Israel Struggles With African Refugee Dilemma

Coils of razor-wire top the fence surrounding the Shepherd hotel, which has been purchased by the...

Coils of razor-wire top the fence surrounding the Shepherd hotel, which has been purchased by the right-wing American Jewish millionaire Irving Moskowitz, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood July 19, 2009 of East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion after the U.S. State Department told the Israeli envoy to Washington that it must halt a controversial construction project at the site.

(David Silverman/Getty Images)

Five years after a mounted militia stormed his village, torching houses and killing his relatives, Ibrahim Saad el-Din, a refugee from Sudan's Darfur region, gazed at remnants of another slaughter: hundreds of shoes worn by Jews killed in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust.

Saad el-Din was among a dozen African refugees brought by an Israeli advocacy group to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial last week, hoping to spur public sympathy for their plight by invoking the Jewish people's own history fleeing death and persecution.

Over 16,000 asylum seekers have poured into Israel in recent years, most from Africa, posing a unique dilemma for the Jewish state.

Israel is proud of its heritage as a refuge that took in hundreds of thousands of Jews who survived the Nazi genocide. But it's conflicted over refugees from elsewhere. Israel's many wars with its Arab neighbors have left it distrustful of outsiders, while some fear accepting non-Jews could threaten the state's Jewish character. As a result, it is struggling with how to handle the non-Jewish newcomers.

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"The Jewish past makes us particularly mindful of the dangerous plight of exiles and refugees and the need to help them," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "But the smallness and siege mentality of our country given its hostile environment make us more committed to maintaining our majority."

Israeli refugee advocates criticize the state, saying stints in jail and the scant support asylum seekers find in Israel fail to honor the memory of Jewish persecution through the ages.

"I think it's a great shame the way we're behaving," said Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers. "We have an extremely short memory."

Israel's current refugee influx started in 2005, when Egyptian smugglers helped a few hundred Africans sneak into Israel. The government arranged jobs for some, and as stories of their new lives spread, more came.