[News] Detention and Deportation in Israel

Fri Apr 22 15:34:20 EDT 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/mya04222011.html
April 22 - 24, 2011

Detention and Deportation in Israel

A New Nakba?

By MYA GUARNIERI

Tel Aviv.

Several weeks ago, Israeli authorities arrested 
M, a pregnant woman, along with her 
three-year-old, Israeli-born son. The young 
familysans the father, who had been deported 
several months beforewas briefly detained then expelled from the country.

But don't break out those Palestinian flags just 
yet. This was a family of migrant workers.

The father is Thai; the mother, Filipina. They 
both arrived in Israel, legally, on state-issued 
work visas. Here, they met and fell in love. And 
that's how they became "illegal."

The father lost his visa because of an Israeli 
policy that forbids romantic relationships 
between migrant workers (read: non-Jews). The 
mother lost her legal status due to the 
governmental policy that forces women to choose 
between their visa and their baby. M made the 
choice most women wouldafter she gave birth, she 
refused to send her infant to live with extended 
family in a faraway land. So she became "illegal", along with her child.

About a week after M and her toddler were 
deported, the Israeli High Court struck the 
latter policy down (pointing out in its ruling 
that the policy was actually breaking the state's 
own labor laws). While future families might be 
spared, the current expulsion that will see some 
500 children kicked out of the country, along 
with their parents, has already begun. And, so 
far, there is no sign that the High Court ruling 
will be applied retroactively. (Given the state's 
tendency to ignore left-leaning court 
decisionsincluding the 2007 order to reroute the 
separation barrier that has sliced the West Bank 
Palestinian village of Bilin into twoit's 
unclear whether the policy will indeed be changed.)

And so the deportation continuesone family at a 
timein the name of preserving a "Jewish and democratic" state.

***

At first glance, migrant workers might seem 
unrelated to the Palestinian struggle. But 
migrant workers were introduced to Israel during 
the First Intifada to replace Palestinian day 
laborers from the Occupied Territories. While the 
siege on Gaza is often discussed as something 
that began suddenly in 2006, it is the most 
severe manifestation of a gradual closure that 
the Israelis started during the First Intifada. 
Despite the fact that the Palestinian resistance 
to the occupation was, by and large, nonviolent 
at the time, this gradual closure included 
restrictions on movement. In some cases, it 
prevented Palestinian laborers from reaching 
their jobslow-paying jobs that Israelis didn't 
want, jobs that are now held by migrant workers.

Having replaced those other 
"others"Palestiniansforeign laborers and their 
children have become the new battleground for 
Israeli nationalism. Interior Minister Eli Yishai 
has called the kids "a demographic threat
 liable 
to damage the state's Jewish identity." During 
his tenure as Finance Minister, Benjamin 
Netanyahu called Palestinian citizens of Israel a 
"demographic problem". As Prime Minister, 
Netanyahu has extended this racist rhetoric to 
non-Jewish foreigners in general, lumping African 
asylum seekers and undocumented migrant workers 
into one group that poses "a concrete threat to 
the Jewish and democratic character of the country."

But nationalism cuts both ways. And those who 
oppose the deportation also tend to frame their arguments in patriotic terms.

Israeli Children is the most prominent grassroots 
movement that was formed in response to the 
planned deportation, which initially included 
1200 children and was announced in the summer of 
2009 (the same year Israel issued a record number 
of visas to bring new migrant workers). As the 
name suggests, its leaders and affiliated 
activists emphasized how quintessentially Israeli 
the kids facing deportation are.

Last May, a massive rally against the expulsion 
was held under a blue and white banner that read, 
"We don't have another country." A tweaking of 
the title of a beloved Israeli folk song, "I 
don't have another country," the event drew over 10,000 supporters.

But the movement against the deportation was a victim of its own success.

In August 2010, the Israeli cabinet voted on 
arbitrary criteria that would allow most 
school-aged children to be naturalized. In other 
words, these 700 kids were considered Israeli 
enough to stay. Forget about human rights for the 
little ones (and for the older ones who have 
already graduated from Israeli schools).

Now, as the deportation is being carried out, 
Israeli Children is struggling to bring media attention to the issue.

"When people are against the deportation, they 
always imagine a 10-year-old that speaks Hebrew 
and goes to the Israeli school system," says 
Rotem Ilan, co-founder of Israeli Children. "When 
they are talking about a 3-year-old, they don't see him in the same way..."

"When we talk about the younger children, we talk 
about basic human rights," she adds, "[I can't] 
say that a one year old is Israeli. And yet I 
don't believe that these children should be in jail."

The movement's success and, now, its failure 
points to the issue facing the "Jewish and 
democratic" statehuman rights, stripped down, pure and simple.

***

Amongst friends and colleagues, I have angrily 
referred to this deportation as the new nakba. 
Arabic for catastrophe, it refers to the 
dispossession that befell hundreds of thousands 
of Palestinians when Israel was established in 
1948. As my friends and colleagues are keen to 
remind me, invoking the nakba for this current 
expulsion is a mistake, it deflates the power of the word.

But we need a word. Something must be a said 
about a state that brings non-Jewish migrant 
workers and, in denying their basic human right 
to love and make love, treats them as little more 
than machines. Something must be said about a 
state that, some 60 years ago, treated humans 
like objects to be moved outside of its newly 
forged borders and continues to do so today. 
Something must be said about a state that arrests 
and deports children whose only "crime" is being born to a non-Jewish mother.

Mya Guarnieri am a freelance journalist and 
writer based in Tel Aviv. I am a regular 
contributor to Al Jazeera English. She can be 
reached at: myaguarnieri(at)gmail(dot)com

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