Ukraine will be co-hosting the next European Cup soccer championship in 2012.  As part of the build-up to this momentous event, it is organizing a mega-million advertising campaign promoting Ukrainian tourism throughout the world.  I’ve even heard of “Ukraine–All About U” promotions as far aways as India. Ukraine also sees tourism with Israel as a major opportunity because there are many former Ukrainian Jews living in Israel, and Ukraine, as the cradle of Hasidism, includes major pilgrimage sites for Orthodox Jews to the graves of such luminaries as the Berditchever and Bratslaver rebbes and the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the movement.  I myself visited these sites and saw how many Orthodox Jews from Israel and the Diaspora were drawn there.

This is why Ukraine still has interest in joining NATO and just signed a protocol with Israel ending the need for visas for mutual travel.  On his current visit to Israel, Prime Minister Azarov emphasized his country’s interest in signing a Free Trade agreement with Israel that would create a duty-free zone for products and services between the nations.  As part of this expansion of trade, there would also be an expansion of security and military cooperation of the sort that characterized Ukraine’s presumed participation in the abduction of Palestinian civil engineer Dirar Abusisi on a train in Poltava on the night of February 18th.  Abusisi was later transferred to Mossad custody, flown out of Ukraine to Israel, and imprisoned in a Shin Bet interrogation chamber within hours of being spiriting off that train.

One might also presume that Ukraine would love to get its hands on some of that advanced weaponry, missile systems, and high-tech security applications developed by Israel’s weapons industry.  A free trade agreement would go a long way toward satisfying Ukraine’s appetites for these new toys for its military.

In fact, I’d lay money on the fact that there was either a tacit or explicit quid pro quo between Israel and Ukraine for securing the FTA and that the rendition of Abusisi was part or all of the latter’s payment for the transaction to be completed.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, and even more for those it is attempting to draw to the championship games, the nation is not ready for prime time.  First, Ukraine is a country now in the grip of a pro-Russian strongman style government more in the Soviet/Putin style than that of the Orange Revolution.  Second, is a country where trade and security come before human rights.  Where indeed human rights exists only as a concept honored in the breach if at all.  Third, there is a huge trade in illicit weapons, drugs and even human trafficking.  The European Union pays Ukraine hundreds of millions to wage a fight against the latter major crimes.

I’ve had a in-depth conversation with an American in Ukraine who specializes in immigration, human rights, and refugee issues there.  He gave me quite an education.   There really is no such thing as refugee protection in Ukraine.  If you are fleeing from persecution suffered in a former Soviet Republic like Uzbekistan or Russia, you have no protections inside Ukraine.  Upon entering that country, you may be beaten by immigration authorities.  You may be arrested even as you enter a government ministry where you are about to apply for residency and refugee status.  Take a look at this website established by Ukrainian human rights lawyers to see evidence of what I’m saying.

This is why Dirar Abusisi’s case is so important in the context of Ukraine’s push for international recognition.  Why should the world welcome Ukraine on the world stage and allow it to exit the orbit of Russia as a former Soviet satellite, when it can’t respect the norms honored by other western democracies?  Dirar Abusisi followed the rules as laid out by Ukraine.  He went to the ministry to proffer his papers to apply for citizenship, since he wished to bring his country from Gaza to a place where he hoped they might have a better life (he is also married to a Ukranian national).  And how was he repaid for following the rules as laid out by Ukrainian authorities themselves?  He was kidnapped either directly or indirectly by a third nation whose agents were operating in Ukraine with the apparent tacit or explicit assent of Ukrainian security agents.  Then he was flown into captivity by those Israeli Mossad operatives.

What message does this send to the thousands of refugees fleeing war, conflict, or persecution in other countries who find themselves in Ukraine?  It tells them that this place is a free-fire zone for political refugees or dissidents.  It tells them that if the Ukrainian secret police don’t get you first, your native security services will.  And they might even do it inside Ukraine.

An Israeli TV news reporter recently broadcast an unsubstantiated rumor offered to him no doubt by the IDF that the ship recently seized by Israel allegedly containing Iranian arms allegedly destined for Gaza was organized by a company in Odessa.  He also hinted that Abusisi may’ve been connected to this venture.  What would be especially wild about this story if any of it was accurate (and keep in mind very well none of it may turn out true) is that Ukraine is the kind of place where a company can plot the transfer of tens of millions in advanced weapons systems to so-called terrorist states, while Ukraine also collaborates with the nation that would allegedly be victimized by these weapons in illegally seizing a citizen of a third state who might’ve been organizing the weapons deal.  ”What a country,” as Yaakov Smirnoff used to say.

Does this sound like a country that’s ready to play soccer or anything else upon the world stage?  Ukraine has a LONG way to go.  It might start by making a full accounting of what happened to Dirar Abusisi.  Who snatched him?  Why?  Who did they give him to?  What happened to him?  Why didn’t Ukraine do anything to protect him?  What did Ukraine get in return for its cooperation?

Nobel Peace laureate Maguire stands before the MV Rachel Corrie before sailing for Gaza (AP)

In a ruling that should bring shock and disdain on Israeli jurisprudence throughout the world, the Supreme Court ruled that the intelligence services and Interior Ministry were right in excluding Nobel Peace laureate, Mairead Corrigan Macguire from Israel as punishment for her sailing on the Rachel Corrie in order to break the Gaza blockade.

In effect, Israel’s highest court has implicitly ratified the blockade as a legal act under Israeli law, a view contrary to international law.  It has also ratified the blatant security policy of excluding political undesirables merely because they criticize Israeli government policy.  Interestingly, a significant minority of Israeli society shares those same views, but because they are citizens the security services do not (yet) have the power to exclude them.

For those who enjoy debating my views, I should make clear that Israel and other countries have every right to exclude anyone they wish from their countries.  They usually don’t have to give rhyme or reason.  But in rejecting entry of some of the world’s most distinguished intellectuals, peace activists, and clowns from Macguire to Chomsky to Finkelstein to Ivan Prado, Israel betrays to the world its shrinking from democratic values, free debate, and political diversity (for God’s sake..afraid of a Spanish clown???).  In other words, the nation shows its true colors to the world and can no longer argue it is what most know it isn’t: a democratic society which values free speech for all.

Laughably, the court suggested that the authorities should have allowed Maguire to enter the country using a 48 hour visa to attend the conference she was planning to address.  In that case, I wish the Supreme Court judges who rendered this stupid ruling were instead lowly immigration officials so they could’ve acted sensibly in place of the stupid decision made to exclude her.

Also laughably, the court suggested that the proper route would’ve been for Maguire to protest her exclusion by the Interior Ministry before attempting to enter Israel.  Why should she honor an unjust and corrupt system by engaging in such a charade?  Everyone knows she would be denied, and once denied and after appealing her denial, she would still be rejected; and if she THEN attempted to enter Israel the court would STILL have ruled against her finding a different ground on which to do so.  Once again, I make the point that even Israeli highest court is loathe to second guess security decisions even those having no rhyme, reason or justification in democratic values or common sense.  It is, as Israel’s media have also pointed out, a rubber stamp for the security apparatus.

“You shall not oppress the stranger [immigrant] because you know the soul of the stranger for you yourselves were immigrants in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9)  [translation, R.S.]

This verse recalls the migration of Jacob’s sons to Egypt during an ancient Israelite famine.  It invokes the history of oppression that Jews suffered there as economic migrants who ultimately escaped slavery at the hands of Pharaoh during the miraculous exodus orchestrated by Moses during the holiday we are about the celebrate, Passover.

Ruth and Naomi (Leonard Baskin)

The Bible calls on Jews to treat immigrants (the term ger in Hebrew, which is often translated as “stranger”) with respect no less than eight different times in at least four different books.  In addition, there is the deeply moving story of the Book of Ruth, whose entire plot revolves around an Israelite economic migrant, Naomi, who travels with her family to Moab to escape famine at home (not unlike current Israeli immigrants from Sudan, Ethiopia and Asia).  While in Moab, Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women, but when the sons and her husband die, she decides to return to Israel and urges Ruth, her daughter-in-law, to return to her Moabite family.  Ruth refuses with one of the most gracious, moving speeches to grace the entire Tanach:

“Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

In more recent history, we have the accounts of righteous Gentiles who gave Jews refuge during the Holocaust at great risk to themselves and their families.  Conversely, we have a darker history of those like the Roosevelt administration which turned Jews away from ports of refuge, as the St. Louis was shunned when it unsuccessfully attempted to deposit 900 Jewish refugees in the New World

This is not a general subject that is peripheral, but rather is at the heart of Judaism.  Without the tender mercy of strangers, we might have long ago ceased to exist as a people.  Therefore, we see ourselves as a generous people, one attuned to suffering and therefore bound to treat the stranger in our midst with kindness and respect.

So how else should a Jew react when they read disgusting incitement (for the full effect in the original Hebrew, read here) from none other than a member of the Israeli Knesset, Yaakov “Ketzeleh” Katz, who is also a prominent extremist settler leader.  Here Katz (whose nickname oddly invokes the Yiddish diminutive for “kitty-cat”) inveighs against the thousands of economic migrants pouring into Israel’s economy from dire African places like Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.  One linguistic note: the term “infiltrator” used here has a charged connotation in modern Hebrew, as it historically referred to Palestinian fighters who “infiltrated” Israel to engage in terror attacks:

The State of Israel is facing a hard problem: Between 1,000 and 2,000 persons infiltrate each month through the porous southern border…In an increasing arithmetic progression we will reach, in six or seven years, 75,000 or 100,000 African infiltrators, most of whom will live in Tel Aviv…

With a century of hard labor, Am Yisrael has built here a Jewish state. In ten years, these infiltrators could make it all go to waste. We are losing the state to insanity.

…Our committee has visited schools and kindergartens in Arad and we couldn’t believe our eyes: The city is slowly being taken over. The schools in Arad and Eilat are filling up with Eritrean and Sudanese children. Already, close to a tenth of the city’s inhabitants are Sudanese or Eritrean, Muslims and Christians.

We got used to thinking that we are defeating our enemies in battles and here they have surprised us from the rear. The rulers of Sudan and Eritrea, in collusion with the Egyptians are conquering Israel.

Note in this passage, echoes of the Nativist rants of yesteryear against the oncoming hordes and unwashed masses bearing hard down on our shores.  Note the language akin to that used to describe a plague of locusts or other form of vermin.  The racism is mind-boggling.  Also note that Katz, comfortably ensconced in his West Bank settlement home, is attempting to gin up hysterical fear among the wealthy denizens of Tel Aviv’s northern suburbs, which are akin to places like Evanston, Scarsdale, Beverly Hills and Napa Valley in the U.S.

…The infiltrators are penetrating Hatikva neighborhood, are flooding south Tel Aviv and every day they advance a few tens of meters towards Dizengoff on their way to Akirov and Ramat Aviv…As I see it, there is no choice but for the prime minister to declare martial law for everything regarding infiltrators.

In the following passage, Katz suggests establishing an entire city for migrants that would be a cross between a concentration camp and Hooverville:

…I have suggested…to start [constructing] a city that will be a decent distance from the border, where only there the infiltrators will be allowed to live. They will be employed in government projects for building the city itself [and] building the border fence [to prevent further immigration].

It may be that this kind of labor would take it’s toll on the infiltrators in a way that they will advise their relatives not to follow in their footsteps to Israel. They may even wish to pay again $2,500 per head to the corrupt guides who brought them here, this time in order to  return them to their home.

For some time no one is surprised how many of Tel Aviv’s residents are willing to sell Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. But it is unbelievable for me to behold how it does not bother them that their own city is becoming Eritrean and Sudanese. A thought sneaks to my mind that this secular, liberal and elitist community has simply lost all will to live…Is this what they hoped for when they built their homes in Tel Aviv? That it will become an African city? What kind of person wants to sell himself and his home?  [translation: Eitan Issacson]

The Jewish people both within and outside Israel should know that when they continue supporting the Occupation, they are supporting racism like this.  Do we want to be judged and measured as a people by the hate of such hooligans?  Further, I challenge the settlers who define Judaism and Jewish values for us as they do here in the comment threads.  Theirs is not Judaism.  It is a perversion of Judaism.  Let’s call it Judea-ism, an idolatry based on worship of land over the spiritual values which our Biblical Prophets represented.  We do not need a Third Temple in order to be good Jews.  We do not need armed outposts in Hebron to maintain our covenant with God.  Let us take back our religion from such people.  They do not represent us, nor should they represent Israel.

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• Israel to build security barrier on border with Egypt (telegraph.co.uk)

Thanks to reader Miriam Adams for notifying me that Sami Al-Arian was freed on bail today by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after five years in prison:

Sami Al-Arian is out on bail in Virginia today, said his attorney Jonathan Turley.

“He is having a very cheerful reunion with four of his children in Washington, D.C.,” said Turley.

His wife, Nahla, and youngest daughter, Lama, returned to Egypt three days ago.

The former University of South Florida professor had been in federal custody for more than five years and was released this afternoon after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed with his attorneys that to hold him was a violation of his constitutional rights.  Al-Arian had been held by  ICE for 130 days and the legal limit was 90 days.

A federal judge had ordered the government to release him in July.  Despite her ruling the Justice Department refused to do so and the judge ordered them to do so once again today, which is the only reason he is out.

Despite a five year battle by the feds to pin a terror charge of any kind on him, they never succeeded.  Keeping him in jail seemed designed as a punishment for their failure, rather than a legitimate legal procedure.  His release is a small victory for civil liberties and against Islamophobia in this country.  It is a small victory against the Bush Administration’s perpetual war on terror.

He is nowhere near in the clear yet though.  Now, he must prepare for a Supreme Court appeal of the supoena that led to his original contempt citation.

“Radical Islamic” musicologist with terror weapon tucked under chin (NYT)

I just read this in the NY Times and if this isn’t anti-terror fever run amok I don’t know what is:

Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States.

Her case has become a cause célèbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgar’s music.

But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion.

The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion.

After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake.

In a tearful telephone interview from her parents’ home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman, 34, an Oxford graduate who earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, said she felt like a character in Kafka.

“I don’t know why it’s happened, what I’m accused of,” she said. “There’s no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless.”

So what could possibly have placed her on a watch list? I guess it must be her expertise in Elgar, writer of Pomp and Circumstance:

But Ms. Ghuman’s case does not seem to fit such a pattern. Few believe that her book in progress, “India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940,” or her work on Elgar, best known by Americans for “Pomp and Circumstance,” could have raised red flags in Washington. And if it were a question of security profiling, nothing in her background fits.

She was born in Wales. Her mother is a British homemaker, and her father, an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Wales, was born in India to a Sikh family and moved to Britain in the 1960s.

I never knew there was some pro-terror secret message hidden in that particular piece of music. Condi must know something we don’t.

Here’s the story of what actually happened to her at the San Francisco airport that day:

Ms. Ghuman’s descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away.

In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as “Hispanic.”

Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night.

Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed.

“They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights,” she said. “For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means.”

As Ms. Ghuman tells it, the officers said they did not know why she was being excluded. They suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities, she said, or that Mills College might have terminated her employment without telling her. The notions are unfounded, she said.

One officer eventually told her that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and advised her to reapply for a visa in London after a 10-day wait. But it took more than eight weeks for her file to be transferred to the United States Embassy in London, in part because of routine anthrax screening at the State Department.

As for the possibility that she has been deemed a security threat, Ms. Ghuman said: “It’s not only insulting and heartbreaking, but how? In what way? Musicians, dangerous people? Is it my piano playing?

“I have no indication at all,” she added, “and it has been 13 ½ months.”

This is an outrage beyond words. And the fact that the State Department has allowed it to continue for so long without rectifying what is clearly a idiotic, incompentent mistake is beyond belief. It makes this country look like the absolute buffoons we sometimes are to the rest of the world, not to mention that it makes democracy as practiced (or not) by the Bush Administration into the laughingstock of the civilized world.

I’m delighted to report that Washington State Republicans are working assiduously to ensure their continuing irrelevance to the citizens of this great state. Coming oh so close to taking the last governor’s race must’ve scared them into realizing how close they came to relevance. This most recent move came during the State Republican convention at which delegates voted for a resolution declaring that children of immigrants born in this country should not be entitled to citizenship. It’s quite a remarkable statement by our open-hearted Republicans. First, it violates the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution. Second, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of Washington since the state has no say in determining who becomes a U.S. citizen. Let’s hear it for gratuitousness.

And this quotation from the State party chair confirms that party leaders have taken leave of their senses:

…State Republican Party Chairwoman Diane Tebelius said she believes the party’s position reflects how Washington voters feel.

If you read the fine print here you’ll notice she didn’t say HOW MANY Washington voters feel this way. Aside from the delegates who voted for this dumb resolution, if there are more than 10,000 in the rest of the state who agree I’d be surprised. So OK, maybe I’m being generous in thinking that there are only 10,000 Know Nothing nativists in our state. Maybe there are 100,000. If even 10% or 20% of the state feels this way I’d be shocked.

In fact, a recent poll shows Washington State voters favor by a large majority allowing long-term immigrants to become citizens:

A recent poll by Seattle pollster Stuart Elway found that most Washington voters felt that illegal immigrants should be allowed to become citizens.

About 67 percent of Washington voters said immigrants who have lived here a number of years should be allowed to apply for legal status and eventually become citizens if they meet conditions such as paying a fine and back taxes.

If they favor this position they certainly would favor allowing children of said immigrants to become citizens. So much for Tebelius’ ability to ‘take the pulse’ of the Washington voter.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the person to tell State Republicans how stupid they’re being. Let ‘em figure it out for themselves. But if they continue along this path they may eventually win a governor’s race somewhere along about the year 2100 or so.

And here’s some more sterling reasoning from a State party delegate supporting the proposal:

Delegates arguing in favor of the move complained about the cost to hospitals where illegal immigrants have their children. “Once they have babies, they can get on welfare and all sorts of stuff,” said one delegate supporting the proposal.

As a Democrat, when I read stories like this one in the papers I get all warm and fuzzy inside. While they’re at it, I’d suggest that the Republicans also try bringing the Minutemen to Washington. It’ll go over really big too.

A struggle rages in Congress between a bi-partisan group of moderates and liberals seeking a fair-minded, compassionate set of immigrations reforms and the hardline Republican right which seeks a punitive immigration bill. Thankfully, the immigrant communities of this nation are rising up against the latter and saying “Enough!” Enough racism, enough Know-Nothingism, enough anti-immigrant animus masquerading as national policy.

St. Louis passengers pose on deck (all photos: U.S. Holocaust Musuem)

This is the season of Passover, which commemorates an ancient Jewish migration to Egypt which led to my people’s enslavement and eventual liberation through the Exodus. When I think of contemporary Jewish exoduses, the mind travels back to the period before the Holocaust when hundreds of thousands of Jews were on the move, seeking refuge from the Nazi onslaught. There were very few places in the world that would have them. And the U.S. was NOT one of them. Our borders were closed. In fact, anti-Semitism was so prevalent in 1930s America, that I have no doubt that Jews were the wetbacks of their day. Remember that horrid Nazi propaganda picturing Jews as slovenly beasts with long noses and avaricious eyes? Perhaps Americans weren’t as overt in their hatred, but anti-Semitism was there right beneath the surface if not on the surface.

No event more poignantly illustrates this than the tragic fate of the S.S. St. Louis, the ship carrying a thousand German Jewish refugees which sailed around the western hemisphere seeking refuge until it was turned back to Europe where many of the passengers died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust:

Telegram appealing unsuccessfully to FDR for help for S.S. St. Louis refugees

Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, passengers on the “St. Louis” cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never answered the cable. The State Department and the White House had already decided not to let them enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and then qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.” American diplomats in Havana asked the Cuban government to admit the passengers on a “humanitarian” basis…

President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit additional refugees, but chose not to do so for a variety of political reasons.

American public opinion, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler’s policies, still favored immigration restrictions. The Great Depression had left millions of Americans unemployed and fearful of economic competition for the scarce few jobs available…

Few politicians were willing to challenge the mood of the nation. At about the same time that the “St. Louis” passengers were seeking a haven, the Wagner-Rogers bill, which would have permitted the admission of 20,000 Jewish children from Germany outside the existing quota, was allowed to die in committee. On the Wagner-Rogers bill and the admittance of the “St. Louis” passengers, President Roosevelt remained silent. Following the U.S. government’s refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the “St. Louis” sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939.

After their return to Europe, 250 of the 937 St. Louis passengers died in the Holocaust.

Is there any doubt that the xenophobia and lack of compassion exhibited by America under FDR (remember he also refused to bomb the rail lines leading the extermination camps) stalks the halls of Congress today? People like Eric Maher (who I assume is Jewish) should be ashamed of themselves for ‘shaking a stick’ at America’s illegal immigrants and telling them to ‘get in line’ just as the State Department told the Jews of the St. Louis. We Jews know what it’s like to be oppressed whether as immigrants in Egypt or as non-persons in the days leading up to the Holocaust.

A nation or people that no longer cares for the plight of the downtrodden migrant does not deserve to be called the “land of liberty.” Rather, it should be called the land of “I’ve got mine Jack.”

Hebrew slaves building the pyramids (source: Chandlerschool.org)

With demonstrations today in New York, Seattle (where I live) and elsewhere of hundreds of thousands (see NY Times coverage) demanding a fair and equitable immigration reform bill from Congress, I took to thinking about Passover and the Exodus. Why? You’ll recall that Deuteronomy 10:19 says: “Do not mistreat the stranger, for you yourself were a stranger in Egypt.”

That’s why I marvel at the Republican ideologues Tom Tancredo and the Minutemen groups which pound the drumbeats of hate for immigrants. Almost all of those who wish to felonize immigration and close our borders with the use of walls, etc. are believing Christians. One assumes that the Old Testament is a book that carries some meaning for them. So what happened to good old Deuteronomy? Did they forget about it? Or do they only honor it in the breach when it’s convenient?

Uncle Sam/Moses “parting the waters for Europe’s refugees”

Our sacred book tells us that we must not look down on immigrants, we must not treat them harshly. We must treat them as we treat ourselves because we were once in their shoes. We were once slaves in a land not our own. We knew the whip and the lash. We suffered as immigrants in Egypt and therefore must not allow the immigrants among us to suffer as well.

My family hails from several European Jewish communities and came here as immigrants between the 1850s and early 1900s. Would I want my own ancestors hounded and tracked down for deportation as the anti-immigrant crowd would wish? Would I want them to find a wall once they got to our border? Imagine what Emma Lazarus is thinking as she watches down on the debates in Congress about how severely we should treat those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free?” If Lady Liberty could express her emotions she’d be shedding a tear or two right about now.

If you’ll recall the story, the children of Jacob traveled to Egypt to procure food during a severe drought. When they discovered that Joseph, their brother had become the Pharaoh’s right-hand man, they in effect immigrated to Egypt where they sojourned for 400 years. Is this situation any different than those immigrants to this country who come here for a myriad of reasons? Why can’t we see these new immigrants in the same light as Jacob’s children in ancient Egypt?

A little mercy, a little compassion is called for. As for those who can’t muster any–for shame. These folks need to go back and read their Old Testament a little more carefully as they are making a travesty of the Good Book.