Sudan refugees seek home in Israel
ANNETTE YOUNG
IN JERUSALEM
IN ALMOST perfect English, Sanka clearly states what his dream is: to build a life in Israel, learn Hebrew and become a filmmaker.
But Sanka is not a Jew seeking a new life in Israel. He is a 29-year-old Muslim refugee, one of more than 200 Sudanese - both Muslim and Christian - who have illegally made their way from Egypt's Sinai into Israel in the last 18 months.
All came to seek asylum in the Jewish state. Instead, most, including Sanka (who for legal reasons does not want to use his real name), find themselves imprisoned as enemies because of the Sudanese government's hostility towards Israel.
But as citizens of a nation itself ravaged by conflict, Israelis are becoming divided over their moral obligation to provide a home to Sudanese refugees from the war-torn Darfur region.
The number of Sudanese making the arduous trek to Israel has increased as fighting intensifies in Sudan, having claimed at least 200,000 lives and created more than two million refugees. Recent attempts to crack down on illegal Sudanese living in Cairo has also added to a rise in the numbers.
"If they know, everyone who pays $50 (£26) can come to a modern, democratic state and live happily ever after - why not come to Israel?" Yochie Gessin, an Israeli government lawyer, said last week. "We can't accept this, there are some 40 million Sudanese."
Such statements have sparked a bitter reaction. Avner Shalev, the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, has written to prime minister Ehud Olmert, urging him to "show solidarity" with the Sudanese refugees.
"As members of the Jewish people, for whom the memory of the Holocaust burns, we cannot stand by as refugees from the genocide in Darfur hammer on our doors," Shalev wrote.
Michael Kagan, a lawyer with the Tel Aviv University Human Rights Clinic, which represents some 50 Sudanese refugees in the Israeli High Court, agreed. "This situation reveals just how much Israel is currently grappling with the issue of offering asylum to non-Jews," he said.
[color="Black"]The United Nations has also become involved as they attempt to resettle some of the Sudanese in Israel to other countries. Now working in a kibbutz on the shores of the Dead Sea, Sanka is one of almost 30 Sudanese released on "house arrest" as their fate is decided in court. Despite being jailed for a year before being sent to the kibbutz, Sanka is remarkably upbeat about living in the Jewish state. "The Israelis here are really a free people, they have an open mind," he said.
With his family from Dafur, Sanka, then living in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, decided to leave Sudan after attracting unwanted government attention over his reformist views. "I am Muslim but I don't agree with fundamental Islam," he said. "Many of my friends who expressed similar views, were arrested, tortured or in some cases, disappeared."
He spent four years in Cairo but, after being arrested as an illegal worker, he caught a bus to Egypt's Sinai region where he then walked for two days across the desert and into Israel. He was picked up by an Israeli military patrol and taken to a military jail.
"The Jewish people I've met here understand my plight. For the first time in my life I feel free. I know that sounds funny but I do. I feel freer here than I ever did in Sudan."
Tomorrow, Israeli human rights groups will hold a demonstration in Jerusalem, having petitioned the high court on behalf of the refugees. By Friday, the government must submit to the court a plan to grant judicial hearings for the refugees.
This article: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=824192006
Last updated: 03-Jun-06 23:58 BST
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This should be interesting.
That's the kind of immigration I could live with, I'm all for it!
It's too bad we couldn't set up a fund, $50 dollars to add a Sudani to Israel, seems like money well spent! 
Afterall they are basically just migrant workers, doing the jobs Israeli's won't do. 
What a worthy cause! I think a foundation should be set up right away. Get Sally Struthers on the phone - "Won't you send your dollars today so a poor Sudanese boy can realize his dream in Isreal?"
:cheers:
"Henceforth no Jew, no matter under what name, will be allowed to remain here without my written permission. I know of no other troublesome pest within the state than this race, which impoverished the people by their fraud, usury and money-lending and commits all deeds which an honorable man despises. Subsequently they have to be removed and excluded from here as much as possible."
MARIA THERESA, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia (1771 - 1789)
Sudan's 'genocide' lands at Israel's door
The Christian Science Monitor @ Yahoo! News ^ | 06/02/2006 | Joshua Mitnick
TEL AVIV - Shlomo Reisman remembers vividly from his childhood the visage of Jewish refugee kids after World War II. They sneaked into pre-state Israel illegally, defying a ban by the British authorities.
"They came here without anything," says Mr. Reisman. "Without underwear, in shorts, with torn shoes."
Now, a new group of refugees is slipping into the country illegally - a mix of Muslims and Christians from a country that's officially at war with Israel. But the 230 Sudanese refugees that have arrived are landing in an Israeli jail. As Israel decides what to do with those who have fled what the US has described as a "genocide," Reisman says the government should be mindful of Jewish history.
"In principle, the state of Israel and the Jewish people who have known discrimination ... should give asylum to people who are being persecuted," he says. "Given our history, the Jewish people must show mercy toward persecuted people."
That sentiment is part of an emerging debate in Israel over whether the Jewish state has a moral obligation to release from jail the refugees fleeing Sudan's civil war and genocide.
On Monday, Israeli human rights groups plan a demonstration outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Jerusalem residence. They have already petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees. And by the end of the week, the government must submit to the court a plan to grant judicial hearings for the refugees.
The flow of refugees to Israel has picked up over the past six months since 27 Sudanese asylum seekers were killed late December in clashes with Egyptian police at a sit-in demonstration at a UN refugee agency office in Cairo.
"I wasn't protected by the UN in Egypt. I was afraid that my visa had expired and they would take me back to Sudan," says Deng, a Sudanese refugee who paid $600 to a Bedouin guide to sneak him into Israel from the Egyptian Sinai desert. He received the money from friends living in Australia. "I was expecting to be protected. I am a refugee."
He will mark soon his first anniversary in an Israeli jail, a year in which he's had no contact with four daughters he left behind in Sudan. "Prison is a prison, but it's better here than the jail in Sudan or life in Egypt," he says.
During a recent hearing in parliament, Israeli Interior Minister Roni Bar-On told legislators that security forces often try to return the refugees to the Egyptian side of the border.
The treatment has raised concerns among some Israeli Holocaust scholars. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, recently appealed to Mr. Olmert on behalf of the refugees.
"As members of the Jewish people, for whom the memory of the Holocaust burns, we cannot stand by as refugees from the genocide in Darfur hammer on our doors," he wrote referring to the Nazi Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed.
That comparison is a sensitive one in Israel, which absorbed hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors during the first decades of its existence.
"We are not sending anyone back to Darfur," says Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev, a son of Holocaust survivors who took umbrage at the World War II association.
Like the Sudanese, Albert Khaleb furtively crossed into Israel by night. Only he did it more than 60 years ago, walking two nights straight from Damascus to Tiberias via the Golan Heights. But he has little sympathy for the Sudanese.
"I don't know who they are," says Mr. Khaleb. "We need to be wary of them. They know they're coming to an enemy country and they're liable to be expelled."
Awwww shit, We know damn well, the jewboys will be able to kick them out if they exhibit too much,good ol' TNB,which they will,of course, sooner or later - and get totally away with it,with the press,celebrities,and 99.9% of "our" politicians.