(And Israel doesn’t get a pass here because it let some refugees in. Lauding the good deeds of a policy they’re now reversing doesn’t impress too much).

Arutz Sheva: Egypt Allowing Sudanese Refugees to Flood Israel

Arutz Sheva: 500 Darfur Refugees Given Asylum

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Sunday that he has ordered 500 Darfur refugees be given Israeli citizenship and absorption assistance.

Olmert added, however, that other African refugees, who continue to attempt to enter Israel from Egypt, will be turned away. Fifty such Africans were transported back to Egypt Saturday night.

Israel estimates that 2,800 Africans, 1,160 of them Sudanese, have crossed the Egypt-Negev border region in recent years.

It’s a complicated issue. My opinion is that the African illegal immigrants, once vetted, could take some of the jobs currently requiring importation of foreign workers.

This statement, at the very least, is simply false. As soon as a person crosses your border, they are legally within your jurisdiction. This is why Israel can, among other things, send them back (how could they initiate such a proceeding against someone not “under their jurisdiction”?). Since Israel is the controlling sovereign authority in the land where these refugees are currently in, they have an obligation to treat said refugees fairly and humanely. That obligation exists under international law, and under moral law. And any “Jewish state” that doesn’t recognize that obligation is not representing Judaism in any manner that I recognize (”for we too were once strangers in a strange land”, as I recall).

Bottom line: Egypt’s conduct is despicable (it’s hard to cast my description of their conduct, “well-known discrimination, violence, and brutality”, as anything but condemnation) but it doesn’t justify Israel’s stance here in the slightest. I’m not backing off an inch.

This really should have been the subject of a speech or two in the UN

The UN is too busy condemning Israel to be bothered with REAL crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Sudan and elsewhere.

You’re right, in particular about the Arab world.
The silence re the Darfur genocide in and from Arab nations has been deafening.
I think Western nations have become so afraid of causing offense, they’ve been reluctant to point this out. This really should have been the subject of a speech or two in the UN.

And these refugees aren’t under Israel’s jurisdiction until and unless Israel lets them into Israel. Until and unless Israel does, they are under Egypt’s jurisdiction; echoing Laura’s comment, where’s your condemnation of Egypt? You sure seem to be quick to let Egypt off the hook, and yelling for Israel to admit them sure takes the pressure off of Egypt to do anything, doesn’t it? Not that your post was going to amount to a lot of pressure on anyone in any event, but…

How many Americans care when Mexians die while walking across the desert in search of a job?
We;re not doing so well re the displaced Iraqis, either.

I don;t think America is in a position to cast the first stone.