Israel’s immigration policies – which are the most racist in the world as they restrict settlement in Israel to those of racially Jewish descent only – are being tested to the core in the resort city of Eilat.
Reports from Israel have revealed that illegal sub-Saharan African immigrants now make up 10 percent of the town’s population, numbering 5,000 out of the 55,000 strong population.
Thousands of Africans, mainly from Sudan but also from Eritrea, Somalia, Ivory Coast and Ghana, cross over the Israel-Egypt border every month.
Most try to reach Tel-Aviv, where the largest concentrations are to be found, but increasing numbers are draw to the holiday town of Eilat.
The situation in the town has now reached breaking point. Two weeks ago, the mayor, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, said he would take the government to court for not implementing the decision to build a new fence on the Egyptian border.
Mayor Halevi said there is “no guarantee that they are real refugees. And even if they have every right to be here, you can’t just push into Eilat 5,000 new people, without any connection to the place and without any planning.
“A few months ago, 55 new immigrants arrived here from Hungary. It took us half a year to plan together with the Jewish Agency how to prepare for their arrival, housing, jobs, schools, everything. Now I have to deal with a hundred new people arriving here every day and I simply have no resources to deal with them,” he said, vowing to root out what he called “infiltrators.”
He is also worried that the Africans will end up ruining the booming tourism industry.
“A town like Eilat needs a community at its heart, without that no tourists will want to come. Only a third of the illegal immigrants are working at the hotels, the rest are just kicking their heels, getting drunk and frustrated, becoming involved in petty crime and we don’t have any resource to deal with this.
“The whole identity of Eilat is being eroded because of the government’s inaction.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Israel the illegal African immigration problem has caused further consternation. Recently, 25 Tel Aviv rabbis have endorsed a new campaign to keep undocumented immigrants out of the city.
“[M]ay the efforts of those that toil to defend the Jewish character of the City of Tel Aviv be strengthened,” said one rabbi who had joined the push.
The religious leaders have also posted ads around the city reading: “We, the undersigned, neighbourhood and synagogue rabbis, warn the public of the Jewish law bans and dangers posed by renting out homes to these people!!!”
The campaign was started by neighbourhood residents and aims to prevent anyone from renting homes or apartments to immigrants illegally in the country.
One petition authored by the residents issued a rallying cry, saying they “will not let the neighbourhoods in which they grew up to turn into Sudanese neighbourhoods, something that has already happened to the Neve Sha’anan neighbourhood.”
City council member Binyamin Babayof, of the Shas party, has also been at the forefront of the movement. Shas is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish conservative party that supports incorporating biblical law into state law and rules as part of Israel’s governing coalition.
The campaign has cited rising crime rates, saying 40% of crimes have been committed by undocumented immigrants in areas where “these people” already live. With this daunting threat, the campaign’s supporters say they must isolate themselves against the entry of any more.
Last year, it was estimated that there were 200,000 illegal immigrants in all Israel, a significant number when it is considered that Israel’s population is in the region of 7,503,800.
Of that number only 75.4% are Jews (about 5,660,700 individuals), 20.3% are Arabs (about 1,523,900 inhabitants), while the remaining 4.3% (about 319,200 individuals) are defined as “others,” (family members of Jewish immigrants who were not registered at the Interior Ministry as Jews, non-Arab Christians, non-Arab Muslims and residents who do not have a religious classification).
* Further evidence of the racist nature of the Israeli state is obvious from the fact that the Interior Ministry in Tel Aviv keeps a list of Jews. Observers point out that the last state which kept a list of Jews was Nazi Germany, which Jews universally hate.
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Israel doesnt limit its immigration to those of Jewish descent only. This article is poorly researched. It grants Jews and non-Jewish refugees automatic citizenship. If you are non-Jewish and not a refugee you have to go through a long bureaucratic process in order to get citizenship, as do immigrants to any other country.
Israel should allow all races and religions to integrate into their homeland. Afterall, it is gods country and it should all be shared. It is the second melting pot of the world.