Maan News Agency, April 13, 2011
Last week, Israeli immigration police arrested and deported a three-year-old boy, born and raised in Israel.
The toddler was detained and expelled to the Philippines along with his mother, M, who is pregnant. The children’s father is a migrant worker from Thailand who was deported several months ago. Distance and poverty makes it unlikely that the family, torn apart by the state of Israel, will be reunited.
This is just one heartrending story that has surfaced as Israeli government steps up its current efforts to ensure a “Jewish and democratic” state—by deporting non-Jewish, Israeli-born children of migrant workers, along with their parents.
In addition to the forced separation between herself and the father of her children, M faces another problem—she has not spent enough time working overseas to pay back the loan she took to cover the 5000 dollar fee the employment agency charged for arranging work in Israel. While the law mandates that employment agencies can charge no more than 3050 NIS (about 900 dollars) for this service, a tremendous majority of agencies charge between 5000 and 20,000 dollars.
The few that dare defend the deportation—and there aren’t many—sometimes argue that this isn’t about the children or demographics. They say that this is about enforcing the law.
So let’s talk about the law. We could discuss the 2007 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that ordered the army to reroute the separation barrier that slices through the Palestinian village of Bilin—a ruling the state continues to ignore. Or we could discuss the siege on Gaza, which is illegal according to the Geneva Convention.
In fact, the blockade brings us right back to M’s deportation—the siege on Gaza didn’t begin, suddenly, in 2006. The closure was gradual; the restrictions on Palestinian movement began during the First Intifada. And it was then that Israel, dependent on inexpensive labor, began to replace Palestinian day laborers with migrant workers.
Today, it’s the same state that prevents farmers in Bilin from reaching their land and that keeps the people of Gaza locked in an open air prison also denies migrant workers the human right to having families. It’s about agency—the ability to control one’s life, the power to self-determine.
But, for a moment, let’s set aside that most basic right—the freedom to live as one pleases. Let’s pretend that those who defend this deportation are right. Let’s say it’s about enforcing the law.
Never mind that both the Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have referred to migrants as a threat to the Jewish character of the state.
Never mind that most of those being expelled have not broken a law—they have violated a policy, one that has never been legislated or codified, that states that if a migrant worker wants to have a baby, she forfeits her visa. Never mind that this policy is inhumane, that it violates a woman’s human right to love, and to make love, and to reproduce when and where she wants to.
Never mind that the children’s only “crime” was being born.
For discussion’s sake, let’s pretend that the few that dare defend this deportation are right—let’s pretend that this expulsion is just about enforcing the law. For discussion’s sake, we’ll also set the West Bank and Gaza aside and pretend that this is just about enforcing the laws that apply to migrant workers. If that were true, wouldn’t the police be swarming the streets chasing after the Jewish Israelis who own the employment agencies?
Wouldn’t there be units running after the thousands of Jewish Israelis who break labor laws by underpaying migrant workers and overworking them—sometimes to the point of exhaustion or nervous breakdowns?
This lop-sided enforcement of law and policy, this inhumane deportation, can be explained in one way and one way only—it’s yet another case of Israel trampling on the basic human rights and freedom of others, all in the name of building a “Jewish and democratic” state.
*Photo: Mya Guarnieri. An Israeli-born Filipino child holds a sign that reads “Don’t deport me.”