Dr. Shlomo Mor Yosef, Interior Ministry bureaucrat tasked with deporting African refugees
African refugee child, whose t-shirt reads: “My aunt is the best, best, best in the whole world!”
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The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights demanded the revocation of the physician’s license of Shlomo Mor Yosef, the director general of the Immigration section of the Ministry of the Interior. He is tasked with directing the expulsion and forced deportation of 40,000 African refugees, many of whom have lived in Israel for years after escaping civil war and various forms of ethnic strife in their homelands.
It was Mor Yosef’s unit which advertised for bounty hunters to capture refugees off the streets and whisk them back to Africa, in much the same way that 19th century slave catchers were dispatched by white plantation owners to capture runaway slaves and return them to their southern owners.
African refugee from another era: Moses’ mother saving his life
It was also Mor Yosef who announced that in its infinite mercy, his agency would not deport every single African refugee, but only those who were single males. In the mind of this brilliant pencil-pusher, only single males leave their homes looking for work, thus making them economic migrants, rather than true refugees.
It never occurred to Mor Yosef that in the Biblical story of Moses, Pharaoh also tires of the Israelite slaves, ‘economic migrants’ of their day who fled to Egypt to escape a famine. But they were useful to him in building his pyramids. Wanting to be rid of them eventually, but not in a way that sabotaged his massive building projects, he directed all the midwives to drown any male Hebrew babies. They did so, except in the case of a single one, the little baby Moses. The rest is history.
I suppose the next step in Mor Yosef’s escalating policy to rid Israel of its own African ‘slaves’ is to direct that all newborn male babies be drowned in a suitable local river like the Yarkon. The only problem is that the remaining girl babies could ‘interbreed’ with Israeli Jews and continue the race in that fashion. But that would be an unacceptable dilution of the Jewish racial gene pool.
Mor Yosef is also quoted as denying that deported refugees die when returned to Africa, despite the fact that Israeli NGOs and journalists have documented the deaths of refugees at the hands of ISIS in Libya and elsewhere. For all these reasons, PHR-Israel has declared that Yosef has betrayed his oath to heal the sick and give comfort to the afflicted. Instead, he is aiding and abetting the suffering of fellow human beings in violation of the Hippocratic Oath and his medical license. In doing so, he brings the entire Israeli medical profession into disrepute.
On a related note, an Orthodox rabbi, Dr. Ori Weiss, has summoned Aryeh Deri, the Interior Minister to a beit din with a complaint that his directives to expel the Africans violates various Jewish laws.
Silverstein has published Tikun Olam since 2003, It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He lives in Seattle, but his heart is in the east. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.
What became of Dr. Ori Weiss’s din Torah? Did Interior Minister Deri respond?