T’ruah denounces this week’s Knesset law that will once again send African asylum seekers to jail without trial. This law violates both international human rights and Jewish law.
This new law, passed Monday, December 8th, in the last hours before the Knesset disbanded itself, comes in response to an Israeli High Court ruling forbidding the practice of imprisonment without trial as a violation of Israel’s Basic Laws. This is the second time the Knesset has passed a new law that overturns a High Court decision in favor of the asylum seekers.
Israel is a country of refuge. As a Jewish people, we have known the experience of having no safe place to go. The asylum seekers, who come mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, have left their own homes to escape forced lifetime army conscription, religious persecution, torture, and other human rights violations. As the Torah teaches, we must “not oppress the stranger, for [we] know the soul of the stranger, having [ourselves] been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).
We are conscious that Israel, as a small country, has limited resources to absorb asylum seekers. We are not asking for the borders of Israel to be thrown wide open. Rather, we are asking for Israel to process the claims of the fewer than 50,000 asylum seekers currently residing there.
Jewish law insists on fair trials. Indeed, one of the Torah’s first commands for setting up a just human society involves the need for courts and judges. Rather than being allowed to present their claims for asylum, as happens in every other country that has signed and ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, African asylum seekers in Israel are sent to detention centers – they are treated like criminals but without a trial. This is unacceptable.
We call on the Israeli High Court of Justice to again affirm that imprisoning asylum seekers is abhorrent and unacceptable in Jewish law, in international law, and according to the Basic Law of the State of Israel. We ask the Knesset to abide by such a ruling, to take steps towards evaluating asylum claims, and to welcome the oppressed strangers who come to us seeking refuge.
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