Migrant Workers

Former Philippine National Police Chief and current Senate of the Philippines Ronald dela Rosa seen holding an Israeli-made rifle. (Courtesy of Philippine National Police)

Philippine police are executing people with Israeli weapons

Israel continues to export arms and military training to Rodrigo Duterte’s regime, even after the ICC launched a preliminary investigation to look into suspicions of crimes against humanity there. By Eitay Mack For much of the past two years, Israel has been exporting weapons and military training to the Philippine security forces. As part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug…

By +972 Magazine August 19, 2019

Israeli immigration agents arrest migrant worker Geraldine Esta and her daughters in their home in Ramat Gan, Israel, July 23, 2019. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

PHOTOS: Israel begins crackdown on foreign workers and their children

Israeli immigration authorities begin summer-long deportations of at least 50 foreign workers and their Israeli-born children. Text by +972 Magazine Staff, photos by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org Israeli immigration authorities have begun immigration raids targeting foreign workers from the Philippines and their children, in a crackdown that is expected to snare at least 50 adults and their…

By +972 Magazine July 24, 2019

+972 Writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat’s book short-listed for the Wingate Prize

Guarnieri Jaradat’s book, The Unchosen, is deeply reported look into the lives of asylum seekers and migrant workers in Israel. +972 Magazine congratulates writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat on her book, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others, being short-listed for the 2018 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. The Unchosen was short-listed alongside The Dark Circle…

By +972 Magazine January 12, 2018

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+972 Writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat’s book long-listed for the Wingate Prize

+972 Magazine congratulates writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat on her book, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others, being long-listed for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, alongside books by Amoz Oz, Joshua Cohen, Linda Grant, Nicole Krauss, and Nir Baram. The Unchosen is deeply reported look into the lives of asylum seekers and migrant workers in Israel. It was published…

By +972 Magazine November 30, 2017

Population and Immigration Authority agents arrest a Filipina and her daughter in south Tel Aviv, taking them to a deportation detention facility at Ben-Gurion Airport prior to their deportation, August 16, 2011. It was the first documented arrest in which a child of foreign immigrant workers, born, raised and educated in Israel was arrested and deported. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

What does the future hold for non-Jews in the Jewish state?

A new book about Israel’s crusade against asylum seekers and undocumented workers strikes at an essential truth about the precarious status of non-Jews in a self-defined Jewish state. “The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others,” Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, Pluto Press, 2017. In a small apartment in south Tel Aviv, a Filipina woman hides her…

By Natasha Roth-Rowland May 4, 2017

Thai workers on a tractor on the way to start their working day, early hours of October 18, 2013. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Run out of town for teaching farm workers their rights

Labor advocates set out to explain to Thai agricultural workers what rights they have in Israel. Instead, they are intimidated and chased away by the workers’ employers. By Angie Hsu In the rush before leaving Tel Aviv for the Arava Desert Friday morning, I ran into the bathroom and grabbed two bottles of sunscreen. It…

By +972 Magazine March 11, 2017

Israeli authorities arrest a migrant worker and her small child [file]. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Privatizing Israel’s migrant care puts profits before people

On paper Israel’s for-profit manpower agencies act as job providers for impoverished groups from third world countries. In reality, they are the drivers of a system that harms workers, employers, and the state. By Abigail F. Kolker In Israel, there are some 60,000 migrant caregivers, comprising the largest group of documented migrant workers in the…

By +972 Magazine September 13, 2015

A woman holds up a photo of a refugee daycare center's yearbook during a protest against living conditions in south Tel Aviv, April 19, 2015. Five refugee children have recently died due to the substandard living conditions in daycare centers. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

PHOTOS: Hundreds gather to protest dire conditions of south Tel Aviv

Hundreds demonstrated in central Tel Aviv against the dire living conditions for the residents, refugees and foreign workers who live in south Tel Aviv. Photos and text: Oren Ziv / Activestills.org Approximately 300 Israelis, asylum seekers and foreign workers protested Sunday evening at Habima Square in central Tel Aviv against the living conditions in south…

By Activestills April 20, 2015

Hebron demonstrators were calling upon Obama to remember the civil rights movement in the US (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

No Voice: Hopes for Israeli elections from those who cannot vote

Over 200,000 people with no legal status live in Israel today. There are another 4 million in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All of these people are directly affected by Israeli elections but they have not right to vote. This is what they have to say — about the Right and the Left, the…

By +972 Magazine February 6, 2015

The protesters were calling to close the prison and to recognize the refugee rights of the African asylum seekers living in Israel.

The importance of being earnest about human rights

In an open letter, one of Israel’s foremost refugee rights lawyers calls on the deputy attorney general to follow her conscience. By Asaf Weitzen Dear Deputy Attorney General Dina Silber: I am familiar with a bit of your academic work, including two books you authored and speeches that you give from time to time. You have…

By +972 Magazine January 22, 2015

Israeli authorities arrest a migrant worker and her small child [file]. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Family life forbidden for migrant workers in Israel

Legal advocates decry Israeli policies toward migrant workers as inhumane and claim that they violate the laborers’ human right to family. Maris Delusong, a 36-year-old caregiver from the Philippines, is alone at Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. She stops at a sale rack outside a clothing store. She looks at the baby clothes, pulls a…

By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat October 15, 2014

A view on the toilet in the workers' residence. (Activestills.org)

Home Field – Visiting agricultural workers in Israel, part 5

In a series of posts based on field visits and meetings with migrant workers in Israel, Noa Shauer and Shiraz Grinbaum highlight the conditions, hardships and exploitation of foreign workers. In part 5, they met with agricultural workers in the northern Israeli moshavim of Sdei Trumot and Revayah, trying to re-evaluate their working conditions after…

By Activestills June 1, 2014

A Thai agricultural worker, sitting on his bed inside a shipping container, used as the group's residency, Moshav Yavetz, January 25, 2014. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Home Field: Visiting agricultural workers in Israel, part 3

In a series of posts based on field visits and meetings with migrant workers in Israel, Noa Shauer and Shiraz Grinbaum highlight the conditions, hardships and exploitation of foreign workers. In part 3, agricultural workers in Moshav Yavetz suffer harsh neglect, are stripped of their right to decent pay and live in insufferable conditions. Read part 2…

By Activestills January 31, 2014