Opponents of the deportation of African illegal labor migrants in Israel back to Africa can note with great satisfaction the agreement between Israel and the U.N.'s refugee agency to transfer over 16,000 of the migrants from Israel to other Western countries.
The well-oiled mechanism behind the international pressure on third-party African governments to renege on their previous consent to take in illegal migrants expelled from Israel achieved its primary aim of preventing the migrants from being returned to Africa.
Those who opposed the deportation were willing to do anything for their cause, including tarnish Israel's reputation, profane the memory of Holocaust victims and damage Israel's strategic relations with important African countries.
The campaign to rescue the deportees from the "life-threatening" dangers awaiting them in Africa was completely hypocritical. The protection of civil rights was not the motivation for the organizers of protests throughout Europe against Israel's "deportation government." These highly publicized demonstrations, in which the Africans were depicted either in chains like slaves or awaiting deportation at train stations as in Nazi Europe, were intended to cause the maximum damage to Israel's reputation, while portraying the governments of Rwanda and Uganda as collaborating with a "white colonialist power" in its efforts to deport "miserable African asylum seekers."
My impression from a recent visit to Rwanda was that local authorities were prepared for the absorption of thousands of deportees from Israel. But the impact of the coverage of the protests against the expulsions in international and African media outlets was very embarrassing to both Rwanda and Uganda. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who currently chairs the African Union, could not have allowed his country to be portrayed as lending a hand in the "forced expulsion" of Africans from a wealthy Western country.
The cancellation of the deportation agreement and its replacement with a U.N.-sponsored deal to transfer the migrants to Western countries constitutes a Pyrrhic victory for those who oppose deportation. First and foremost, despite being signed by the U.N. agency for refugees, the new agreement makes the true nature of the problem clear: These are not "refugees" or "asylum seekers," but labor migrants who arrived in Israel to improve their standard of living. They will not be transferred to U.N.-run refugee camps in safe countries in Africa, but will be able to continue on to better lives in the West – although not in Israel, as those who oppose the deportations and have the backing of organizations that seek to erase the Jewish character of the State of Israel had hoped. The African labor migrants were only a means to this end.
So now these pure and noble-minded souls who were willing to hide the "refugees" in their homes to keep them from being deported will be put to the wwww. Will we see them open their cities, their neighborhoods and their homes to the thousands of migrants set to remain in Israel, so that they can enjoy all the abundance the state has to offer them? Why would we leave such an important task with the government, if those righteous souls are still willing to take them in?
The African migrants who remain in Israel will need to prove their desire and ability to be absorbed into society and not live at its expense or become involved in violence and crime. Israeli authorities will need to consolidate a clear program to that end, and whoever does not meet the necessary standards should not be able to enjoy any rights.
Now that the framework deal to deport the migrants is off, how will Israel extricate itself from the mess created by the Left?
