Displaced Africans face an uphill struggle for rights and services
Israel is largely a nation of immigrants. However, as many African refugees discover, some foreigners are less welcome than others.
First-time visitors to Tel Aviv are often greeted by an unexpected sight. In Levinsky Park, immediately outside the city’s Central Bus Station, dozens of young African men hang around at almost all hours. They are not simply loitering; most are refugees from war-torn North African nations with nowhere else to go. They endured terrible hardship before arriving in Israel, but found little sympathy or support when they arrived here.
Their problems are also far from over.
Tel Aviv’s African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) is one organization working on their behalf. The experiences of the group’s program manager, Nic Schlagman, and his close friend, Mike Brhane, are telling examples of two sides of this struggle.
Brhane’s parents were born in the region of Ethiopia that is now Eritrea. They participated in the rebellion against the Ethiopian government and later found themselves in a refugee camp in Sudan, where Brhane was born. When he was 4, the family relocated to Las Vegas. When he was 18, he went to Eritrea to visit family, but was arrested and forced into the military. He spent “around 8 or 9 years” in the army. It seemed that there was no way out, but eventually he was able to escape to Israel.
He came here because he heard it was “the same rules as America,” Brhane said. “So I said, OK, I can live freely there and nobody will force me to do anything, I can live my life as a normal human being.”
He is now in stuck in limbo, like many African refugees here. He is in an ambiguous legal situation with no clear way forward, struggling to get by. He is stateless. He has neither a visa nor a passport. And, perhaps worst of all, Brhane has no legal right to work. Although he grew up in Las Vegas, he never received citizenship and cannot get help from the American government.
While his is an irregular example, it is not surprising. The ARDC deals with these issues on a daily basis, said the British-born Schlagman, who made aliyah six years ago. The mostly foreign, mostly volunteer staff runs a shelter for women, single mothers and children. They provide legal advice, language lessons and psychotherapy to trauma victims, all with funding from the United Nations and the European Union.
They see the rewards of their work daily. Brhane expressed his appreciation, saying, “My best friend now is Nic, and all the people in the ARDC helped me in their own ways.”
They struggle, however, with an obstinate government and a generally unsympathetic and uninformed public.
Like Brhane, most of the refugees are young men from Sudan or Eritrea who left to escape violence, persecution or forced military service. Even the journey is difficult, and many do not make it to Israel. Many are caught by Egyptian police and military, some are held hostage in “torture camps” in the Sinai and North Africa run by smugglers, and some do not survive at all. Some are turned away at the border or immediately deported. Despite all this, it is very difficult for them to get legal recognition as refugees. Schlagman said, “Regularly the Ministry of Interior or Prime Minister says that a tiny percentage of these people are actually refugees. Our experience would seem to say it’s not true.”
According to Amnesty International, less than 200 people have ever been recognized as refugees in Israel. There are currently about 50,000 refugees here. This gives the nation that was founded as a state of refuge one of the lowest rates of refugee recognition in the world.
Brhane has experienced this first hand. “The government won’t allow me to be a refugee. I gave them everything,” he said.
Although Israel is overburdened and understandably reluctant, Schlagman pointed out what he sees as a deliberate effort on the part of the government to deny proper treatment and asylum to many of those who need it. “The most obvious bit is reframing the name of how these people are called in the press, from being refugees to infiltrators and migrant workers,” said Schlagman. The term “infiltrators” is derived from the obscure Law of Infiltration, passed in 1954 in an effort to curb terrorism. Through a technicality, this law can be applied to, and used against, refugees.
Aside from the problems with status determination, there are other significant legal difficulties for refugees here. Visas are a constant concern involving the threat of deportation. Most don’t have the right to work, have no right to welfare and only have access to health care in life-threatening emergencies. There are only a few social workers available to help them with these issues, and there are no systems in place for treating torture victims.
The right to work is one of the most distressing problems for most of these young men. Brhane, who speaks three languages fluently, can no longer even find a temporary job. He had a job in Tel Aviv, but after government threats of fines and legal penalties, his employers could no longer keep him.
He said they told him, “Mike, we love you, you’re a good person, but we don’t want to lose our work permit.”
He expressed his frustration, saying, “I can’t even find my daily bread. You need to eat and live, right? You need shelter to stay warm so you won’t get sick or die. I don’t even have this. Nothing’s wrong with me. I have a mind. I have two hands and legs.”
There are several arguments commonly used by the government to justify this dismissive attitude towards the refugees. Most focus on the demographic, economic and social problems that the refugees could create. Schlagman has heard them all and remains unconvinced. “None of the arguments are very compelling to me, to be honest,” he said.
One common position-similar to arguments made in American politics-states that an illegal workforce will hurt the economy by taking low-paying jobs from Israelis. In response, Schlagman points out the fact that the government has issued 120,000 visas to foreign workers for jobs that Israelis aren’t interested in, more than twice the number of refugees currently here.
Many also argue that the influx of non-Jews threatens the Jewish majority. While this fear may be understandable, Schlagman believes that the Africans do not pose a legitimate threat. There are only roughly 50,000 refugees here, among a Jewish population of over 5 million.
Schlagman acknowledges the challenges faced by some urban areas, saying. “I think there is pressure on some neighborhoods with just a very different type of person living there, but that could be improved by improving their condition and rights they have.”
He criticizes government policies that have led to this situation. “It’s partly down to the government in terms of how it chooses to integrate new people who come here. People want to live close to one another because they feel more safe, but were they given a more welcome feeling from the state then they would move around the country a lot more.”
Schlagman believes that the issue is fundamentally religious. “For many people, when it comes down to it, this is the only Jewish country and non-Jewish people should go somewhere else. The majority of the population is just not interested in having any non-Jewish people here,” he said.
The ARDC, along with other groups like Amnesty International and the Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel, pursue a legal strategy to achieve their goals.
Schlagman is tentatively optimistic about their efforts. He said, “That’s where change happens, in the law, so our big focus is challenging the law.” He goes on to say, however, “It’s also about winning the minds of the people. Most people, if you get the opportunity to really sit and talk with them, and no one loses their temper, find it hard in the end not to feel somewhat sympathetic.”
Brhane takes a different tone. “My problems don’t even have an end. From the day I stepped into this land until now, I’m having problems my whole life,” he said. “The only reason I came to this country is to be free.”
Luke Tress is currently participating in the WUJS Israel Interns program. He is the New Voices Israel correspondent.
