel has 37,000 Africans seeking asylum.
That's it. Not more, not less. I think that the state of Israel is strong enough to grant them temporary residency
and in the time perceived their refugee status determination applications properly.
Those who would be granted refugee status, according to the United Nations Convention,
should remain in the country as long as the situation in their country has not changed and there is still danger to their lives.
Those who are not eligible to the status, then it's a whole different story.
And then the state of Israel has the moral and the legal right to deport or to find a solution.
But 37,000 African asylum seeker is not a threat, neither to the Jewish nature or character of the state of Israel, nor to its democratic.
And I think it's our obligation to accept them as long as their their lives is in danger if they're returning.
But that's what I think. So, yeah. I'm just so it's it's I mean and I agree.
Yes. No, no. The question is,
if we if we can compare the the the official statements of Israel to other European countries such as Italy and Greece and their policy as well,
because from what I understand that it's these refugees are jailed.
As well for and are not the refugees, the asylum seekers.
Once you are a refugee, you're not due. But listen, all these countries have taken in a certain number of asylum seekers and refugees.
They they already have taken. So their policies that are being constructed now are poss taking in.
I mean, they're looking at the future. Israel has not taken its share in this global refugee migration cycle.
And I think that once it will take its share, then it can have more stricter regulation.
Voice of the new asylum seekers whether coming from Africa from other countries.
Do you live here and on the actual legal system of. Thanks, because there has been a system set up.
My understanding is I volunteered for a while because my understanding there was that there's actually a very
professional system and the claims go up to the desk of the minister and the minister just refuses to sign.
And in many cases, I'll I'll I'll go from the end point back up until today, Israel recognised 12 countries as refugees.
That's it out of about 30 or so thousand applications.
How did they choose this structure? They had to have the worst horrific stories, A and B, they had to have a very, very good legal advice.
And most of them were victims of human trafficking and atrocities that were that they suffered in the Sinai Desert from the Bedouin people.
But only 12, that's it. The 12th was recognised last week.
So that shows that a the system is extremely strict.
I mean, you can't even count it in percentage wise.
It's 0.037 recognition rate, whereas Greece has the lowest recognition rate and I think it's 1.5%.
Okay. Most Eritreans in Europe it's about 70% recognition.
Sudanese, it's about 55% recognition in their applications to Israel by no means no.
Now, as I said before, in the beginning it was the UNHCR who did the process and then the state of Israel took over in 2009 and 2013.
And there is a professional team, but it's very small, limited number of people,
and they just can't cope with the number of of requests that take time to issue.
And then when they do process it, usually the they they just reject the requests.
Yeah. And how many people even get to process claims?
Okay. Up until today, about 7000, I think African refugee claims were processed in about the same number of Ukraine claims of refugees Israel had.
Israel had in the past four years, about 25,000 Ukraine and Moldavian and other excuses for people seeking asylum in our country.
And most of them were rejected and deported back to Ukraine, not to a third country.
Yeah, that's something that a lot of people don't speak about. Yeah.
You had just to give commenting on that an observation and then a question.
And my impression is with the immigration and so, you know,
I think Brexit the Trump election you know on the long you go that that there has not been a distinction legal and illegal that seems to be missing.
You know whichever side you. Not the same.
I suspect there is a difference between legal and illegal.
And the question, the other things that you looked at, things like cultural differences.
And because it's easy to say after you get a move back or something like that, but I mean,
that Eastern Europe and the things there are profound cultural differences that I think we we pick up very quickly.
I mean, I think there are languages, for instance, in which is no word for thank you, because the idea of grace is just not there.
You know, heaven doesn't makes seem to shine sensational the just that the unjust.
But that is not an idea that didn't in the culture.
Well, you know there are lots of little things like that that that you sit back and say, but my suspicion is that they do play into this somewhere,
even if it's only the level of what you do, like know, living in a favela with your neighbours.
Okay. As to your first question about legal status.
To the best of my knowledge,
there are hardly any refugees that enter a country with a legal document prior to their entry and prior to their seeking asylum,
i.e., any crossing of borders is by definition illegal.
Okay, so when you speak about refugees and then then once you cross the border, you cross it illegally.
Once you are in the country that you're seeking asylum, you can process papers and a request for asylum.
So there is no a pre journey, a refugee visa.
There are hardly any pre journey. So each and every asylum seeker in the world has gone through a process of being illegal in a certain country.
Okay. So that is one thing. Once you process your papers, you are in a very specific legal situation where you are seeking asylum.
Now, countries around the world have different rules and regulations concerning this in-between status, but it is illegal status to seek asylum.
Then you seek it and either you get it or you're refused.
Then your legal status changes. So that's one thing.
The other thing is with migration in general, obviously people who overstay their visas,
whether it's a student visa or a working visa or any other visa, are illegally in the country that they are.
So of course, there is there is a distinction, and I hope that I made it clear, but all those seeking asylum go through a phase of being illegal.
One point as to the question of of cultural refugee of of cultural differences obviously you.
Right. And because it was just an overview, I didn't go into it, but when I did my studies,
I truly went into the specificities of ethnic and sub ethnic identities.
However, in these kind of discourses,
people tend to generalise and even politicians and policy would like say all those coming from this country or that country.
However, the Refugee Convention really speaks about the individual person,
and that's exactly why the convention is so strict about processing the request based on your individual story,
your individual cultural background, or why you were persecuted and so on, your gender and all that counts in that process.
Yeah, man. Sarah. So I have two questions.
The first one is, um, I'm wondering because we, we looked at the numbers.
Numbers are striking the, the difference between the numbers.
But I'm wondering if there is a defining moment there in mind where those people who came from, uh, refugees or asylum seekers to infiltrators or.
Or some defining moments apart from the huge number rising up.
Hmm. The first one. And then the second one.
So, based on my familiarity with your earlier work, I'm wondering if you have any when you were doing this, when you doing it's been working for you,
have any thoughts and you have specific attention now towards these people's spiritual and religious, uh, experiences.
And if you do have insights into, into that, do they kind of stay more in the kind of in the back stage of your study?
Or do they do they become part of those that you make on of immigration issues?
Okay. It's interesting the issue of numbers and I put back the chart with the numbers when they started to come to Israel in 2007,
the then prime minister, I think it was one month gave or acknowledged 500 asylum seekers from Sudan and gave them temporary residency in Israel.
And again, this was 500 more were were gaining that status a few years later.
And just recently, the government issued another thousand of a temporary status for those coming from Darfur and South Sudan,
the few remaining from South Sudan.
So, yes, they're they're the numbers, the change in the discourse between refugee survivors of the genocide in Darfur,
which were very common in the first few years, completely eliminated from the discourse today.
And it's infiltrators and black infiltrators and cancer and so on.
And now because of the protests, the government is saying, no, no, no,
we are landing or extending a merciful hand to some, to true refugees, to survivors of the genocide.
And here are 1000 more visas, but the vast majority are still related to US infiltrators.
As to the second question.
It's interesting because I who sit in the churches, that was the first thing I was looking there, spiritual life of the Eritreans and Sudanese.
And this was interesting because they were younger. They were it's a different Christianity.
It's the Eastern Christianity. It's very similar to the Greek Orthodox Church is the Ethiopian Eritrean church.
They did go to the Ethiopian church in Jerusalem and pray there.
I mean, they didn't create their own Christianity, but they didn't celebrate their religiosity as strong as the African migrants that came from Ghana.
In Nigeria, this Sudanese, it's more complex because those coming from Darfur are Muslims.
Now they quickly realised that if they are going to celebrate their Muslim identity,
that would be the end of any merciful and humanitarian gesture toward them within the state of Israel.
Because not only that, they're black infiltrators, Sudanese, they're also Muslims.
So that was something that was too much to celebrate in the public arena.
So they do practice their their Islamic identity, if they wish, mainly within their private homes.
I have one of my graduate students who has been working on Sudanese asylum seekers that live in Arab villages in the Galilee and work there.
It's, it's, it's several dozens. But it's interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and how, how are they received by the Muslim and Palestinian?
It's an excellent question. You know, the genocide in Darfur was instigated by Arab Muslims against black Muslims and the issue of race was playing.
There are not religiosity. And the Darfurian blacks hate the Arab Muslims because they are responsible for the genocide.
Now they come to Israel and it's Arab Muslims. Okay, so there is a huge animosity.
However, when they were seeking life and trying to get away from Tel Aviv, they did go.
To the Arab villages. They are treated as blacks and they are called Zanjeer, which is a derogatory term for blacks within the Arab language zenwatch,
which is a word also used to describe slaves in an ancient time.
So here it's race that plays rather than religious identity.
Yes. First I have a vignette and then I have a couple of questions.
When I was in high school. 1997, 1998, when I was in Israel, I was already told that if my parents sent me to the American school,
my best friends was the son of the Thai ambassador,
and only now I realise why his father was so busy all the time, because this was the height of Thai worker phenomenon.
Now in Israel, because all I remember is his father being very stressed out, you know, rushing from one meeting to the other in suits.
Two interrelated questions that aren't so much about the African migrants themselves and more about
the reception of this whole crisis was with the Israeli public or maybe also the broader public.
The first is, I think this subject came up a couple of weeks ago.
We had another guest here is that I tend to see a lot of the Israelis that for one reason or another are not particularly
juiced up about injustices against Palestinians who become extremely involved in the African migrant crisis,
which obviously has a different kind of resonance on the scale of morality, which is part of it, I think is, you know, conflict fatigue.
But I'm wondering first why it is that it seems to be easier for Israelis in some way to get involved with this and not with that,
although there is obviously across a big population of activists who work on both causes, etc.
And the second was I saw that you had an a poster up there that said Black Lives Matter.
And one of the things that I've been very interested in in this new project I'm working on that I'll tell you about more is really about why,
you know, today in the diaspora you can't be a Zionist and Black Lives Matter, but here they are, you know,
specifically mobilising the tropes of this international, you know, international movement for their cause.
And I'm wondering how that's received abroad, whether, you know,
activists of Black Lives Matter have seized on this issue or are they indifferent
because it's within the state of Israel and they generally do not see a way of,
you know, collaborating on projects that deal with the state of Israel. As to your first question, that's a huge issue to be explored.
And that is why I in the beginning of my talk, at least twice, I said that it is related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
And a lot of people in Israel opt not to relate to it.
But this is not the only issue that a lot of Israeli activists make.
You know, how do you make them feel from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and adopt issues of human right and liberal left,
liberal, but turning a blind eye to the Palestine?
I think that being a human rights activist vs of the African migration is less threatening to a lot of
Israelis than being a right wing and a left wing activist vis a vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But that's that's what I you know, I would that would be a general.
Do you think the social cost is different? I mean, it seems to me that my friends who are involved in the African migrant movement
are not paying the same social cost as friends who are on the left in Israel.
Regarding right now, anybody who's who's saying anything against the Israeli government is being labelled as a leftist.
So it doesn't really matter. What is the cause that you're adopting to to criticise.
You are labelled. But maybe yes, the price is much higher.
As to the Black Lives Matter, that was a one time sign that I saw that I thought was very, very interesting.
I don't think that the movement in the U.S. or the UK has picked up,
but I think that the African asylum seekers are so well aware of all the discourses of black
rights around the world that they thought that if they would pick up that kind of discourse,
that would matter to others that yeah, certainly possible black.
My last question to a related question.
I guess, one of the things that is recurring here, I guess it's still in the air is the question.
So what would be in your eyes, the uniquely Israeli aspect of this story?
Because it is you just you insisted on showing that it is a global story.
And there are two ways, I think,
to understanding it would be the sort of two related questions how is the Israeli case illuminated the complexity of European history,
or do you mean the contemporary story? And how is it illuminated when compared to other Middle Eastern countries,
other Middle Eastern countries absorbing any of the stuff, which is how they do of how do they cope with that?
Okay. So first of all, I think that it's it's a local story.
It's both global and local. It has its global resonance, obviously, but Israel has its unique history.
And I think that due to the unique Israeli Jewish history,
I think Israel has to adopt a policy that is in some way different than other countries not going into one side.
I mean, it has to be, you know, both strict keeping and maintaining the state of Israel as a safe haven for the Jewish people.
At the same time, it has to use or to put into action the unique history of Jewish refugees.
So trying to find this path, which is neither on this side nor on that side, and keeps the Jewish state of Israel as a Jewish safe haven,
but being a safe haven to Jews because of our unique history,
we do have to be more sensitive to people who are running for their lives, who are victims of genocide.
So I think that that's where we are in a unique position.
And as to your second question, Turkey has over 1.5 million Syrian refugees.
Jordan has over 1.7, I think a million refugees.
Lebanon is a state of refugees. Egypt has several millions of refugees.
So in that sense, we are not unique. We are part of the Middle East.
And I didn't speak at all about the several hundred Syrian refugees that are in Israel, but that's a drop of it's really insignificant.
So, yes, we are part and we sometimes we want to be part of and other times we want to be unique.
And that's why it's such a global phenomena. Yes.
Well, I'm going to ask you a question which you've already answered in Egypt, general question that you do with Julius Caesar, 18 Arabs more and with.
It is this sort of seeing that you are there.
So ten people somewhere in Syria sitting at this time talking about refugees from the war in Syria, not us talking.
Well, he he said some the European Western, which tends to although it's happening really it doesn't concern Middle East population.
I'm saying, are there people like that who are in the meetings who really think that the whole question of refugee European that's.
I know it's a yeah.
If you slide, I think that if you go on the net you will find a lot of human rights activists in all the countries around the Middle East,
but their lives are in misery and sometimes their lives is in danger.
And I. Yeah, and yet, in spite of their difficult situation, they struggle to change their the situation from within.
But thank God that at least in Israel and other places,
we live in a democracy and we can and should speak out and think also about the limits of democracy and the benefits of democracy.
When we see that in a democracy. Sorry, I don't want to go on about what's happening in Germany.
In Germany. I think in so many people.
Saudi Arabia got taken. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Of the fans of the Hajj, you know that we're standing all year long,
these air conditioned, beautiful tents which would be used to house a lot of people.
So no money. Yeah, sorry, don't do that.
It's confusing because until Gaza this happened, the state of Israel right now it's eight point something million and what called elections.
Israel has one of the highest fertility rate within the OECD countries.
And it's and you know, people say, yeah, it's it's like this, you know, 88 .8. something is both of them.
Yeah. Eight point something is those holding Israeli citizenship, both Jews and Arabs and migration.
Now, you know, oh, no, Jews who have migrated have an Israeli citizenship.
That's why they're counted within the 8.2 or three. Yeah, million.
Thank you so much. I should mention my new project.
The other case study is South Africa. The.