Israel has not granted a single Sudanese asylum seeker refugee status, in spite of a wave of migrants fleeing violence, according to official state statistics, submitted to the High Court of Justice on February 16. In all, the government has granted refugee status to only 0.07% of the 5,573 Sudanese and Eritreans who have applied for asylum in the country—a mere four individuals.

Haaretz published the statistics. The following is a summary of the findings:

Sudanese Refugees

3,165 Sudanese refugees submitted asylum requests from July 2009 to 2015.

1% (45) of these applications was answered by Israel. 99% (3120) were ignored.

89% (40) of the 45 requests the government answered were rejected. The remaining 5 were granted temporary residence (not refugee status).

0 of the 3,165 asylum seekers were granted refugee status.

31% (976) of the Sudanese asylum seekers who applied left Israel. 69% (2,184) of the Sudanese refugees who applied remain in Israel.

Worldwide, 56% of Sudanese asylum seekers received refugee status or extended protection in the first half of 2014, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Eritrean Refugees

2,408 Eritrean refugees submitted asylum requests in the same period.

45% (1073) of these applications were answered by Israel. 55% (1,335) were ignored.

93% (997) of the requests the government answered were rejected.

0.16% (4) of the Eritrean asylum seekers were granted refugee status.

3% (72) of the Eritrean asylum seekers who applied left Israel. 97% (2332) of the Eritrean refugees who applied remain in Israel.

Worldwide, 84% of Eritrean asylum seekers received refugee status or extended protection in the first half of 2014, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Overall

17,778 refugees, from a variety of countries, applied for asylum in Israel from mid-2009 to 2015.

69% (12,220) of these applications were answered by Israel. 31% (5,558) were ignored.

99.6% (12,175) of the requests the government answered were either rejected or withdrawn.

0.25% (45) of the total asylum seekers were granted refugee status.

Holot Detention Center

1,940 refugees are being held in the Holot detention center.

76% (1,476) are Sudanese.

24% (464) are Eritrean.

45% (865) have been detained for over 9 months.

62% (1,198) migrated to Israel at least six years ago.

22% (1,258) of the 5,803 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who left Israel in 2014 were held in Holot or Saharonim prison.

These applications only constitute a fraction of the African refugees in Israel. Government data estimates that, as of 2014, there were approximately 8,800 Sudanese and 34,000 Eritreans refugees in the country. The actual percentage of documented refugees is thus many times lower.

Haaretz reported that almost 1/4 (22%) of the positions budgeted for Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority’s Refugee Status Determination Unit are not currently staffed. Israel says it is in the process of filling this spots. Amnon Ben Ami, director of the Population, Immigration and Border Authority, claimed the 3,519 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers whose applications have been ignored will get a response within the next year.

The attorney representing Israel, Yochi Gnessin, said one of the reasons the country sends refugees to the Holot detention center is to encourage their “voluntary exit.” Gnessin has come under fire in the past for, in the words of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, claiming “that all of the IDF conversions [to Judaism] are invalid” when she represented the state in the High Court of Justice in 2010.

Anti-Black Racism in Israel

The majority of the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees in Israel are there because they have fled violence. Yet they find themselves in a deeply racist society—one not just violently racist against Palestinians, but against Africans as well. As I detailed in a Mondoweiss article about the relationship between Zionism and anti-black racism:

The prison camp Lia Tarachansky has reported on for months is the Holot detention center, where many of these refugees are held, as detailed above. Tarachansky exposes the conditions these asylum seekers must endure with chilling video footage for The Real News:

Under Israel’s so-called “Infiltrators Law”—so named because Israeli politicians refer to African refugees as “infiltrators”—the government can put asylum-seekers in the camp for up to 20 months. A refugee told The Guardian that Israel is “sending people to Holot just because they’re Sudanese or Eritrean and you’re black, and that’s it, not because you’re a criminal, not because of any other reason. If they’re Sudanese they have to go to Holot. … Police are rounding up the people without due process.” Another asylum seeker reveals that Israelis call Africans “sh*t” and “garbage” and “say we’re not human beings.” In Holot, a detainee lamented “There is no freedom here.”

Israeli human rights organizations have petitioned against the “Infiltrator Laws,” which they say are openly racist and harsh. In September 2014, the Israeli High Court ruled that the concentration camp-like facility must be closed in 90 days, but Knesset Interior and Environment Committee Chair Miri Regev, of the ruling right-wing Likud party, has vowed to keep it open. As of February 2015, it continues to operate.

In response to the High Court’s mandate to close Holot, Israelis filled the streets for one of the many anti-African rallies in the country. In this march, Israelis carried ISIS-style flags, chanting “N*ggers go home” and “Sudanese to Sudan, Eritreans to Sudan”—a country where civil war has been raging for years. Israelis also shouted at African refugees lines such as “May you get AIDS, you whore. … May you be raped, you maniac. You’ll get raped and get AIDS. I spit on you, you garbage. May you be raped, you whore.” Protesters also called Israelis who defend the refugees “whores,” and a man in video footage taken by David Sheen can be seen shouting, in English, “F*ck you motherf*cker, piece of sh*t. Go back to Africa. We hate you as much as we can. Go back to Africa.”

According to Sheen, anti-black racism continues to get worse, not better: “Israel’s anti-African dragnet tightens.” For three years in a row, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has topped Sheen’s “list of Israel’s racist ringleaders.” Members of Netanyahu’s administration blame African refugees for the spread of diseases—in a disturbing parallel to past anti-Semitic myths—and speak of them as “a cancer in our body,” leading violent anti-African demonstrations where racist Israelis brutalize innocent African passerby. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, in his annual video message to the country, Netanyahu bragged of his crackdown on African asylum-seekers.

Many, if not most, of the African refugees in Israel cannot return to their homeland, where they would face violence, war, or even death. In 2013, the Israeli government secretly deported thousands of Sudanese refugees to Sudan, in spite of threats to their lives. It did not inform the UNHCR that it was doing so, in flagrant contravention of international law.