In Europe, close to a million refugees from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan and migrants fleeing economic despair are desperately trying to cross borders to safety. Germany alone has absorbed 800,000 this year. In the United States, illegal immigration over the border from Mexico is a topic heating up again as national elections approach.
Compared with these crises, Israel’s struggle with its migrant population is small enough to seem insignificant. But it’s not — not to Israelis, not to Jews around the world who care about Israel’s Jewish soul, and certainly not to the tens of thousands of migrants themselves.
And Israel is not handling the problem particularly well.
In recent years, huge numbers of mostly Sudanese and Eritrean refugees have crossed illegally into Israel, up to 50,000 by some accounts. They consider themselves asylum seekers fleeing conflict and oppressive regimes. Israel considers them economic migrants in search of work, and has not exactly welcomed them warmly.
Few have entered the country since 2013 when Israel completed its security fence along the Egyptian border, once the point of entry. But those already living in Israel are in limbo. More than 1,200 have been held in prisonlike conditions at a detention facility in the Negev Desert town of Holot. Though free to come and go during the day, these detainees, like thousands of other African migrants who disappeared into the shadows of Israeli society, exist in a legal no-man’s land. They have few opportunities to work or to attain citizenship, yet Israel has nowhere to send them.
Stepping into the fray, Israel’s Supreme Court this month ordered the release of the Holot detainees. That may sound like an act of justice, but as the situation has played out, it’s only made matters worse.
Detainees have been released with little more than bus fare and the clothes on their backs. They are not permitted to enter Tel Aviv or Eilat, the two Israeli cities with the largest African émigré populations.
This is not what the Torah meant by freeing the captive.
Clearly, nations need to monitor their borders and protect their precious resources. No nation can afford to be overwhelmed by unlimited immigration, and Israel, like any other country, cannot accept every asylum seeker knocking on its door. But neither can it permit itself to weaken the moral foundation upon which the Jewish nation is built. Part of that foundation includes the indelible holy commandment to welcome the stranger. There has to be an equitable intersection between self-protection and mercy.
Given the plight of the African migrants, Israel must find that middle ground and create a humane solution.