Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a story about non-Jewish refugees. "Israel is a small country, and we do not have the geographic and demographic depths" to absorb refugees from Africa or Syria, Netanyahu told ministers at the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. This is the same prime minister who in 2012 said the following: “But tiny Israel, on a speck of land, with no natural resources, with no oil, without any of these resources, without the land, we absorbed Jewish refugees into our society and we integrated them into Israeli life.”

How can it be that a country with 8,000,000 people, a highly developed high-tech, export oriented economy, a GDP of $300 billion, a per capita GDP of $37,000 and a trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves cannot absorb a single refugee when 67 years ago that same country with barely 800,000 people, whose main export was oranges, with an estimated per capita GDP of $400-500 and no known natural gas resources took in some 690,000 immigrants, many of them refugees, within three years, as the prime minister likes to boast.

In fact, Netanyahu should know that the absorption of all these destitute refugees fueled one of the greatest post-WWII economic growth stories in the world, with Israel’s GDP leaping 30 percent in 1951 alone and an average of 9.2 percent for the period 1950-68.

Based on Netanyahu’s boast and Israel's historical experience with absorbing refugees, the country should be looking to take in more, not turn them away – especially at a time when the Western world in general, and Europe in particular, is taking action to receive more refugees. So why is Netanyahu able to hold onto his story that absorbing refugees would be bad for Israel, and what are the consequences of this mistaken attitude?

Something here smells of anti-non-Semitism. Israel had no problem in 1991 taking in 14,500 destitute Ethiopian Jews in one weekend. And I bet that if 50,000 destitute ultra-Orthodox Jews from New York showed up on Israel’s doorstep tomorrow asking for all the benefits offered to "olim," new Jewish immigrants, Netanyahu wouldn't say, “Sorry, we’re too small to absorb you.”

It can’t be economics. While there is little research on the economic impact of refugees, perhaps because it is convenient for politicians and policy makers to pander to anti-immigration populism, the little evidence there is suggests that refugees can have a positive impact on local economies. Research has shown that refugee influxes, such as Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, can benefit host communities as international assistance trickles into the community and refugee economic activity – they create more demand for local products and another source of employment – contributes to the local standard of living.

Perhaps Netanyahu is fearful of encouraging more non-Jewish refugees to “infiltrate” Israel for fear of threatening its Jewish character and of admitting potential terrorists who would threaten its security. Has he already forgotten that Israel completed a security fence on the Egyptian border that has virtually shut down the entry of African asylum seekers since mid-2013? Regarding the potential of Syrian refugees, as Anshel Pfeffer noted, they are not interested in coming here and any talk of offering them asylum here is a PR stunt, so it’s a moot point.

So which refugees are we really talking about that Israel cannot absorb? Essentially, they are the 47,000-odd asylum seekers already in the country, many of whom Israel has been tormenting by sending them to Holot. They hardly pose a geographic or demographic threat, representing barely 0.5 percent of the population.

If Israel is not going to take in any more asylum seekers, the least it can do is absorb the ones already in its midst and not try to pawn them off to other Western countries, which should be investing their resources and time on the masses of Middle East refugees heading their way. It is an embarrassment that Israel, a developed nation, sent asylum seekers within their borders to Western nations because they could not handle them.

And for all the anti-migrant propaganda being espoused by xenophobic Israelis that the Africans are a burden and source of crime, a Knesset report indicates that the crime rate among African asylum seekers is lower than that among the general population – somewhat of a miracle considering that Israel’s refusal to allow many of them to earn an honest day’s wages could easily drive many of them to petty crime just to survive. Netanyahu ought to get to know some of these refugees; many of those who do don’t want them to leave.

The bottom line is that resolving the issue by granting African asylum seekers permanent resident status, closing the detention centers and allowing them to work and become taxpayers, rather than spending money to keep them imprisoned, can only benefit Israel long-term. Recall that immigration by “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” as the Statue of Liberty referred to them, helped propel the United States to economic greatness, and that the reduction and virtual elimination of immigration preceded the Great Depression.

If Israel is too scared to open its doors to the tired, poor and huddled masses pouring out of the Middle East, let it at least allow the work-seeking, poor and crowded masses of South Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel to remain in this country and further build our society. And their children, who already speak Hebrew and go to Zionist youth movements, will contribute to Israel’s security when they serve in the Israeli army. Like Abd al-Majd Hidr, aka Amos Yarkoni, the Muslim Bedouin who became a legendary Israel Defense Forces commander, one of them may become the poster child of 21st century Israel. How could a security-oriented, not to mention public relations-oriented, prime minister like Netanyahu not like a story like that?

Steven Klein is an editor at Haaretz and an adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University's International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation. Follow him @stevekhaaretz.