This post originally appeared in Al-Akhbar English:
3-year-old Geraldine Blingoai was born to non-Jewish migrants. That was her crime.
Geraldine Blingoai (Photo: Ynet)
Yesterday, Blingoai was arrested at her birthday party by officers from the Israel Oz Unit, a division of the police created to target non-Jewish migrants and other violators of Israeli immigration policy (link is to Hebrew article; pardon any translation errors). When Ilan Gilon, a member of Knesset from the left-of-center Meretz Party, attempted to visit Blingoai at a holding facility, his assistant was arrested too.
While Blingoai and her mother await deportation to the Philippines, their friends have “gone underground,” according to the Israel daily Yedioth Aharanot.
In other news, left-wing Israeli blogger Yossi Gurvitz said in a Facebook post (also in Hebrew) that he was interrogated by Israeli police after a right-wing legal foundation complained about his writing. Gurvitz wrote:
Two weeks ago I was questioned on suspicion of incitement. This investigation was politically inspired by a complaint of a political organization, the Legal Forum for Israel, aimed at silencing me. I have not committed a crime and I am convinced that the case [will] be closed. So far, I was not able to report it and I am prevented from expanding on the subject because of police guidelines.
In 2010, I interviewed Legal Forum for the Land of Israel founder Nachi Eyal after his group attempted to pressure Israel’s Attorney General to prosecute another dissident writer, Ilana Hammerman, for bringing Palestinian girls living under occupation to play at Israeli beaches. “Israel will not allow these kinds of things to continue,” Eyal told me.
Haaretz’ reporter Barak Ravid has the most information about the case being made against Yossi Gurvitz in his blog, here.
The lawfare group that filed the spurious complaint with Israel’s prosecutor appears to be accusing Yossi of sedition. Good thing he’s a historian, he’ll have come across the uses of such accusations.
The threat of alien infiltration is most insidious in the form of innocent looking girls. There you have it: they LOOK, or more precisely, we look at them and so we became disarmed = corrupted. There exists pretty solid authorities that warn about those dangers.
The case of Yossi Gurvitz is more puzzling. He is sort of short tempered, acerbic and obstinate. For example, he refuses to apply the correct title to Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, calling him Minister of Propaganda. But this and most of the rest can be ascertained quickly using search engines. What is the extra value of interviewing Yossi by police? Also, he clearly incites people to make jokes on important officials. Is it laughware?
Blingoai represents millions of stateless people whose only crime is to have parents not born into the right religion or ethnic group or nationality. Roma, Palestinians, Costa Ricans, and Mexicans are the ones who immediately come to my parochial mind. But God bless them all.
It has been reported here that Jews will be outnumbered in I/P by Palestinians by 2015, according to PA govt information. But the Filipinos and other workers get no mention. They are as invisible as the countless stateless Palestinians exiled in the Gulf States, where the U.S. rescued Kuwait (are you listening Jerome Slater?) for the minority Kuwaiti overlords.