Al Jazeera English, March 7, 2011
Last week, as Israeli president Shimon Peres was calling a South Tel Aviv school to congratulate it for its role in Oscar-winning documentary, the state was preparing to expel 120 of the school’s students, including a twelve-year-old girl who starred in the film.
“Strangers No More” was produced and directed by American filmmakers Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. The film focuses on South Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin school, which is attended by children of African refugees and migrant workers. The film side-steps the subject of deportation and focuses, instead, on the story of three kids who adjust, successfully, to life in Israel.
Despite the fact that the film is American-made, Israelis have widely celebrated the Oscar win as their own.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs—the government body that, amongst other duties, actively promotes a positive image of Israel—was quick to add a congratulatory headline to its website. And Israeli president Shimon Peres called Bialik-Rogozin’s principal, Karen Tal, to remark that the school “had cast a beam of light on the country’s humanity.”
But, in reality, the picture is bleak. 400 children of migrants face imminent deportation, along with their parents. African refugees face growing violence in Israel. And as the government lauds “the country’s humanity”, some Israelis prepare to hide the kids and their families.
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On Sunday—the same day as “Strangers No More” won the Oscar—the Israeli media reported that the government had put its final touches on a detention facility at Ben Gurion International Airport where the children will be held as they await expulsion. A local news station ran footage of the jail, which is equipped with family games and includes drawings of Sponge Bob and Pooh Bear on the walls.
But, besides these images, the Interior Ministry won’t reveal additional details of the deportation. And Ronit Sela, the spokeswoman for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), points out that the Interior Ministry is obligated to publish its policies.
“Will children be separated from parents? Would a time limit be set for keeping a child in detention?” Sela said. “The authorities have refused to elaborate.”
Al Jazeera posed numerous detailed questions to the Interior Ministry, including: Will the children sit in jail before they are deported? What about the children who don’t have passports for their parents’ home country? And when, exactly, will the deportation begin?
But our questions received only a vague response.
“The Interior Minster [Eli Yishai] has clarified a number of times that he is determined to carry out the government decision…,” the spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry wrote.
She said that the first phase was naturalizing the children who met the government’s criteria, as determined in August of 2010. Since then, 701 minors have received legal status.
“In the coming weeks, the second half of the decision [the deportation] will be applied.”
Rotem Ilan, co-founder of Israeli Children—a non-governmental organization that has been fighting the deportation since it was first announced some 18 months ago—feared that the kids could face lengthy detentions before expulsion.
“It’s important to understand that most of these children don’t have passports,” she said. “Some don’t have documents because they weren’t born in their parents’ home country. Many of them are citizens of nowhere. And [obtaining passports] can take a long time.”
“It doesn’t matter how many decorations you put up, a jail is a jail. There’s no picture that can erase the trauma of deportation,” Ilan added.
“When all the newspapers talked about the Oscar, they used the word “us.” ‘We won the Oscar.’ But the second you start talking about the deportation, it’s “them,” she continued. “So [the children] aren’t Jewish. But they’re Israeli. And if we deport them, the moral stain will stay with us forever.”
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Activists and human rights groups also consider the planned expulsion unjust because many of the parents facing deportation are migrant laborers who arrived legally on Israeli-issued work visas. While Israel lacks laws regarding non-Jewish immigration, it revokes the visas of migrant workers who have children in Israel—a policy many critics have decried as inhumane.
“The deportation is a continuation of the state treating [migrant workers] as though they were machines,” Ilan remarked.
Some Israeli officials, including Yishai, call migrant workers and African refugees as a threat to the Jewish character of the state. Similar language is used against the country’s Palestinian population, a group referred to as a “demographic bomb.”
In 2003, then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Palestinian-Israelis a “demographic problem.” As the current Prime Minister, Netanyahu has extended this rhetoric to non-Jewish foreigners.
And this political climate is fostering more than the deportation.
Amongst other recent incidents, just two weeks ago, a Sudanese man was attacked in the center of Tel Aviv. In February, two Sudanese men were beaten and stabbed by a gang of Jewish youth. A police investigation found that the attack was racially-motivated.
And in mid-February, four Jewish teenagers stabbed a young Arab man to death in Jerusalem. The attackers did not know their victim and chanted “Death to Arabs.” The state initially gagged the case. Once the gag was lifted, the Israeli media marched lockstep with Jerusalem police, calling the stabbing a drunken brawl—despite the fact that witnesses disputed this version of events.
Two of the stars of “Strangers No More” are African asylum seekers, one from Darfur, the other from Eritrea.
While asylum seekers are safe from deportation—and this seems to be an acknowledgment of the fact that they are, indeed, refugees—Israel does not grant them any sort of status. Without work visas, African asylum seekers struggle to survive. And it is not uncommon to see asylum seekers, including those who have escaped genocide in Darfur, sleeping on the streets or in parks.
“These are the stars of the movie: children whose parents can’t work and a girl who is supposed to be held in jail,” Ilan remarked.
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South Tel Aviv schools were half empty last Sunday as parents, terrified of the immigration police, kept their children home.
Yigal Shtayim, a 44-year-old painter who lives in Tel Aviv, has been at the forefront of plans to hide the families facing deportation. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, the plight of migrant workers’ children has struck a deep personal chord. And when the expulsion was finalized in August of 2010, Shtayim was “very angry.”
“I wasn’t aware of any organizations working on the subject,” he said. “I just opened a Facebook group.” He titled the grassroots organization “The group for sheltering the 400 children to be deported from Israel” and included images of Nazi-era deportations of European Jews.
“I wanted everyone to look at this situation as a human condition and not something having to do with migration,” Shtayim said. “It was provocative and that was my intentions… It’s a pressure group.”
Over 2000 Israelis have joined Shtayim’s group. Hundreds are willing to open their homes to those facing deportation. The Kibbutz Movement has also offered facilities.
Hiding the children and their parents on the kibbutzim is the best option, Shtayim explains, because the Kibbutz Movement has empty houses and “a whole system to support the community… It’s better than having people as guests in flats.”
But Shtayim—who says he is waiting until the “last minute” to start hiding families—is hedging his bets. He keeps a long, detailed list of Israelis who are willing to help.
“‘Activists’ isn’t the right word for them,” he says. “They’re regular people.”
Some are parents with army-aged children who have their kids’ rooms ready to accommodate families. Landlords have stepped forward to offer empty properties to those facing deportation. A family in the north of Israel plans to donate two houses, rent-free, to the cause.
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What is less clear is whether or not Israelis will keep these promises. Activists and volunteers are somewhat paralyzed in the face of the Interior Ministry’s vague plans—the deportation was announced in July of 2009, postponed, finalized in August of 2010, slated to begin in October of 2010 and still, the details remain unclear.
And although the public is widely opposed to the deportation, it also seems exhausted—while a May protest against the deportation drew 10,000, less than 1000 turned up for a rally held on Friday.
Amongst those present was Esther Aikephae, the now-12-year-old star of “Strangers No More”, a thin girl with plaited hair. After her mother was murdered, Esther and her father fled South Africa out of fear for their lives.
Esther meets most of the government’s criteria for naturalization. She attends a state school and speaks fluent Hebrew. She entered Israel before the age of 13.
But because she and her father arrived four years ago—and the criteria applies to children who have been here for five years or more as of August of 2010—Esther faces deportation.
Speaking at Friday’s rally—where protesters held signs reading “Eli Yishai doesn’t deserve an Oscar”—Esther remarked, in fluent Hebrew, that she was “very happy” that “Strangers No More” won an Oscar. The award brought “honor to Israel and the city of Tel Aviv” she said.
But, she added, the state has “different plans” for her.
“I speak Hebrew, write Hebrew, and read Hebrew it without vowels… In the name of all the other children who find themselves in this position, I call on the state of Israel to let me stay.”
Referring then to an extremely evocative folk song that most Israeli school children know by heart, Esther pleaded, “We don’t have another country.”
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Another Sunday morning in South Tel Aviv—a week after the Oscar win, a week after images of the children’s’ jail at Ben Gurion International Airport hit the airwaves—and the streets remain quiet.
Christina Ongpin, a 35-year-old migrant worker from the Philippines, holds her daughter’s hand as she walks her to school. The little girl, who is almost four, wears a pink sweater. Her black hair is in pig tails.
Ongpin, eight months pregnant, says she is frightened. She has been since August. “But I try not to think about it,” she says.
Ongpin says that many of her friends are keeping their children at home. When asked if she has heard about the Israelis who are willing to hide families, Ongpin, like other mothers Al Jazeera spoke with on Sunday, answers that she has not.
And Ongpin refuses to hide.
“Because of my daughter,” she explains. “She loves to go to school. She is speaking Hebrew already and she doesn’t want to miss one day.”
*Photo: Mya Guarnieri. The son of a migrant worker at an August protest in Tel Aviv. He holds a sign that reads: “My embassy takes a month to issue a passport. They will deport me.”