Month: March 2009

 “I went home with nothing,” Rosemarie Cote, a former client of Fokara’s, says.

During a phone interview from her home in the Philippines, Cote recounts her experience with Fokara. She had been working in Israel without a visa for eight years – sending her money back to the Philippines to support her seven children – when she met Fokara. According to Cote, Fokara promised her a new employer and a new visa.

“He took my money – all my savings – and he didn’t do anything,” she says.

That is, besides giving her a piece of paper.

“He told me that it would protect me for 33 months, he told me I was safe,” Cote says.

But Cote was picked up two months later by Immigration Police. She was deported just days after Christmas.

Read the full story: Fokara’s law.

 

On March 10, Haaretz reported that Muhammad Fokara, an Israeli-Arab attorney, would be suing the state of Israel for over 800 million shekels on behalf of the Gazan family, Al Samooni. On March 11, however, Haaretz ran a second article stating that the Al Samooni family had only heard about the lawsuit from the media. Does the lawsuit exist? The Misrad HaMishpatim (Ministry of Justice) told Metro, “the case hasn’t yet been received by the attorney’s office.”

Read the full story: Fokara’s law.

 Fokara’s law

The Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2009

Pinto Baptist, an Indian worker currently living in Tel Aviv, was desperate for help in December of 2008. In India, he’d borrowed $9,000 from friends and family to pay the agency fees it cost to come to Israel to work. But when he arrived here, in July of 2007, Baptist found that no employment awaited him – he had been victimized by the flying visa scam.

Despite the fact that the job he’d come to Israel for didn’t exist, Baptist decided to remain here. He thought that finding work in Israel, where wages are higher than those in India, was the best way to pay back his deep debt, which was rapidly accumulating interest. He was also responsible for his wife and child in India – if he didn’t find a source of income, he explained, his family might become homeless.

“If I go back to my house with empty hands, what answer can I give my child and wife?” Baptist says.

He needed nothing short of a miracle – and when Baptist, a Christian, met attorney Muhammad Fokara just before Christmas in 2008, he thought he’d found one.

According to Baptist, Fokara said he could recover the $9,000 Baptist had lost. Baptist alleges that Fokara promised him he would be able to stay in Israel for five years.

“He also promised justice,” Baptist adds.

Continue reading “Fokara’s law”

 

Repeated requests to interview a representative of the Indian embassy in Tel Aviv about the problems facing Indian foreign workers in Israel were declined. Sharad Srivastava, First Secretary (Culture, Consular, and Publicity), offered the brief explanation that the Indian embassy in Israel has little to do with foreign workers. He said “we’re not like the Filipino embassy” which is large and has employees that deal specifically with helping Filipino foreign workers.

Read the full story: Stranded mid-aviv.

Stranded Mid-Aviv

Outlook India, March 16-23, 2009 print edition

Lily Devi paid 8000 dollars to make the journey from India to Egypt so that she could pass into Israel illegally via the southern border. The Indian man she paid had promised that work would await her on the other side. Instead, he abandoned her in the desert town of Eilat—leaving Lily, who doesn’t speak English or Hebrew, alone.

Lily recently appeared at the Tel Aviv office of the Migrant Workers’ Hotline, a NGO that assists foreign workers in the multitude of problems they face in Israel. She was accompanied by an Indian man, Yahm, who served as a translator for her. But Yahm and Lily were greeted with the news that there was little the NGO could do to help her—she didn’t know the full name of the agent who dropped her in Israel, and she didn’t know what employment agency, if any, he worked for. Lily disappeared back into the masses of foreign workers which are currently estimated to number well over 300,000—a majority of which are illegal.

Yahm says that Lily, deep in debt, wants to remain in Israel so that she can find work and repay her 8000 dollar loan. According to Yahm, Lily is hiding from Immigration Police in a friend’s apartment in hopes of avoiding deportation. He explains that he doesn’t know how to contact her—Lily is someone he met in passing at the Tachana Merkazit, Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.

Continue reading “Stranded Mid-Aviv”