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This just goes from bad to worse…

After the Israeli Knesset deliberated on a bill which would essentially expel almost all of the 40,000 African refugees who have sought a haven there from civil wars and ethnic cleansing in their African homelands, Israeli human rights groups, Holocaust survivors and American Jewish leaders have decried this new form of Israeli racism.

The bill would offer refugees two stark choices: either accept an offer to be “voluntarily” expelled to an unnamed African country, along with a one-time $3,500 payment; or be permanently jailed in an Israeli detention center with no hope of release or asylum. Bibi Netanyahu lies, of course, when he calls this procedure legal under international law and claims that it is entirely voluntary on the part of the Africans:

Netanyahu added…that the arrangements “guarantee personal safety for those who exit Israel. They receive approvals allowing them to live, work and integrate into the country. If they want, they can also return to their home countries. They are receiving significant financial aid from us.”

Detailed investigative reports by Israeli media prove that this is absolute rubbish. On landing in Rwanda, the expellees are stateless. They have no rights. They may not work. They can be picked up at any moment by local police and thrown in prison. Many of them leave Rwanda at first opportunity and flee to Uganda, where they are also vulnerable. From there many try to make their way to Libya and Europe. Quite a few have been kidnapped in Libya, held for ransom or even beheaded by ISIS. Thus Bibi’s claims are not only lies, they are heartless lies.

There were numerous problems with this proposal aside from the protests I’ve mentioned: once the media revealed that Rwanda was the third-party country to which the refugees would be transported, its genocidaire leader, Paul Kagame, announced that of course his country would offer haven to anyone seeking safe harbor in his country; but that he had made no “secret deal” with Israel to accept refugees. Uganda, another country mentioned as a destination for the expellees, also denied any agreement.

Later, even more damning evidence was reported: that in addition to the payment to the individual refugee, Rwanda would receive $5,000 per head. If it accepted all 40,000 that would mean a payment of $200-million, an extraordinary sum.

Today, in the climactic house of horrors that is this story, the Israeli immigration overseeing refugees announced a bounty of $9,000 for Israelis deputized to hunt for those who refuse to leave and attempt to slip back into the woodwork undetected:

…The Population and Immigration Authority said it would pay up to 30,000 Israeli shekels ($8,845) for civilians to carry out an “enterprise of national importance.” That included undertaking “enforcement tasks” against migrants that involved detecting, investigating, and arresting them. Candidates are expected to start in March 2018, a month before the country starts its designated “voluntary” process to return migrants to their country of origin or a third one.

The reason this is particularly horrible? The Nazis too put a bounty on the heads of Jews and those who turned them in earned quite a tidy sum for their efforts. If you’ve read Huckleberry Finn or know the history of American slavery, you’ll recall that slave owners employed such bounty hunters to capture and return their runaway slaves. The entire enterprise stinks to high heaven. I find myself continually thinking that no one in the Israeli government appears to have a brain in their head when they consider such proposals. They don’t seem either to under the historical echoes of what they do; or else they don’t care (or both).