Israeli Interior Minister on African immigrants: ‘Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man’

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, a.k.a. “the white man” (Photo: Wikipedia)

On Sunday, Israel instituted a new law that allows the government to jail illegal immigrants for up to three years. Previously, immigrants could be held for 10 days. The JTA reports the new law also “stipulates that anyone helping migrants or providing them with shelter could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.”

Reuters shares responses from members of the Israeli government, including Interior Minister Eli Yishai:

[Interior Minister Eli] Yishai, of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told the newspaper Maariv on Friday he saw the African arrivals, many of whom are Muslims or Christians, as a demographic threat.

“The infiltrators along with the Palestinians will quickly bring us to the end of the Zionist dream,” Yishai said, adding that Israel had its own health and welfare issues. “We don’t need to import more problems from Africa.”

“Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man,” Yishai said in the interview with Maariv.

Yishai is the party chairman of the Shas party. Ynet reports that the Shas party journal recently published a public letter to the African migrant workers:

Rabbi Moshe Shafir opened his letter with a seemingly appeasing tone. “We love you dear Sudanese,” he wrote. “The worst a Jew will ever do to you will be better than the live bullets fired at you at the Egyptian border.”

He soon went on to explain why the two populations cannot cohabitate. “A society personifying a social time bomb of robbery, violence, sodomy as well as assimilation alongside the destruction of the institute of marriage and the proper family unit – such a society must be separate and distant, and the sooner the better.”

The article stated that the Jewish people returned to their homeland after many years in exile “to fulfill the positive potential of the human race…you have proved this is not ‘your thing’ and that is why it’s best if we part as friends…you’re ruining our dream…perhaps you may have helped us in various ways, but under the current circumstances it’s probably not the case.”

Shafir stressed, “This is not about racism or any racial doctrine but a question of leadership, and social principles of decent human beings.”

He further added, “This has nothing to do with Nazi racism, God forbid – where things were the other way around: a corrupt, murderous society disposed of a foreign and hinest people who only benefitted it and balanced it with its pure virtues.”

‘We’ll be glad to help you’

Shafir ended his article by quoting Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I have a dream.”

“Listen up, dear and kind Sudanese people. In the United States, Martin Luther King’s dream came true. Giuliani will tell you how he made it happen. Go forth and implement this in Sudan and Eritrea. We promise to help you, we’ll even be delighted to help, as always.”