Three months ago, Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai deported several hundred families from Israel to South Sudan, despite unequivocal statements by human rights group that mere fact of the established state is far from the offering the safety that would allow for these families’ return; the request was at least to extend the group exemption from deportation – Israel’s mechanism of neither denying nor granting asylum – a few months longer. Even that demand was ignored. The deportees’ baggage, all 14 tons of it, was delayed for two months and kept at a warehouse in Israel, simply because the state felt that it could not be bothered to bear the expenses of sending it along. In the baggage was medicine collected for the families by Israeli volunteers from Israeli donors; it was only finally sent to South Sudan a week or so ago, but not before reports began to surface which claimed that immigration officials were helping themselves to the more precious possessions from the pile.
Dwell with me on that image for a second: Families herded into a transport which will take them to the very danger they were running from, leaving a silent pile of suitcases and clothes behind.
Within a week, the deportee children – Israeli children, either born or raised in Israel, speaking better Hebrew than most of this government’s apologists in the United States – began to die. So far, at least seven of them have succumbed to disease