Three years ago I led a congregational tour of Israel and we spent a morning walking around South Tel Aviv near the old bus station to see how 53,000 Eritrean and Sudanese Asylum seekers were living. These mostly male Africans had fled on foot from two of the most violent and brutal dictatorships and entered Israel through the open frontier with Egypt. Since then, Israel has built a fence to stop the flow of refugees and few have come since.

Today, 45,000 remain in Israel without having been granted asylum. Israeli government policy has granted asylum only to a handful of people, and built a detention center in the Negev. The place is called Holot (meaning “sand” in Hebrew) and though “open,” inmates must sign in every evening, cannot work and because of its remote location, have nowhere to go. Israel has done everything it can to encourage these people to leave the country, and 8000 complied. Those who returned to Sudan were likely arrested,  interrogated and/or killed. None returned to Eretria where they faced certain execution. Most fled on rafts to Europe, and their fates are unclear.

The Israeli government claims that most came to Israel for jobs, but all evidence suggests that this is not accurate.

Today in Jerusalem, ARZENU, the worldwide Reform Zionist organization, met with four individuals deeply involved in efforts to assist political asylum seekers.

Mutasim Ali came to Israel from Darfur in 2009 after his village was attacked. He spent 18 months in Holot, is an intelligent natural born leader and has served as the Executive Director of the African Refugee Development Center. Though Mutasim loves Israel, his deepest desire is to return to Sudan to help his people once a new government takes over there.

Sivan Carmel, an accomplished Israeli attorney, is the Director of the Israel office of HIAS, the international Jewish nonprofit organization that protects refugees.

Elliot Glassenberg is the Director of International Communication at the BINA Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture in Tel Aviv and is a teacher at the BINA Secular Yeshiva.

Steve Israel is an activist member of Jerusalem’s largest Reform synagogue, Kol Haneshama, who has helped organize his congregation to assist refugees.

The three Israelis of the group said that they have taken such a strong interest in Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers because they are the most vulnerable people in Israel and it is a Jewish ethical mandate to protect the vulnerable. As Jews who have long experienced the suffering of the refugee, and as a Jewish state that has vast experience in absorbing refugees, they say that we Jews ought to be taking care of this relatively small number of Africans and helping them until they are able to return safely to their home countries.

ARZENU has drafted a resolution to be brought to the World Zionist Congress this week to address this human tragedy. The resolution includes the following:

“The World Zionist Organization calls upon the State of Israel to change its policy towards asylum seekers and refugees seeking protection in Israel so as to adhere to relevant international law and particularly the refugee convention that ‘No contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his/her life or freedom would be threatened.’

The World Zionist Organization calls on the Government of the State of Israel to allow asylum seekers living in Israel  to contribute to the Israeli economy and society until their status is appropriately adjudicated, rather than forcing them to be housed in the Negev at significant government expense or pressuring them to relocate to unfamiliar and unsafe third countries.

The World Zionist Organization calls on the Government of the State of Israel to cease the inhumane and degrading treatment of asylum seekers in the Holot center and to allow asylum seekers to be released in accordance with the Supreme Court decision of this summer…”

None of the speakers wished to embarrass Israel over this issue, but Israel’s government policy of not granting asylum to legitimate asylum seekers is not only counter to international law, but is immoral and “un-Jewish” and ought to be changed.

I asked our speakers why the government opposition has not gone on record about this issue, and they responded that African refugees it is not a high priority issue when considering all the others issues of security, terror, Iran, international relations, and the economy that Israel faces.

Nevertheless, it is a fundamental Jewish ethical principle L’hagen al hapalit – To defend the refugee” and it is time that Israel change its policies and do so.

Those wishing to support these asylum seekers may write directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of the Knesset.

Gidi is a handsome 53 year-old Israeli taxi driver whose grandfather made aliyah from Iraq in the 1920s. Loquacious and charming, he “treated” me to a 50-minute Hebrew monologue on the situation in Israel in light of the Iran agreement, the multiple Palestinian stabbings of innocent Israelis in recent days, President Obama’s alleged weakness and the Democratic Party in America, and his frustration in light of current realities.

Gidi is smart and well-informed, a no-nonsense practical man who believes in a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but sees no way to get there because of the Palestinian propensity to  blame Israel for all their problems and take no responsibility for themselves and their children.

I didn’t raise the issue of Israeli co-responsibility for the logjam because I wanted to hear his views. I just listened, a lot!

While driving up the mountain to Jerusalem, Gidi got so aggravated by the recent stabbings of old Jewish women climbing onto buses and of Palestinian children slicing up Israeli Jewish children that he took both hands off the wheel and gesticulated angrily about the immoral character of these terrorists.

Thankfully, he grabbed the wheel just before I begged him to watch out for the cars careening alongside us.

He was right on so many counts. Something is very wrong within Palestinian society that glorifies shaheeds (martyrs) and leaves no alternative for hero worship for children other than people who want to murder Israelis on the streets. The refusal of the Palestinian Authority to prepare the Palestinian population for peace with Israel in a two-state solution and to educate its children effectively about the humanity of Israelis, is a serious failure of the PA.

As a middle-eastern man through and through, Gidi cannot understand President Obama’s belief in the efficacy of negotiation vis a vis Iran and other fundamentalist murderers in the Middle East. He kept praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an aggressive actor.

Though I agreed that these groups are bitter enemies of the Jewish people and the west, I argued that the alternative to the Iran negotiations (no negotiations) would have led immediately to Iranian nuclear capability, but Gidi doesn’t trust the Iranians as far as he can spit. He shook his head as I spoke, as if to say, “My American friend –you don’t understand!” I repeated back to him Reagan’s old adage, “Don’t trust – verify!”

I explained that I believe that Obama would have, as a last result, attacked Iranian nuclear sites if no agreement had come about and should Iran move quickly to build a bomb, but Gidi didn’t believe me. I told him that Obama is not a pacifist and had used military force in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan (remember Osama bin Laden), and Libya. And then I reminded Gidi, as if he needed to be reminded having fought himself in Lebanon and served two years in Hebron, that war always brings  unintended consequences. He agreed, and so I asked him what he thought would happen if either Israel or the United States would attack Iran given that Hezbollah has built an extensive tunnel system into Israel far greater than anything we discovered coming out of Gaza, and has 100,000 Iranian missiles aimed at the heart of Tel Aviv?

He agreed that there would be war, but that Israel would prevail. I asked, “at what cost, and isn’t negotiation that brings effective results always better than war?”

Only in Israel could I expect to have such a conversation with a taxi driver! That is part of what I love about this country.

Gidi finally asked me what I’m doing in Israel, and I explained that I am a delegate of ARZA at the World Zionist Congress to begin on Tuesday in Jerusalem. He asked, “So – what will come from 500 Jews talking?”

Good question. This my first WZC Congress, but I told him that the WZC is about the important heart-connection that exists between world Jewry and the state of Israel, and about Jews from everywhere in the world helping Israel to grow in strength and preserve its Jewish character and democracy.

Finally, he said: “And it’s about money! Isn’t it!?”

As I indicated, Gidi is a smart guy. Yes – There is a lot of money at stake for the different world Zionist groups in Israel, and because ARZA is the largest delegation coming from the United States (54 seats) combined with our allies in ARZENU world-wide, we hope to not only promote Israel’s democratic and progressive liberal values, but to gain greater influence on key committees and a greater share of the financial pie for our progressive religious and social justice movement in Israel which still receives no funds from the Israeli government.

My ARZENU leadership has asked all our delegates NOT to ride buses or to walk alone in Jerusalem given the last week’s knife-attacks, and though I am personally comfortable doing so, I promised my wife and sons I would abide by their recommendations and take taxis, and hopefully to meet more Gidis.

This week’s Torah portion, by the way, is Lech Lecha – Go forth! And that is what we hope to do.

To be continued….
L’hitraot.