Of Interest

I saw this article on page three of today's NYTIMES. I had to think of all of the times various United nations committees castigated Israel, and here ,that country is doing more for Islamic refugees than the United Nations itself or other Arab countries. Interesting that this made page three and was totally buried on the internet edition of the paper.

Please read Sudanese in Israel Hope They Have Found a Home

Here are some passages:

In Egypt, their prior haven, they struggled with poverty and dismissiveness — and sometimes outright hostility — from the authorities. Some of them had been part of a Sudanese encampment in a Cairo park in December 2005, meant to try to pressure officials in the nearby United Nations office to relocate them. When they refused to follow the orders of Egyptian authorities to disperse, they were blasted with water cannons and dragged away. Twenty-seven people were reportedly killed in the melee.

and

The presence of refugees from the Darfur conflict, which the United States calls genocide, presents Israel with a particularly difficult problem.

Israel, founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, has felt a responsibility to harbor refugees — plucking Vietnamese boat people out of international waters, for example.

But now, government officials fear that if word spreads that Israel is a good place to settle, their country could be overwhelmed by large waves of refugees from Sudan and elsewhere in Africa. Mediterranean countries, particularly Spain and Malta, have been stunned by surging African migration, much of it illegal.

“Israel is endeavoring to be as humane as possible,” said Mark Regev, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “Israel has a special understanding of the genocide in Darfur. We have a very real compassion for the refugees, and no one is being turned back.” But, he added, “Israel does not have the capability to deal with all of Africa’s refugees, so we have to be mindful.”

and

“I don’t think that the Jewish people can look the other way when such a horrible genocide is being conducted. It is our obligation to be as of much help as we can,” said Mr. Lapid, a Holocaust survivor.

[A group of Sudanese recently were taken on a tour of the museum at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. They stood silently, some wiping away tears as they looked at photographs of corpses and cases displaying children’s dolls and a mother’s final postcard. “It was very hard to see this, really shocking,” said a 24-year-old man who fled Darfur last year. “It reminded me of my own people. I hope one day we can have a museum like this in Darfur.”]

Theo Kaminer, who is coordinating the kibbutz movement’s efforts to take in the Sudanese, said the farms felt a moral obligation.

“If not us, who will help them?” he said. “No one else is lifting a hand. These people are refugees from a Holocaust.”