Just heard the BBC news
podcast where they "discovered" that Israel was deporting refugees
against their wishes to 3rd party countries.
Ignoring for now that
this is hardly a discovery: it has been a matter of public record for ages, and
worrying for those of us who care about Israel, but paraphrasing Abba Eban
"Israel rarely misses an opportunity to miss and opportunity".
We could have shown the
world a model for how to care for refugees. For relatively little social or
financial cost we could have absorbed them, provided education and security,
and offered them to stay or move and develop as they wished. We even have the
infrastructure for immigrant absorption up and ready, with Merkazai Klita,
government funded language courses, university discounts, etc.
And the risks would have
been so low. We have built a strong barrier in Sinai against more coming, so
such simple kindness would not have encouraged more arrivals.
Unlike potentially
hostile Syrian refugees the Eritreans clearly are not.
But instead of doing our
international duty, and doing what is right in our own eyes, we treat them and
continue to treat them terrible, and now we get even worse PR.
When will we learn?
