I am an asylum attorney. I am also Jewish. In my role as a lawyer, I represent many Muslims and many people from the Middle East, including Palestinians. Today, I want to discuss what it means to be a Jewish attorney representing Palestinian asylum seekers during this time of conflict.
I’d like to start with a message I recently received from one of my Palestinian clients, about his family in Gaza. (more…)
The war between Hamas and Israel has prompted some American politicians to call for a ban on refugees from Gaza. Other politicos want to deport student protesters who express pro-Palestinian sentiments, or exclude Palestinians from the U.S. altogether.
I suppose that in a time of war, there’s an impulse to pick a side. Israel or Palestine. Muslim or Jew. Us or Them. And so in theory, I can understand why some leaders would want to punish those who appear to be supporting our adversaries. But as I see it, painting all Palestinians or all Muslims as Hamas supporters is counterproductive and harmful to our national interests, not to mention untrue. (more…)
They say that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. That’s true for death as well. I had no plans to write about Israel this week, but given the current conflict, I am finding it impossible to write about anything else. (more…)
Perhaps you’ve heard about the plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to derail U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Many Republican leaders have joined the effort, and 47 Senators (all Republican) led by Tom Cotton wrote an open letter to the Ayatollahs warning them against a deal. All this is in the public record.
What’s less well known is the role of a powerful lobbying group, which has pushed efforts in Congress and in the media to end negotiations before any agreement is reached. The group is known by its acronym: AIPAC. No, no, not that AIPAC. I speak of the “Asylum and Immigration Professionals Advancing Chaos” lobby, also known as “the Other AIPAC.”
Why would asylum and immigration professionals want to advance chaos, you ask. Although I shouldn’t do it, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Chaos is good for our business. Let’s face it–the more things suck over there, the more likely people are to come here. And when they come to the United States, they need immigration and asylum lawyers to help them stay. Move over Big Tobacco and Big Oil; make room for Big Asylum!
The Other AIPAC has a record of success. Take, for example, the Second Gulf War in 2003. Before the U.S. invasion, our friend Mr. Netanyahu told Congress, “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” I’m not sure about that, but taking out Saddam’s regime has certainly had positive reverberations in the region of my wallet. Scores of Iraqi asylum-seekers have hired me since we “brought democracy” to Iraq. Thank you, Bibi and the Other AIPAC!
What’s so wonderful about the Other AIPAC is that people seem to accept what it says despite all evidence to the contrary. For example, Mr. Netanyahu recently indicated that he would never cede territory to the Palestinians: “[T]here will be no concessions and no withdrawals,” he said. He apparently views the land as vital to Israeli security. But what say the people who are actually experts in Israeli security. In contrast to Mr. Netanyahu’s position, over 180 retired Israeli security officials–high ranking members of the military and intelligence services who have devoted their lives to protecting Israel–have strongly endorsed a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians and a two-state solution:
We believe that it is imperative, possible, and urgent to launch an Israeli regional initiative to determine borders that ensure security for the citizens of Israel and a firm Jewish majority. Such an initiative will strengthen Israeli society from within; allow for more effective handling of security threats; create dramatic political, security and socio-economic transformation; and enhance Israel’s international standing.
So does this mean that Mr. Netanyahu’s position is actually endangering Israel? Is he substituting self-delusion for reasoned analysis? No matter, the Other AIPAC has got his back. More chaos = more business, that’s our mantra.
But, you ask, what about Iran? Mr. Netanyahu says that we know enough about the current, not-yet-negotiated deal to know that it is worse than no deal at all. It will leave Iran able to produce a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, it will lift all restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after 10 years, it won’t stop Iran’s aggression in places like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, or its sponsorship of terrorism. He gives us a simple alternative: Tighten the sanctions and hold out for a better deal. Sounds reasonable, no?
Well, let’s ask the experts. The same group of retired generals that oppose Mr. Netanyahu on Palestine also opposed his speech to Congress:
[T]here is not a single security expert that doesn’t understand that after this speech, Iran will not be distanced from the nuclear option it is attempting to achieve. The people of the US see the rift between the countries and the leaders, the people of Israel see it, and no less importantly, the people of Iran see it.
The international coalition of countries that has been squeezing Iran, and that forced them to negotiate, has been led by the Obama Administration. To be fair, the effort to isolate Iran began under the Bush Administration. But the sanctions have been significantly expanded under Mr. Obama.
Perhaps–as Mr. Netanyahu proposes–we could continue to tighten the screws on Iran, and our coalition partners would follow along. Or maybe, as many experts believe, increasing sanctions would cause the coalition to fall apart. Then, I suppose we could go it alone. Unilateral sanctions work so well, after all. Just ask Cuba. But again, all of this is of no consequence to the Other AIPAC. We say, “Tighten those sanctions! To hell with the coalition! Bring on the chaos!”
Ignore the experts, block all negotiation, pander to the base with angry statements about Iran, put partisanship ahead of policy. This is the Other AIPAC’s recipe for chaos. And, as we know, chaos is good for business.
If you talk to people working in the human rights field, many will tell you that they view their work as an expression of their political and moral beliefs. More often than not, those beliefs are grounded in religious faith.
That is true for me. I am Jewish and I am an asylum lawyer. I view my work as an expression of my Jewish values. These values are derived not just from our sacred texts–which encourage discussion, debate, and self reflection–but also from our experience as a people who lived in exile and faced centuries of persecution. For me, Jewish values include respecting the life and dignity of all people, trying to understand “the other,” trying to understand myself, and sympathizing with the powerless. All this is a good fit with asylum law where I represent foreign people who face harm or death from governments or terrorist groups. But how do these values align with support for Israel?
There was a time when I felt that my values were largely consistent with supporting Israel. After all, it is a small country, created by refugees and surrounded by enemies. But more recently, it has become harder for me to be “pro-Israel,” as that term is generally understood. It’s not that I don’t support Israel and believe it should exist as a Jewish state. I do. But I have found that in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to reconcile the values that guide my life and career with being “pro-Israel.” There are several reasons for this.
For one, it is difficult to accept the dishonesty of the pro-Israel side. Of course, this is not a problem confined to supporters of Israel. If anything, I see more dishonesty from opponents of Israel. But since I am Jewish and concerned about the behavior of my side, it is difficult to square my Jewish values with the pro-Israel propaganda that I daily see in the news. An example of this is how Israel’s supporters consistently put forth a narrative that exonerates Israel for any blame in the current conflict. It is true that Hamas initiated the recent fighting, but that is hardly the beginning of the story. Israel seems always to have an excuse for failing to make concessions or reign in settlers. As a result, moderate Palestinians are undermined (since they cannot show progress to their constituents) and extremists are empowered. A more honest evaluation would include self criticism–what have Israel and its supporters done wrong? How have their actions contributed to the cycle of violence? How have Israeli policies encouraged Jewish extremism? This type of analysis, I have never heard from the pro-Israel camp.
Also, I have great difficulty accepting the alliance of pro-Israel Jews with Neo-Conservatives and Christian Zionists. I find the Neo-Conservative’s view on the use of force to be immoral and anti-Jewish, not to mention cynical, short-sighted, and ineffective. Exhibit No. 1 in that regard is our war in Iraq. As for the Christian Zionists–people like John Hagee of Christians United for Israel–their purported love of Israel seems a thinly veiled proxy for hating Muslims. If there ever came a time when Israel was actually able to make peace with the Arabs, the Christian Zionists would be opposed: Peace with Muslims is not compatible with their world view. The values of Neo-Conservatives and Christian Zionists are profoundly contrary to my own. And while I understand that the enemy of my enemy is sometimes my friend, for me, certain alliances are beyond the pale.
I also have trouble with the knee-jerk defensiveness of the pro-Israel camp, which is eager to label any expression of anti-Zionism as Antisemitism. Sometimes anti-Zionism is Antisemitism, and sometimes it is not. But there is a flip side to that coin: For many years, Jews have made the State of Israel an integral part of our religion. Synagogues have Israeli flags and signs supporting Israel, we celebrate Israeli Independence Day, we send our young people to Israel to study, we raise money for Israel. In other words, we have made Judaism and Zionism synonymous. In that case, it is hard to fault our enemies for confusing the two concepts. Frankly, I think our attachment to Israel is a good thing. What I oppose is the assumption that all criticism of Israel is made in bad faith, which allows us to avoid the difficult task of self examination.
Linked to the issue of defensiveness is the on-going effort by Israel supporters to stifle speech that they view as anti-Israel. They threaten funding sources, ban (or attempt to ban) disfavored speakers from Jewish events, label leftist Jewish groups “traitors,” and they rejected the dovish J Street’s attempt to join the Presidents Conference, an umbrella organization of Jewish-American agencies. If the pro-Israel camp sought to counter the ideas they find offensive, that would be one thing. But instead, they seek to eliminate those ideas. I am a believer in free speech and in the (very Jewish) idea of debating issues. To me, these efforts to squelch speech and avoid engagement on difficult issues is offensive.
Finally, I do not appreciate the effort of Israel supporters to deflect attention from Gaza by comparing it to the much more deadly situations in Syria or Iraq. While I think it is legitimate to ask non-Jews and non-Palestinians why they are more concerned about Gaza than Syria, I do not think that question is appropriate for Jews (or–obviously–Palestinians). As Jews, we should be concerned about the behavior of other Jews. We should question Israel’s policies that we disagree with. The fact that others are behaving worse than us does not seem a valid justification for our own actions.
I remember an incident from when I lived in Israel–way back in 1990. I was visiting the Jewish settlers in Hebron, a large Arab town in the West Bank. We went to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is considered the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a holy place for Jews and Muslims. We were in the Jewish section when the settlers started singing “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” and dancing. They danced into the Muslim part and interrupted a dozen old Muslim men who were praying. At the moment, I felt I had to choose sides–with the settlers or with the Muslims. I am sorry to say that I chose to dance and sing with my fellow Jews. The old Muslim men stopped their prayers and watched us quietly, humiliated.
I still believe that there is a choice to make, but it is not a choice between Jews and Muslims or Israelis and Palestinians. It is a choice between right and wrong. I am pro-Israel in that I believe Israel should exist as a Jewish democratic state and that it has the right to defend itself from terrorists’ missiles and tunnels. But if “pro-Israel” means persecuting, humiliating, and de-humanizing Palestinians, refusing to make concessions for peace, demonizing opponents, stifling speech, and making alliances with morally bankrupt groups, you can count me out.
A couple of recent articles got me thinking about how the U.S. handles asylum seekers coming from countries that we view as friends–Western-style democracies that generally respect human rights.
The first is an article from the Jewish Daily Forward (featuring a quote from my esteemed law partner, Todd Pilcher) about asylum seekers from Israel. The article found that 18 Israeli nationals sought asylum in Fiscal Year 2011. The article found that the asylees were a “strange and quirky mix:”
One, an Arab citizen of Israel, is a gay man who convinced authorities he would face violence from his own family and tribe if forced to return to Israel. Lack of adequate action by Israeli police played a role in the approval of the request, his attorney said. Another is an Israeli woman who suffered domestic abuse. She also received asylum after making the case that Israeli authorities were not protecting her. Yet a third is the son of a founder of Hamas who, after spying on the terrorist-designated group for Israeli authorities, felt unsafe under Israeli protection and fled to the United States in fear for his life [I wrote about this case here].
The second article is a follow-up on a homeschooler family that received asylum from Germany. In that case, an Immigration Judge found that the family faced persecution in Germany after they refused for religious reasons to send their children to public school, as required by German law. The Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the IJ’s decision last May, and the homeschoolers filed a petition for review and a brief with the Sixth Circuit. The case is currently pending.
Other “Western” countries listed as source countries for asylum seekers in the U.S. include Argentina (9 people granted asylum in FY 2011), Brazil (20 people), Germany (4), Latvia (6), New Zealand (5), Poland (6), and the United Kingdom (8). These numbers are pretty small given the total of 24,988 people granted asylum in FY 2011, but such cases raise some interesting questions.
First, how do the source countries feel about a decision from the U.S. government that they are persecuting (or, at best, failing to protect from persecution) their own citizens? When asked by the Forward, an Israeli diplomat said that the scarcity of asylum cases in the United States did not require the Israeli government to bring up the issue with Washington. The official added that the few cases in which Israelis were granted asylum in America represented “unusual circumstances” and did not reflect on Israel’s democracy. I’d bet that like the Israelis, most Western democracies see these asylum cases as aberrations and aren’t particularly bothered by them. One country that is annoyed by our State Department’s practice of evaluating the human rights situation in other countries is China. In “retaliation” for our report, China issues its own report, which describes a litany of human rights abuses in the United States.
A related issue is whether–if the number of asylum cases form a particular allied country increased–that country could raise the issue diplomatically in order to curtail asylum grants. Theoretically, asylum should be independent of politics, but the Forward article raises the example of Israeli conscientious objectors who received asylum in Canada. Apparently, “Canada has approved dozens of asylum requests from individuals claiming political persecution by Israel since 2000.” According to the Forward, in 2006, the Israeli government protested Canada’s asylum policies. And in the past two years the number of Israelis receiving asylum in Canada has declined. If this is correct, and the decline in asylum grants is related to the Israeli protest, it raises serious concerns about the integrity of the Canadian asylum system.
Another question raised by these asylum cases is, how the heck do you get granted asylum from a country like New Zealand or the UK? My guess is that these cases involve very special circumstances, like victims of human trafficking who have not received adequate protection, or maybe sexual orientation cases where the person was subject to severe abuse. Another possibility is that the Immigration Judge and the DHS attorney agreed to grant asylum in order to address an otherwise inequitable situation. For example, I once had a case where my client was convicted of an aggravated felony. She had been here for many years, had a family with a special needs child, and it was obvious that the only reason for her conviction was the incompetence of her criminal lawyer (her crime was very minor). Although it was pretty clear that she did not qualify for withholding of removal, the IJ would have granted relief to resolve the situation. Unfortunately, the DHS attorney did not agree. Had the attorney agreed, the client would have received relief, even though she really did not qualify. Maybe something similar is happening in some of the asylum cases at issue here.
Asylum cases from Western democracies are relatively rare. But there are enough such cases to help prove the adage, no country is safe for everyone all the time.
A recent editorial in Al Jazeera by Charlotte Silver criticizes the Israeli asylum system. The first paragraph pretty much sums up the author’s feelings on the matter:
The notion of a “Jewish and democratic state,” never a feasible reality, continues to unravel as its inherent racism is revealed in a new way. Any political discussion of refugees that are of the wrong ethnicity inevitably refers to African migration to Israel as an “existential threat.” Labeling these refugees as “threats” allows the state to criminalize and imprison them. Meanwhile, the country continues to solicit immigrants from East Asia to fulfill the need for cheap labor, and Jewish immigrants to battle the internal demographic war.
There certainly are legitimate bases to criticize the Israeli asylum system (more on that below), but given the asylum systems–or lack thereof–in the Arab World, such criticism is hypocritical coming from Al Jazeera. For one thing, unlike the large majority of countries on Earth, many Arab countries have not accepted the Refugee Convention and offer no protection to people fleeing persecution. Further, wealthy countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait are well known for their abusive treatment–akin to slavery–of foreign guest workers. Given the absolute disaster that foreign asylum seekers face in Arab countries, Al Jazeera would do better to concentrate on the failures at home rather than complain about what the Israelis are doing. It’s kind of like an F student criticizing an A student because he missed a question on the test (ok, maybe it’s more like an F student criticizing a C student, but you get the point).
That said, the Israeli asylum system is far from perfect. A thoughtful–and very critical–academic article from 2010 by Professor Tally Kritzman examines the Israeli system, which was created in 2002 (although Israel has been a party to the Refugee Convention since 1954). Essentially, the article argues that the Israeli asylum system is “an extension of Israel’s immigration and citizenship regime, which excludes the non-Jewish refugees and frames the refugee as the ‘other,’ with the Palestinians and other enemy nationals facing maximum exclusion.” While asylum seekers are considered “others” in many countries, Prof. Kritzman argues that in Israel such people are “more ‘other’ than elsewhere.”
Despite the problems, Israel is making an effort to improve its asylum system. At the request of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, in 2010 Israel partnered with the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, UNHCR, and USCIS to help train asylum officers. Hopefully this new effort will lead to an improved asylum system that will treat asylum seekers more correctly under international law and distinguish such people from immigrants to Israel.