Welcome|שלום
Hello and welcome to the Activists for Asylum website. Activists for Asylum is a group of students and other activists, all working together for the cause of assisting Darfur, South Sudanese and other refugees in Israel. This includes both directly helping them, and raising awareness. You can learn about the refugees from the interviews we have conducted with them.
שלום
וברוכים הבאים לאתר של פעילים למען פליטים, קבוצה של סטודנטים ופעילים
אחרים למען הפליטים מסודן ומאפריקה. באתר תוכלו ללמוד על הפליטים מראיונות
שערכנו, לשמוע על הצעת החוק בכנסת, שאם תעבור תאפשר לממשלת ישראל לגרש את
הפליטים בחזרה למקומות מהם נמלטו. תוכלו גם לעזור לנו, ע"י חתימה על עצומה
ושליחתה, על ידי שליחת דואר אלקטרוני לחברי הכנסת וגם בדרכים אחרות
וכמובן, נשמח אם תיצרו אתנו קשר.
URGENT: Petition regarding the recent bill in the Knesset (more information in the petition below)...
Link to information regarding the bill
The Infiltration Prevention Bill
Request for civic organizations to sign a petition against the Infiltration Prevention Bill up for vote in the Knesset.
Introduction:
Humanitarian and human rights organizations,
youth groups, and civic groups throughout Israel and abroad ask the
Israeli public and members of the Knesset to oppose the Infiltration
Prevention Law. While the bill will be discussed in the Committee of
the Interior and Environment, it will soon be voted on in a consecutive
second and third vote, without a discussion period between votes, as
is standard with most bills. We understand that every organization invests
its time and energy in promoting its own particular, important causes.
However, because the bill is inherently anti-democratic, goes against
basic Jewish values, and opposes the principles by which the state of
Israel was founded, we ask that organizations take some time to reach
an agreement to sign this petition to prevent passage of this bill.
If this law is passed and enforced,
countless refugees—including survivors of genocide, rape, and other
crimes against humanity on the part of governments and private militias—will
be deported back to areas where they are likely to be imprisoned, tortured
and killed because of their ethnicity, religion, political views, and/or
gender. Others may be imprisoned in Israel for up to 20 years. This
bill makes no distinction between those who are innocent refugees escaping
for their lives, on the one hand, and terrorists and those who seek
to compromise Israel’s security, on the other. Volunteers in Israel,
including volunteers from abroad who come to assist refugees, may also
find themselves behind bars, as the law’s punishment for any who assist
“infiltrators” is identical to the punishment given to refugees.
This petition will be presented to the Minister of Defense whose office initiated the Infiltration Prevention Bill and who is appointed for its enforcement. Our hope is that representatives of your organizations will support this petition and sign it in order to assist us in preventing the passage of this bill, in order to uphold our judicial and moral obligations to the state and its democratic and Jewish values.
If your organization would like to
be a signatory of the petition below, please send the organizational
representative’s name, position, telephone number and e-mail to: Sigal@hotline.org.il
Petition:
The state of Israel is one of the 147
nations in the world that is a member of the Geneva Convention for the
Protection of Refugees of 1951. In light of the Holocaust, Israel saw
great importance in being involved in the wording and adoption of this
convention, and Israel is a member until this day. Israel even signed
the Protocol of the refugee convention of 1967, and the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(1984), which includes the deportation of asylum seekers.
Even though Israel signed these international conventions, and even though the right to request asylum in Israel was established since 1948, there has yet to be a legal process established in Israel that recognizes the status of asylum seekers in Israel. The rights of asylum seekers are currently inconsistently given and taken away by clerks of government offices. A bill to establish a process for receiving recognition and rights for asylum seekers was rejected by the Knesset in a preliminary vote in 2008, while the government of Israel was attempting to pass other bills that directly contradict the international agreement and conventions that the State of Israel has signed.
The Infiltration Prevention bill directly
goes against basic principles of protection and care for asylum seekers.
If this law is passed and enforced, many refugees—who have escaped
genocide, rape, and other crimes against humanity at the hands of governments
and private militias—will be deported, likely to their deaths, because
of their ethnicity, religion, political views, and/or gender.
Volunteers and representatives of organizations
that give as much as a glass of water to a thirsty refugee may, if this
law passes, find themselves “guilty of assisting infiltrators” and
face years in prison, as the law’s punishment for any who assist “infiltrators”
is identical to the punishment given to refugees.
Even today, the Ministry of Defense and Israel Defense Forces are enforcing some of the clauses of Infiltration Prevention Law in a policy entitled “Coordinated Return Procedure.” The asylum seeker victims of this procedure, if they survive it, are imprisoned in Egyptian prisons or in camps in Eritrea and Sudan. Since August 2008, this policy has been enforced in the Egyptian border. Some of the refugees, who survived crossing the Egypt-Israeli border, where Egyptian soldiers regularly open fire on refugees, were blindfolded by Israeli border patrol and forcibly returned to Egypt and into the hands of Egyptian soldiers. Reports from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, found that many who are deported by Israel to Egypt are deported by Egyptian authorities back to their country of origin, blatantly going against the principle forbidding the deportation of a person to a country where he is likely to suffer from persecution. Others have disappeared within Egyptian prisons and denied access to a representative from the United National High Commissioner for Refugees.
We, civic organizations in Israel and abroad, call on the Minister of Defense to withdraw this bill and we call on all Members of Knesset to vote against this bill and to do everything in their power to ensure it does not pass.
At the same time, we call on the government of Israel to differentiate between infiltrators who threaten the security of the state, and those who have fled to Israel for protection from persecution that is no fault of their own. We call on the government to establish a policy that applies her judicial and moral responsibilities as outlined in the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Refugees—responsibilities that reflect the State of Israel’s value for human rights, and the basic Jewish and democratic values upon which the state was founded.
Name of the organization:_________________
Name or Organization’s representative: ____________________________
Number of members/volunteers in the
organization:_________________
Position in the organization:_________________
Phone Number________________________
E-mail:_______________________
CURRENT EVENTS:
May 26th, 2009
For 30 NIS, enjoy delicious food, great cocktails, beer, wine, music,
dancing and fun! ALL profits will go directly to English classes,
publishing testimonials, transport costs, and paying refugees for
telling their stories at public events throughout the country.
Because it is right before Shavuot, we will have a small assortment of Israeli fine cheeses--come early so you don't miss out!
Want to donate or volunteer but cant come to the event? Call Mollie at: 0503241522
