Thank you for this post. Kol hakavod.

J1 – the US accepts almost 40k asylum seekers a year… The current population in the US of African immigrants is almost 1 million. Plus, immigrants actually need a way of getting to the country they are seeking to enter. Many Africans literally are walking to Israel because it is a (supposedly) democratic nation within their proximity. Not to say the US absorption rate is great or the asylum granting is ideal, especially after the Patriot Act, but you might want to find out more about US immigration and asylum policies before pointing fingers. Or visit NY and actually see neighborhoods of African immigrants…

Let’s take a step back:
There are all sorts of problems in Africa–agreed.
I would hope that the world would do a better job in solving those problems in Africa, so that people wouldn’t feel the need to flee.
That, unfortunately, probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.
So, what’s the answer for all of these migrants?
I would hope that the world might develop a mechanism for their immigration to multiple countries, including Israel.
Or, we can continue with the current trajectory–that Israel is more or less the only refuge for people fleeing countries such as Eritrea.
I invite Justin and KFJ to look at a population map of Africa and of Israel.
It is not unfair to demand that Israel be held to a higher moral standard than the world’s other nations, but it is unfair to hold Israel to impossibly high standards.
If the current trajectory continues unabated, Israel will be expected to absorb millions of African refugees, without end to the immigration.
That’s not realistic, nor is it fair to expect of a tiny country with no natural resources.
It is true that Israel did indeed recently absorb large communities from the FSU and Ethiopia (because they were Jews.)
But there are two ways to look at those difficult absorptions: either through the lens of Israeli racism, or through the prism of the importance of Klal Yirael, which the Jewish community in Israel worked to uphold, in bringing in the Russians and Ethiopians.

“If this issue is a moral demand onto Jews, fine. The Jewish communities in North America should play their part too. They should be calling their Congressman, writing to the White House, organization NGO’s and fundraising campaigns, starting internet petitions, etc. . . . ”
The idea that Jews in NY, for example, live only in the UWS or Park Slope, and not among immigrants is about 20 years behind the times. Most of us can’t afford those areas, so we infiltrate Crown Heights (West Indian), Bushwick (Latino, African American), and Jackson Heights (Latino, Indian) instead. If your idea is that us coddled hypocrites wouldn’t consent to living among immigrants, you’re pretty far off.
In general, the idea that American Jews don’t know what its like to live with large immigrant populations is pretty ignorant. Yeah, you had your flood to the suburbs type. You also have the UWS. But there are far more Jews in NY than there are rent-stabilized apartments available to us.
I agree about the double-standard, though. But I think that Israel should deserve criticism for reacting with ugliness and promoting neo-fascists much the same way that the Dutch and French deserve for doing the same. And, frankly, I think that Americans are in a pretty good position to state that criticism.
Let’s face it. If you have the one of the most vibrant economies in a region, you’re going to have this problem. If ethnicity is a point of national pride, like it clearly is in France and the Netherlands, you’re going to react with ugliness.
Of course, a nation of people for whom ethnicity is a point of pride may well have a hard time seeing things this way…

KFJ wrote, in the related post:
It seems many Israelis have forgotten. Israel is supposedly the “center” of Jewish life, to where Diaspora leaders point as the place where knowledge of Jewish historical persecution is part of the public’s awareness. The UN’s covenant on refugee asylum was one of Israel’s first contributions to the international community: the country’s first government championed, campaigned and signed the voluntary law. Just like the Israelites enshrined the lessons of slavery in the Torah, early Israelis enshrined the lessons of the Holocaust in international law. Both are Jewish contributions to global morality.
Then KFJ wrote:
Kindly don’t speak for me, my perspective is bound up in American democratic principles that are hard to separate into exclusively Jewish principles.
Your point is noted, but I’m not a professional mind reader.
Israel has imported several hundred thousand migrant workers from the Philippines and Eastern Europe. They get work permits, so why not the African populations? Makes no sense.
Agreed that it was a huge mistake to bring in those migrant workers. If they hadn’t have been brought in, the job market would have led to higher wages/better conditions in agriculture and construction, and those jobs would have been filled by people who already lived in Israel–both Jews and Arabs–which would lead to lower unemployment. I don’t see how the solution is to perpetuate that mistaken policy, vis-a-vis foreign workers.
But what about working diplomatically with lots of other countries for a joint absorption and humanitarian assistance?
Agreed. And the demand is that must Israel take the lead in a mechanism for joint absorption and humanitarian assistance to African refugees that’s legitimate.
It’s not legitimate, however, to demand that Israel solve the problems of African refugees by itself, or to expect it to turn into the destination point for what could end up being millions upon millions of asylum-seekers.
That’s too much to ask.

“I would argue the exact opposite. If you are discussing these issues through an American Jewish spectrum, then you have every right to call out Israeli society on the occupation, because the American Jewish community isn’t holding another nation under a military occupation.”
Correction: The American military isn’t successfully holding another nation under occupation. God knows we’ve tried. It would be indeed a double standard to criticize the Israeli military and government on the occupation while condoning undeclared drone wars that kills civilians just as well as they kill militants. When I vote to reelect the President, I am – in a way – condoning that. The only thing that mitigates this moral outrage, is that the danger posed by a extremist government in Pakistan (if the situation in the tribal regions spread to the capital) makes the threat of Iran look like a child’s game, considering that Pakistan actually has nukes, and a history of nuclear proliferation. Whether drone wars are productive or counterproductive in that regard is completely unknown to me. (My real moral worry is that it’s unknown even to experts.)
“Is this an unfair demand? Are American Jews prepared to live out their morality only in an arena half-way around the world?”
We have our own immigration issues. It is fair to criticize us on the way we handle them. It is fair for Jews to specifically criticize Jews on moral grounds with respect to how we, as Jews, handle those issues. But it is not fair to criticize American Jews on the grounds that we need to be prepared to solve Israel’s immigration issues in order to criticize Israel.
Do you have prominent neo-fascists making loud noises like in the Netherlands or not? If you honestly answer that question, you have your answer to the larger question: the criticism is fair.
It seems to me that you have things exactly backwards.

“hey have that right. If they want to have a bit more integrity behind those criticisms, though, they would put their money where their mouths are, and begin a campaign to bring hundreds of refugees per year, to the Jewish communities on Long Israel, in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, etc., and have those refugees really live in the Jewish neighborhoods.”
Again, you are way behind the times. This was a valid criticism in the 60’s and 70’s, as urban Jews fled to the suburbs to escape the great migration – something, given your stereotypical understanding of the US displayed in a typically brazen Israeli manner (yes, yes, that’s a joke) – you probably don’t understand the significance. One of the reasons the position may have more integrity than you think is Jews made that mistake, and younger generations are ashamed of the racism of their parents and grandparents. Which is why those concentrated Jewish communities of which you speak (unless they are ultra-orthodox) are rapidly turning into withering geriatric communities.
Personally, my only demand of Israelis is that they not act like fascist thugs. It is unclear to me whether ordinary Israelis are following their politicians in so-acting, or whether it goes the other way around. Still, given that it is a democracy, it doesn’t really matter.

I’m pleased with the outburst of raw naked racism directed at Africans. Makes it easier to demonstrate that whatever is wrong with Israelis isn’t necessarily related to Palestinians. Whatever is wrong with Israelis is just… wrong, and the tribal reluctance to respond accordingly helps to neatly divide the community into allies and opponents.
For the Jewish community to become anti-racist, it is necessary that we name and shame the racists and provide them with no space in which to have their racist assumptions affirmed or catered to with sensitivity.
The pattern for this kind of rejection has been set – by the bastards who go after JVP. Let’s see them apply that standard to the Israeli politicians fanning the flames of hate in Tel Aviv.

Most here seem to be conflating the issues of providing refuge and offering asylum and naturalization. Israel can and should be a refuge for victims of genocide, but is under no obligation or moral impetus to naturalize them, must sensibly manage their length of residence in the country, and establish a horizon for their repatriation.
The riots were ugly, and fit the definition of a pogrom. That they seem to have been incited, in part, by ostensibly religious Jewish parties and persons makes me sick. That’s completely f*cked up (and also, the absolute WORST way to deal with it is by attacking those persons head on, because they’re playing to a base of extremist activists, and doing so will only raise their electoral profile). The issue of providing haven to refugees is emerging as a powerful litmus test for observant Jews to differentiate between unworthy blowhard demagogues and serious, Torah-minded leaders, precisely because the mitzvah of providing refuge is so patently clear and inescapable.
Also note, these weren’t “haredi” pogroms; most of the rioters, from what I saw, were not religious-identified whatsoever.
Shiri’s solution – American Jewish involvement – is kneejerk and quite puerile. The problem is an Israeli problem and the solution must be an Israeli solution. Any American Jewish role should be by Israeli request. Have some faith in our people’s sensibility and compassion. The last thing Israelis need are American Jews with too much time on their hands making a sport of stand-off carpet-bombing righteous indignation (too late?) which will, instead of focusing anger on the rioters, where it would naturally go, provoke a defensive response (as demonstrated by J1 above).
Define this within an American vs Israeli context and we all lose. Define this within a right vs left or a religious vs secular context and we all lose. The consensus for doing the right thing without destroying either the country or our values exists.

I’m neck deep in clinicals. I sometimes go days or weeks without reading a thing about contemporary Israel; the only time the word still comes up is in my ChiTaS and davening. No time for much else. It’s been a profound, life-changing experience, to take an extended break from activism. I’ve missed maybe two or three months of news, without really missing anything, if you know what I mean.
With perspective, it’s really amazing to me that so many people devote incalculable quantities of time, vast waterfalls of the stuff, of their lives, to events in which they have no direct role, no real competence, and no actual ability to influence anything.
Every morning I check in on a little girl named Sheena, 7 years old. When she was five her parents beat her so badly they severed her spinal cord, among other things, turning her into a quadriplegic. In the last two years her legs and left arm atrophied and had to be removed. Her right hand is contorted and clenched involuntarily in a terrible way which, if she retains any feeling in that arm, must be immensely painful for her. All day, every day, she stares at the wall, blinks and wets her lips. I don’t know if she can hear me, but trying to enrich her sensory input in the morning has become so much more important to me than checking the news.
Still, nice to see Jewschool plugging away.
How are you doing, Jonathan?

Victor,
Great reply. You hit the nail on the head.

@Jonathan1
Don’t worry too much. This isn’t really about you, as an Israeli, or Israel itself, for that matter. Much of what passes for progressive Israel-related American activism is simply using Israel and Israelis as a prop, a convenient “other” (which is why KFJ’s gross generalizations are kosher, whereas he’s never dare to speak in such generalities of black or hispanic Americans, much less Palestinians), in the classic American struggle for self-definition by negation.
Israel has so far deported what, 200-300 people? My country, the United States, deports thousands of people a day, tearing apart families and destroying lives in the process. Many of those deported have been living here for years or decades, from the time they were infants, and know no other country or language. We have tens of thousands of illegals in administrative detention (the same kind that Islamic Jihad members stage hunger strikes about), many thousands of which will remain so for years, indefinitely, because their countries of origin either no longer exist, are failed states, or refuse to repatriate them (I know of such people). I’ve yet to hear a single progressive American Jew start a crusade on this issue, and were they to try, they would fail.
It turns out illegal immigration is a complicated subject when one is forced to grapple with its complexities. But this is racist, apartheid, as-a-Jew, not-in-my-Holocaust-surviving-grandmother’s-name Israel we’re talking about here, and a little righteous indignation flavored with a quote or two from the Rambam goes a long way to appearing like you really care, without doing a damn thing.
So, just act the part you’ve been cast in, Jonathan: STFU like the nice, bigoted, racist and homophobic AIPAC neocon, rapist of Filistine that you most clearly are, and remain a convenient prop in the Jewish-American game of communal identity politics. Remember, it’s not really about you, because if it were, they’d be talking to you, not about themselves.

I had the same observation. Of course, being a Jew in any place makes the subject of Israel like a connected issue. However, I think that the topic is more concentrated on Jews on America rather than what is happening in Israel as a country.