Lawmakers from the left-wing Meretz party drew criticism for their decision to travel to Rwanda with the financial backing of a German policy institute as part of their efforts to prevent the deportation of illegal African infiltrators from Israel.
The trip comes amid controversy in Israel surrounding government policy to deport African migrants, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, to Rwanda come April. Many in the Israeli public contend that sending the migrants back to Africa, even if it is not to the countries they fled, constitutes a threat to their lives. The state, however, insists that they face no threat in Rwanda, and that the overwhelming majority of them are in Israel merely for work, and not to escape life threatening situations.
Meretz MKs Michal Rozin and Mossi Raz said they planned to follow the migrants to Africa and learn about the immigration policy in place on the continent and how they were being treated by their host nations, calling their four-day trip an "emergency visit."
In a statement, the two said they would "assess the current situation in Rwanda and Uganda and meet with public officials and representatives from human rights organizations in an effort to mobilize broad opposition to the agreement, to expose them to Israel's policy regarding asylum seekers and to explore any possibility of stopping the deportation."
Rwandan authorities in the capital of Kigali, however, refused to meet with the Israeli lawmakers.
Rwandan Foreign Ministry official Olivier Nduhungirehe said, "Rwanda cannot be a playground for Israeli internal politics. We deal with governments, and we only receive foreign officials that are announced and cleared by their foreign ministries."
Rozin has said that migrants deported from Israel "would join the 174,000 refugees in Rwanda who have been here for 20 years, without regulated status, and that is how they will remain. Refugee status is granted sparingly."
She claimed that "since our struggle against the deportation began, we have been joined by more and more … citizens who are not willing to deport the refugees. We will not let this happen without exhausting all modes of action."
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri lashed out at Rozin and Mossi, saying "Meretz MKs who flew to Rwanda with German funding, would you be so kind and suggest to your German dispatchers, in my name, that the State of Israel does not object to deporting the infiltrators to Berlin instead of Rwanda."
Likud MK Anat Berko also blasted the lawmakers' trip. "What could be more deadly and absurd than the radical Left, which claims to be liberal, connecting to a communist German fund that aspires to the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state?" she wondered.
"The argument over whether Meretz is a Zionist party ended the moment the MKs accepted funding to travel to Rwanda to follow the illegal labor migrants from the [Rosa] Luxemburg Foundation. How great must the Meretz MKs' disappointment have been when they discovered that Rwanda is a safe place for labor migrants, and according to the High Court of Justice's ruling, there is no problem with sending them there? Most of them return to their countries of origin."
Berko accused the German fund of acting to facilitate "the destruction of Israel and the negation of its Jewish identity. The fund supposedly concerns itself with 'human rights,' just not the human rights of the Jewish people."
"This is the same fund that donates to the Zochrot organization, which promotes the [Palestinian] 'right of return' claim that aims to destroy Israel demographically," she said.
"Here is my suggestion to the German fund," she continued. "Since very few children are being born in Germany these days, Germany can serve as another host country and absorb these workers. To MK Michal Rozin, I would recommend going on a tour of south Tel Aviv with funding from the Knesset," she said, referring to the high concentration of African refugees in certain southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods, where the migrants are accused of menacing the locals.
Israel has started handing out notices to 20,000 male African migrants giving them two months to leave the country of their own accord or face punitive action.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is offering the migrants $3,500 and a plane ticket to what it says is a safe destination in another country in sub-Saharan Africa.
The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel is posing a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home. The right-wing government is under pressure from its nationalist voter base to expel the migrants while others are calling for them to be taken in.
The government says the migrants are "infiltrators" looking for work rather than asylum, but there is a growing liberal backlash against the plan, including from rabbis, a small group of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and ordinary people who say Israel should show greater compassion to the migrants.
