Hundreds protest plans to deport migrant workers, kids

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

By Dana Weiler-Pollak (Haaretz)found at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120969.html

Hundreds of people turned out yesterday in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to protest the cabinet's decision to deport 1,200 children of foreign workers and their parents next summer.

Yesterday morning social welfare organizations held a vigil in front of the Knesset as the legislators inside discussed the deportations. Another vigil was held at the same time across from the Interior Ministry building in Tel Aviv.

In the afternoon, several hundred demonstrators, marched along Ben Zion Boulevard in the center of Tel Aviv. Protesters called on cabinet ministers to "do what is moral, true and right" and grant the children legal status.

"As long as deportation is on the agenda, no matter the date, we'll keep on working," said Rotem Ilan of the Israeli Children organization, which organized the protests. "Those kids can't be living on hold, in permanent anxiety. Until the day arrives on which those 1,200 children, who are 100-percent Israelis, get a legal status, we won't stop."

Deeply engaged in the struggle is Noa Maiman, whose father is business tycoon Yossi Maiman. "Our connection to this is personal: It began when my grandmother, who is 95 and a Holocaust survivor, made us promise that we would take care of her "granddaughter" Pirita - her Peruvian caretaker's little girl," Maiman said.

"My grandmother is terrified about it and we all feared for our friends when the Oz deportation unit took to the streets," Maiman said, referring to the Oz task force created by the National Immigration Authority to locate and detain foreigners working in Israel without valid work permits.

"As the August deportation deadline drew near we prepared about 75 hiding places for children," Maiman continued. "I felt personally responsible. My grandmother was saved from the Holocaust by a Polish woman who hid her for two and a half years. I'm not making a comparison here, but there's this ongoing womanly grace happening here, and perhaps my grandmother is also trying, in her way, to pay the world back in kindness."

MKs and ministers yesterday also voiced their opposition to the plan. Education Minister Gideon Saar (Likud), said that "the interim decision of the prime minister must be extended until the of the year, and in the meantime a general policy must be fleshed out to avoid such situations in the future."

Saar's predecessor, MK Yuli Tamir (Labor), invited the leaders of the protesting organizations to the Knesset, and requested time for the issue at the session. "The cabinet's decision to leave those children just hanging in mid-air appears to me to be cruel and unseemly," she said. MK Haim Oron (Meretz) said the "brutal and shameful decision to deport children" shows that Interior Minister Eli Yishai of Shas and his colleagues "have forgotten what it is to be Jewish."

The Minister of Sports and Culture, Limor Livnat (Likud), said that if the decision to deport the children goes forward, she would formally protest it in the cabinet. "It's inconceivable that those kids, who know no other country but Israel, will spend their days terrified, horrified and hiding from immigration police," she said.