• Israel’s forgotten deportees

    The Daily Beast, July 3, 2012 While Israel’s current campaign to deport some 700-1500 South Sudanese asylum seekers made headlines around the world, the mainstream media has neglected another ongoing expulsion. Since March of 2011, the state has been arresting and deporting the Israeli-born children of migrant laborers along with their parents. In the past …

  • Deployed

    Tablet, March 11, 2011 On a Friday night, Filipino congregants are praying in a tiny, unmarked church tucked off a nameless alley in south Tel Aviv. The church is one room, with wood laminate floors and plastic chairs. Burgundy banners read “Elohim” and “Yahweh” in Roman letters. A Star of David made of spoons hangs …

  • Xenophobia in Tel Aviv

    Guernica, March 8, 2011 This morning, I woke to the news that a woman had been stabbed to death in South Tel Aviv. Two men—dubbed migrant workers by the Hebrew press, but referred to as “African descent” in the English-language media, suggesting they were probably asylum seekers—were briefly held under suspicion for the crime. They …

  • To be Israeli

    Al Jazeera English, October 20, 2010 “I’m very afraid. I don’t know what to do,” says G, a Filipina worker, as she runs her fingers through her five-year-old son’s hair. Her husband was deported from Israel a year ago. Now she and her two children—aged five and one—face imminent expulsion to the Philippines. G—who is …