The comfortable distance between liberals and refugees

From our all-Jewish, middle-class neighborhoods, we tell Israel to welcome refugees, but only poor, conservative areas are obliged to absorb them. 

I’m glad the deportation of the South Sudanese refugees, which was supposed to start today, has been delayed. (A court order put it off for at least two weeks, while the Foreign Ministry recommends delaying it for six months, mainly because of the fighting, famine and disease in that country.)  Whether the refugees number 700 as they themselves say, or 3,000 as the Interior Ministry says, I don’t want to see any of them deported to South Sudan or anywhere else; by rights, they should be allowed to apply for Israeli citizenship (which of course will never happen).

But while I don’t think the South Sudanese constitute a problem for Israel, they definitely do in the poor, conservative Israeli neighborhoods, especially in South Tel Aviv, where they are concentrated. And while the numbers of South Sudanese coming into Israel from Egypt have gone way down, the refugees coming here from other African countries, mainly Eritrea, now number 2,000-3,000 a month, double the rate of last year. Those aren’t the Interior Ministry’s figures, they’re from the UN.

In six years, more than 50,000 African refugees have come to Israel, and they all live in the poor neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Arad, Eilat and other towns, which really, really don’t want them. “This isn’t Tel Aviv, it’s Africa! This isn’t Tel Aviv, it’s Harlem!” shouted one speaker at a southside Hatikva Quarter protest last year. The government refers to the refugees as “illegal infiltrators”; their Israeli neighbors typically call them kushim, which, given the context and tone, means “niggers.”

We liberals and leftists can come up with our political/sociological explanations for such racism while fighting every attempt to limit the number of refugees in Israel. But with rare exceptions, liberals and leftists don’t live next door to apartments filled with poor young African men living two or more to a room, with very few unmarried women, and with little to do in their off hours except hang out and drink. Imagine if they were concentrated not in South Tel Aviv but North Tel Aviv, and not in the poor neighborhoods of Ashdod but the rich neighborhoods of Herzliya. You can’t imagine it because it’s unimaginable. It could never happen. Israel wouldn’t allow it. But it’s allowed in the poor neighborhoods because poor neighborhoods are considered the natural receptacle for social problems in Israel and every other country.

It’s not right. And since North Tel Aviv, Herzliya and the rest of Israel’s well-off districts are not going to volunteer to absorb tens of thousands of African refugees, and since Israel is never going to give them the chance to become citizens and live decent lives, their numbers have to be controlled. We must not deport anyone to South Sudan or Eritrea or any other disaster zone, but refugees who can be sent home safely should be sent home. Furthermore, the border fence and the refugee camp being built in the South should be operated as humanely as can be, but they have to be built. There’s a limit to how many refugees this crowded little country of 8 million people can absorb, and 2,000-3,000 a month is beyond it.

I wish Israel were a multicultural society, and African refugees could become citizens and intergrate and gain the means to live wherever they wanted. Then 50,000 or 100,000 of them wouldn’t be too many. But the way things are, we liberals and leftists in our mainly middle-class, all-Jewish neighborhoods may demand that the state welcome all the refugees, yet it’s only the not-so-liberal, not-so-middle-class Jewish families of Hatikva Quarter and the like who are obliged to live with them.

“They work as servants in the rich homes in North Tel Aviv, but they live here with us. I’d like to see what they’d say in North Tel Aviv if their kids had to go to school with their servants’ kids,” said a Hatikva man at an angry local meeting a couple of years ago.

He’s got a point. So it’s not enough just to do right by the refugees; we Israeli liberals and leftists also have to think about doing right by the refugees’ neighbors.

Related: South Sudanese protest their slated deportation