Our bodies have painfully tasted
man’s indifference and inhumanity to his fellow man. We have witnessed in our
own flesh the moral evil present in human society. But this should not tempt us
to become morally arrogant. Our suffering should not lead us to self-righteous
postures, but to an increased sensitivity about all human suffering. (David
Hartman, 1982)
In his
autobiography, Once Upon a Country, A
Palestinian Life, Al Quds University President, Sari Nusseibeh, tells a
story about a time when he asked his mother what her father would have done if
European Jews came and said that they want to return to the shared homeland to
avoid the imminent catastrophe awaiting them in Europe. Her
response was that her father would
welcome his Abrahamic cousins.
“Welcoming”, however,
connotes an element of passivity that would have been insufficient in light of the
tragedy that European Jews were facing. In hindsight, we all like to think that
we would have done much more, but the episode of the St. Louis, the German
ocean liner that tried to bring 937 refugees to safety in Cuba in 1939,
suggests otherwise. These refugees were returned to Europe where over a quarter
of them met their death in concentration camps. Apparently, even when fully
aware of horrors being perpetrated against brothers (or cousins), we are unable
to leave our comfort zones and meet the challenges our morality demands of us.
I can’t speak to
other people’s morality; who am I to judge? but my own sense of decency is
beckoning me to take action and I need help. I must save two families that have
been deported from Israel to South Sudan. These are the families of my 13 year
old son’s school friends from the two years I was on a fellowship at the Shalom
Hartman Institute.
I recognize that
the notion of deportation is highly charged; thus, allow me an opportunity to
explain why I feel that the country of immigrants and refugees that I love, which
I opted to become a citizen of during high school, has fallen short on its
moral and legal obligations.
Poogi and Deng, my
son’s friends from his public school in northern Tel Aviv, had their parents
visited by Israeli officials who said that, now that they have a state of their
own, Israel can help them return home. Sounds nice, but the officials didn’t
like Poogi’s mother, Theresa’s response. She said, I’m paraphrasing, “Thank
you, but we are saving money of our own and waiting to see if the country will
be safe for our return. We have six children and five of them are still in
school. My husband is a leader in our community church here. We can’t just take
our kids out of school and abandon our community.”
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| Poogi, Deng and Itamar celebrating Purim |
The official
didn’t like this and asked how she was saving money. Then he reminded her that
she has refugee status but not a work permit. In Israel, instead of allowing
refugees to work and give back to the country that is helping them, they import
indentured servants, under the guise of “foreign labor,” who must pay for their
right to work in Israel for a limited time and cease to be humans while they
live there. An example of this is having children. If a “foreign worker” has a
child and raises that child in Israel with Hebrew as their mother tongue with
all the risks and rewards of living in the promised land, then that child is at
risk of being separated from his or her parents and deported back to the
parents native land, alone, where they have never visited, don’t speak the
language and don’t know the culture.
The Israeli
officials told Theresa, that they would forgive her violation of Israeli law
and give the family one thousand dollars per adult family member if they would
accept the offer and return to South Sudan. And, of course, sign a document
that says they are not being deported. Grace accepted and her family moved back
to the civil war raging in her native country after 6 years in our promised
land.
I am not decided
about the existence of God, but I believe in angels because I learned that
Poogi and some of his siblings are now safe living in a boarding school in
Uganda, paid for by the parents of one of the children’s classmates in North
Tel Aviv. Wow! This is the Israel I love. In fact, I remember taking my son and
the boys, his Sudanese friends, to the beach in Tel Aviv and some other angels
approached the boys. One woman wanted to buy them ice cream. An older man
hugged Poogi and Deng and said, “Welcome to our country. We thank you for
giving us this opportunity to give back after having been refugees ourselves.” Oh,
for the love of angels.
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| Sudanese children raised in Israel now at the Trinity School in Kampala, Uganda |
I found out about Poogi’s
and Deng’s current situation when I went to their apartments in South Tel Aviv
and discovered that they had left the country. A friend turned me on to Come
True, an Israeli NGO that helps get the Sudanese children to safety in Uganda
and raises the funds to pay their tuition. One of the volunteers put me in
touch with Theresa in South Sudan. She has nothing but puts her last penny into
a Zain cell phone so she can be in touch with her children in Uganada. In Juba,
the family’s home was broken into and completely looted. Not only did they lose
all of their possessions, but also the apartment is uninhabitable and unsafe. Theresa
used to work in a hotel before the fighting broke out. Now the only visitors
are oil industry magnates who come to drain this fledgling country of its only
natural resources. The slow flow of tourism led to Theresa’s dismissal from
work. No job, no home, just a homeland. The creation of her country, like the
birth of a child, was so full of hope. What has gone wrong?
Deng’s family,
maybe more pragmatic, thought they chose safety over hope. They fled South
Sudan for Cairo. Now they live in poverty and suffer extreme racial and
religious persecution. Both families are Christian.
During the
catastrophe that occurred in Europe throughout the Second World War, few people
took action to prevent the atrocities. Those who did help were either vested in
the lives of the victims or simply humane. The Israeli philosopher Avishai
Margalit describes this as the distinction between morals and ethics. Margalit
says that ethics are supposed to guide thick relations, those we have with
people who are engaged in our lives, either as friend or foe. Ethics guide
these relations because we have stakes in them. The rules of war, for instance,
are ethical because they regulate the behavior of enemies who are deeply
engaged with one another. Ethics also guide our obligations to family, friends
and fellow citizens. Without ethics society would not flow fluidly. Morals, on
the other hand, are for perfect strangers. If we are not vested in the lives of
others, do we have any impetus to help them? Why should we act when the stakes
are low? What might compel us to feed the poor of distant lands if not a moral
imperative?
For most people
reading this, South Sudan is a moral concern. We ought to care because we are
human, and fellow humans are suffering, but caring about the South Sudanese
will not change the quality of our lives. For me, this has always been an
ethical issue. I have been culpable since the beginning. My country, Israel,
sells arms to China, which end up in the hands of the Janjuweed. These Arab
marauders created killing fields in Darfur and other parts of Sudan, leading to
the steady flow of immigrants. Refugees made their exodus by foot through
Egypt, like my people before them, with hopes of a sanctuary in a promised land.
My country flew them back to a civil war. Not only is this unethical, it is
also a violation of the Geneva Convention.
I understand that
if Israel keeps its borders permeable, more refugees will come. Yes, we are geographically
small and dedicate a lot of our national budget to defense, but I love the
comment that the man on the beach gave to the boys. “We thank you for giving us
this opportunity to give back after having been refugees ourselves.”
In most conflicts,
the parties see the world as a zero sum game. One side must lose for the other
side to win. Everything is always limited by our lack of creativity and the
opacity of those forces that have something to loss. In a transparent Israel,
rational, good people would give jobs to refugees before importing foreign
laborers to do the same work. Opacity hides the money that goes to “man power”
companies and politicians who allow this system to continue without obvious
benefits.
If Israel would
take a leading role in addressing the refugee crisis, she could find partners
in the global community. Instead, Israel exports the arms that are used
against these refugees. How many average Israelis understand the horrible
consequences of some of their countries leading oligarchs’ despicable business
practices?
Many people will
find it distasteful to read me question the country’s policies. They will say
it is washing dirty laundry in public. Some readers will feel terrible about
what this country, which holds so many promises and hopes for our people, is
doing. They may be pushed away or talk about it with disdain among friends.
What I am searching for is people who will take action and try to help save
these families or at least their sons.
Both Poogi’s and
Deng’s mothers have said to me that they would rather be separated from their
son’s and know that they are safe than to be together and in harm's way. I am
willing to take these boys into my house and raise them beside my own children, but
I need help. Both the Talmud and the Koran share the verse, “To save one life
is akin to saving the entire universe.” I want to save at least two. Please
think about how you can help; immigration lawyer friends, politician
associates, NGO’s and, of course, money. We can start by paying for the
families’ cell phones. We can pay for continued tuition for the children in
Uganda. We can send money for food and clothing. And we can make this a public
issue so that we don’t allow ourselves, via our country, to be shamed by these inhumane and unethical policies.
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