Will the kids be alright? Deportations, conscience, and Israel

Over the past six months Israel has been raging over the fate of 400 children of migrant guest workers that have been scheduled to be deported from the country along with their parents. The children’s deportation was originally scheduled to take place on the eve of the Jewish New Year, at the beginning of September, and has been postponed to follow the Sukkot holiday, which ended last week. Israeli authorities have set up special facilities to hold the families once they are rounded up, yet to this date the deportation has not begun. On the ground, Israeli kindergartens are empty of migrant children who are kept home by their parents for fear of the immigration police, and a few kibbutzim have even volunteered to hide the children about to be sent away.

The children’s deportation, should it take place, will happen despite months of loud public opposition that has united almost all fractions of secular Israeli society. The few supporters of the deportation consist mainly of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox, and are led by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the head of Shas, Israel’s largest ultra-orthodox party.

The opposition to the deportation, while almost uniform in the religious affinity of its members, has brought together unlikely voices in Israeli society. Holocaust survivors joined Knesset members and ministers who belong to opposing political parties to voice their discontent with Yishai’s decision. Ehud Barak, the head of the Labor party and minister of defense joined Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli minister of education and Likud member in an unlikely coalition against the "inhumanity" of the deportation. Even Sarah Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, wrote a letter to Yishai, pleading with him to reconsider his decision and let the children and their parents stay.

What stands behind this loud public support, which has become almost a consensus in Israeli society, and what does it mask?

The answer is not a simple one. To begin, suffering children provide a simple, non-controversial image behind which it is easy to unite and rally. It is much harder, for example, to address the lack of a formal immigration policy in Israel — the main motivation for Yishai’s decision on the deportations in the first place. The current Israeli immigration policy is a de-facto revolving door, which allows for a continuous influx of new foreign workers, yet mandates their departure after a year, two years, or more. Consequently, a powerful, but publicly invisible bureaucratic apparatus, has emerged in the Israel, which is funded by each new worker by fees for visa arrangements and transportation costs. Great lobbying efforts within the cabinet advocate for a continuous stream of expulsions, which are followed by a flow of new workers, from which to profit.

On a more fundamental level, however, the opposition to the deportation is grounded in deeper, more complex reasoning.

In the past year Israel has seen the rise of worrying phenomena that threatens the country’s democratic fabric and point to the seeping affects of the occupation.

The first is Im Tirtzu, a new movement started by right wing students and academics, which targeted left wing professors in Israeli universities. The movement demanded from Israeli universities to rid their faculties from such "un-loyal" academics critical of Zionism and the occupation. Later in the year, Im Tirtzu even went as far as threatening Ben Gurion University with contacting its international donors to tell them about the supposedly radical leftist academic hegemony in the university’s Political Science and Governance department, which, they claimed, silenced students and prohibited them from expressing opinions supporting Zionism. Im Tirtzu gave Ben Gurion’s president a 30 day ultimatum to correct the supposed academic bias that has, according to the group "displaced, marginalized and excluded the Zionist discourse." This public letter, which was eventually denounced by most Israeli academics, had never the less received some support by the Israeli press.

In parallel to the rise of Israel’s new McCarthyist movement, the country also experienced a local Abu Ghraib-style photo fiasco. Earlier this year, Eden Abergil, a former female IDF soldier posted on Facebook photos from her military service. In the photos Abergil is posing next to handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners. As a result, a public uproar ensued, yet Abergil adamantly stated that she did not understand why. The Palestinians in the photos are terrorists, she said, and thus should be treated accordingly. Later it turned out that Abergil was not the only IDF soldier to post such photos, and a few days ago another scandal resulted due to a video of an Israeli soldier belly dancing next to a handcuffed blindfolded female Palestinian woman.

The Israeli media covered Abergil’s story, extensively criticizing her, and also focused on the damage caused to Israeli PR in the world. The question that was never raised, however, was that if this were some kind of a prevailing norm, what else is considered "normal" in the army? A question many Israeli parents, no doubt, had to deeply suppress was just how desensitized do their 18-year old children need to become to successfully police the Palestinian civilian population under Israeli occupation? Consequentially, what are the long-term psychological affects, and perhaps even damages, these young Israelis will suffer as a result?

The case of the migrant children, thus, provides a perfect "feel good" opportunity. As Minister Barak said — deporting the children is a "not Jewish or humane and will scar the entire Israeli society." Thus, opposing it enables the country to act and feel humane and generous, allowing for a non-complicated, almost non-controversial, cathartic moment. It does not, however, force Israel to deal with the very painful issues regarding the future and fate of its own children, issues that could possibly tear the country apart.

Hadas Cohen is a PhD Candidate in the political science department at the New School for Social Research and is writing her dissertation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.