Category: Miscellaneous

Palestinians step again towards nationhood

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, August 18, 2012

A year after their bid for statehood flopped in the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation is again planning to seek an upgrade in UN status. On Sep. 27, the PLO will approach the UN General Assembly in hopes of becoming a non-member observer state. If their bid is successful, the Palestinians will be eligible to join various UN agencies and will also be able to bring allegations of Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court.

Responding to news of the Palestinians’ upcoming UN bid, Israeli Knesset Member (MK) Danny Danon said that Israel should unilaterally annex Israeli-controlled Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank and includes more than 200 Israeli settlements and outposts.

The idea of an annexation seems to be gaining currency. Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, promoted a Knesset bill calling for such a move. MK Uri Ariel has called for the application of Israeli civil law to Area C – a move that analysts say would amount to a de facto annexation.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Ariel’s proposal has garnered the support of “more than half” of Likud’s parliamentary representatives. And last month a number of Likud MKs participated in a conference organized around annexing not just Area C but the whole of the West Bank.

Despite the fact that Knesset Members are active in the drive towards an annexation, government spokesman Mark Regev has said that talk of an Israeli annexation of Area C is “ludicrous.”

Whatever the end goal, the Israel government continues to establish “facts on the ground” in Area C. According to the Israeli non-governmental organisation Peace Now, 2011 saw a 20 percent increase in West Bank settlement construction with work beginning on more than 1,850 new units. This year, Israel has approved over 1,400 new housing units in settlements – suggesting that 2012 will be a record-breaking year of settlement growth – and the number of West Bank settlers has risen by 4.5 percent.

As the state facilitates the transfer of Jewish Israelis to Area C with one hand, it uses the other to push the indigenous Palestinian residents out. Between January and June of 2012, the UN reports, Israel destroyed 384 Palestinian and Bedouin homes and structures in East Jerusalem and Area C. According to the UN, this led to the “forced displacement” of 615 Palestinians and Bedouins, more than half of who are children.

The UN notes that 2012 has seen a “significant increase” in both demolitions and displacements, “On average, 103 people have been displaced every month in 2012, compared to 91 in 2011, 51 in 2010, 52 in 2009 and 26 in 2008.”

Both the state and Israeli settlers are increasingly using “lawfare” against the Palestinian population in Area C – deeming Palestinian structures and villages that often pre-date the Israeli occupation itself as “illegal” and, therefore, subject to demolition.

According to Tamar Feldman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there are more than 14 Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills that are caught up in legal battles – waged by the state and right-wing organizations like Regavim – to hang on to their land.

The Palestinian villages of Zanuta and Susya, which are both under threat of imminent demolition, are two situations in which Regavim revived frozen demolition orders by petitioning the court, essentially forcing judges to rule on the cases. There are also the 12 villages in Firing Zone 918. If the state has its way, 1,500 Palestinians will be expelled from the area.

The state has no plans to relocate the families or to compensate them for taking their land.

Speaking to IPS, Feldman comments, “The Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills area have a lot of (Israeli-declared) firing zones and nature reserves that have restrictions on entry and residency. Most of the firing zones are not really being used for live fire training and (Zone 918) has not been used for live ammunition training. In fact, it has been used very little in the last 15 years.”

She calls the state’s sudden claim that it needs to use the area for military exercises, “very strange.”

The firing zones and nature reserves that dot Area C – as well as the demolitions, lopsided allocation of resources, and restrictions on freedom of movement – all function together to block Palestinian growth or drive Palestinians out altogether by making life unbearable. Is it a matter of grabbing more land or is it about creating a Jewish demographic majority on that land? Either way, both are crucial issues to annexation.

Feldman adds that the state’s expropriation of Palestinian land to create firing zones and nature reserves is “very problematic from an international law point of view. You’re not supposed to use an area within the occupied territory for any general purpose that serves you.”

But the recent Levy Commission report denies that Israel is occupying the West Bank. While the committee recommended that the government legalise all settlements and outposts, some observers say the Levy report constitutes an attempt to lay the legal groundwork for an Israeli annexation.

Jeff Halper, co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, tells IPS, “A lot of the settlements are built on private Palestinian land. And the Supreme Court isn’t letting (the state) expropriate the land. An annexation would mean that it all becomes Israeli land…it cuts through that Gordian knot of legal hassle and the issue of criticism of the settlements…”

“If Israel annexes Area C,” Halper continues, “the world will complain for a day…after the yelling and screaming, it will be normalised.”

Despite the fact that Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981 – and faced no real repercussions from the international community for either move – some analysts say that Israel won’t take Area C.

Neve Gordon, author of Israel’s Occupation, says Israel is too worried about “demographic concerns” to annex Area C and that “the political cost is considered too high…at this point, Israel is happy with a de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank without legally annexing the region as a whole.”

Fwr Vwls 4 Futr Englsh?

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Tablet, June 19, 2012

I’m used to seeing abbreviations on Twitter, Gchat, and SMS. But I was surprised recently when an editor closed an email with “Rgds.”

The “s” on the end helped me guess that it wasn’t short for “Rigid” or “Raged,” or so I hoped. Given the context, I assumed he meant “Regards.”

But I wondered how such a word ended up in a business letter? Did it mean that Twitter-ese is making its way into formal, written correspondence? And “Rgds”—a string of consonants, vowels inferred—reminded me a bit of Hebrew. While a dot system helps Israeli children learn vowels, the dots eventually come off, like training wheels, and adults read and write without them.

Might Twitter and SMS push vowels out of English? Could the language end up looking more Semitic than Germanic?

While text messages limit users to 160 or 320 characters, according to Dr. Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University and the author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, the average SMS spans only 20 to 40 characters. So brevity isn’t forced upon us, it’s more a matter of “how much we want to type.”

And typing has gotten easier with the iPhone and other devices that have full keypads; auto complete helps, too.

Abbreviations are a way “to show that you’re hip, you’re in the know, you’re cool,” Baron says. They’re not necessary. Nor are they new. They’ve been popular for at least 1000 years.

“There were abbreviations…out the wazoo,” Baron explains. “Because if you’re writing on parchment and you’re copying manuscripts [by hand], you would like to save sheep hides and you’d like to save your efforts.”

The advent of the printing press didn’t change this. Instead it standardized some abbreviations. Still people—out of either laziness or ingenuity, whichever you prefer—kept shortening words. As is the case today, vowels were often the thing to go.

Baron offers an example from the eighteenth century, when gentlemen closed written correspondence with “Yr hm srv,” short for “Your humble servant.”

Acronyms have also been trendy throughout history. In the 1930s and 1940s, Baron says, friends signed letters with B.F.F.—best friends forever.

I’m surprised to hear this. I remember B.F.F. from my pre-teen days, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was everywhere: on the notes we passed in class; in the saccharin sentences we scribbled into each other’s notebooks; on the heart-shaped pendants that best friends wore.

Was it really 60 years old?

“We do tend to reinvent the wheel sometimes,” Baron says. “But, absolutely, [B.F.F.] existed decades before this.”

And, by the way, btw didn’t spring from chat, Twitter, or SMS. Nor did b/c for because or b/w for between. All are, Baron says, “way old.”

According to Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College and the author of Language and Ethnicity, there is a chance that such common abbreviations could make their way into the language.

In that scenario, “the word because becomes ‘bec’ because people are used to [using b/c],” Fought says, adding, “I’ve had students tell me that they hear people saying L.O.L. aloud,” pronouncing the acronym for laugh out loud like the word loll.

This phenomenon is common in the Philippines where abbreviations are embraced (a little too enthusiastically some say). For example, a Filipino who has grown up in America, or who has an American parent, is called a “Fil-am.” Overseas Filipino workers are referred to by their acronym: O.F.Ws. In my experience, saying “migrant workers” or “foreign workers” elicits weird looks and gentle corrections.

The national language of the Philippines, Tagalog, is a mixed bag. Although it’s a Malayo-Polynesian language, it has borrowed extensively from Spanish and English. Chinese immigrants also made a contribution to Tagalog; Sanskrit and Arabic have left fingerprints on the language, as well.

English is similarly open. Fought explains, “It’s like this mutt language, like the dog you pick up from the shelter that’s a little bit of this and that. “We’ve got Latin roots, Greek roots, French German, Scandinavian borrowings. English will borrow from any language.”

There are loan words from Hindi, Native American languages, and Spanish, to name a few.

“We’ll just take anything,” Fought says.

Which is exactly why we won’t end up taking the Hebrew system.

“There’s too much going on,” Fought remarks, offering the example of rbt. Is it rebate, a descendant of Old French? Or robot, on loan from Czech?

Because English is so chaotic, many English-speakers have a hard time learning to spell. And they seem to drift, naturally, towards what looks more like the Semitic system.

Baron explains, “What we do know about children learning to write English is that if they are allowed to spell however they wish… [they] leave out the vowels. In English, figuring out which vowel to put is tough. The consonants are generally much easier to figure out.”

But vowels are here to stay.

“Vowels are not our friends,” Baron says. “But, nonetheless, we have lived with them in English for a long time.”

Fought agrees. However, she adds, we could see the vowels fall out of languages that have simpler spelling systems. She muses, “It could work for Spanish where they only have five vowels.”

Israel bans mother from visiting daughters, deports families

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, May 31, 2012

Hundreds of thousands of families — from Palestinians to Southeast Asian migrant workers to African refugees — struggle under Israeli policies that seek to limit the number of non-Jews within Israel and in the areas it occupies.

Sitting in the living room of her home in East Amman, Jordan, Sabah Othman flips through the photos of her two daughters’ weddings. “I love all of my children,” she said, in Arabic. “But my girls are my best friends.”

Due to Israeli policies, however, Othman’s relationship with her daughters now takes place on the phone.

Othman’s daughters live with their Palestinian husbands in Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Because Othman’s husband is from Hebron, all of Othman’s Jordanian-born children hold West Bank identification cards and can enter the West Bank without a visa.

But Othman holds only a Jordanian passport, so she must apply to the Israeli consulate in Amman to enter the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In the past three years, she has applied six times and has been rejected four times. The two times Othman received a visa, she was permitted to visit for two weeks.

Most tourists get a three-month visa issued on the border.

Israeli officials have admitted that the state has no security claim against Othman, who is a mother of five and a grandmother of eight. Numerous inquiries at the Ministry of Interior, the Israeli consulate in Amman, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that Othman’s visa requests were denied due to questions about her “migration intentions.”

Othman denied that she intended to leave her husband, sons and grandchildren in Amman and migrate to Shuafat Refugee Camp. But Israel’s concerns that she would do so point to the state’s obsession with demographics and maintaining a Jewish majority.

Sam Bahour of the Ramallah-based organization Right to Enter explained that, under Israeli law, West Bank ID holders can help first degree relatives secure residency in the West Bank. In practice, however, things are not so simple.

Bahour, who was born and raised in the United States, married a West Bank Palestinian in 1994 and immediately applied for an ID. “The Palestinian Authority wasn’t even here yet [and the Israelis] refused to deal with it.”

Since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, Israel has purged more than 150,000 Palestinian residents from the population registry and has ignored hundreds of thousands of requests like Bahour’s for family unification. Between 2000 and 2005 alone Israel received 120,000 such applications. The requests were simply not processed.

A survey conducted in 2005, on behalf of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, estimated that more than 640,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had a parent, sibling, child, or spouse who was unregistered.

Because Israel controls the population registry for the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority cannot help.

“The PA is just the mailman,” Bahour says, explaining that Palestinians submit their applications to the PA, which delivers them to Israel and then distributes the Israelis’ answers.

After 15 years of living in the West Bank, Bahour received an ID in 2009. His was one of the 33,000 applications Israel processed to reward the PA for taking part in “peace talks” — turning the human right to family into a political card.

Bahour believes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their family members reflects a “policy of fragmentation” designed to pressure the population into emigrating.

Othman’s daughter, Amira Dana, has begun to look for work abroad. She hopes to move to a place where her family members can visit her whenever they like.

Dana mourns the important life moments she has been unable to share with her mother, like the births of her three children.

“I really wanted her there next to me. I didn’t want anyone there except her,” Dana said. But Israel denied Othman entry.

Inside present-day Israel, migrant workers’ children and African asylum seekers bear the brunt of Israel’s demographic war.

The state ignores African refugees’ requests for asylum. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called them a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and even though Sudanese and Eritrean citizens cannot be deported to their home countries, Israel does not provide them with work visas.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio recently, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “Jobs will root them here.” As a result, many of Israel’s approximately 45,000 African asylum seekers are unemployed and homeless.

Mimi Hylameshesh, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, cleans houses for a living. She makes just enough to rent a small apartment in south Tel Aviv and to send her daughter to daycare. While Hylameshesh manages to feed her child, she does not always have the money to buy food for herself.

In another attempt to preserve its Jewish majority, the state is in the process of deporting hundreds of families of migrant workers, including Israeli-born children. Until now, all of the children who have been expelled have been aged four and under. But members of the organization Israeli Children explain that older kids could be arrested and expelled during the upcoming summer break.

Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old grandson since 1999, when his father died and his mother abandoned him. The boy was born here, attends public school in Tel Aviv, celebrates the Jewish holidays, and speaks fluent Hebrew.

Despite the fact that he met all of the criteria for “naturalization” in both 2005 and 2010 — when Israel opened “one-time” windows for the children of undocumented migrant workers — his applications were denied. He faces expulsion to the Philippines, his parents’ home country, a place he has never visited.

Rose Fabianas, 32, and her six-year-old daughter, Danielle, also face imminent deportation to the Philippines.

Fabianas sits on a park bench in south Tel Aviv, watching her daughter play on the swings with friends. She calls to Danielle and the girl darts over. Danielle talks, shyly, about her life in Israel, where she was born. Her favorite subject is mathematics, she said in fluent Hebrew, and her favourite holiday is Purim.

Fabianas remarked that Danielle used to live in constant fear of the immigration police. When someone knocked on the door, Danielle would beg her mother not to answer. “But now she says, ‘Ima [mom], I’m already big, they’re not going to take me’ … She’s very settled.”

My mom joined Twitter and it brought us closer

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Slate, January 4, 2012

When my mom started following me on Twitter, I felt a bit like a teenager who couldn’t get any privacy. After I tweeted a friend to say that his brother was unusually handsome, she chimed in, writing, “Ooooo, he *is* cute.”

I deleted the tweet and kept it strictly professional after that.

But the change she made recently to her profile was even more jarring. She added one word, putting it right at the beginning of her self-description:

Artist.

I knew that my Mom had gone to art school when she was young. I also knew that she’d dropped out. Eventually, she became a graphic designer. A single watercolor was all that remained of her life as a painter. It showed a woman with long, flowing hair standing in the rain, trying, unsuccessfully, to hold petals in the cupped palms of her hands. The picture hung in our study in a plain, silver frame.

I’d always admired the piece. But I’d viewed it as the youthful work of a dilettante, of someone who liked going to galleries and museums but who wasn’t a true artist.

She’d been on Twitter for over a year when she made the change to her profile. My first response to my mother’s update was guilt. What else had I missed about my mother?

I studied her tweets. Looking for a new camera, she said.

Was she into photography now, too?

And then another surprise:

I do love Savannah.

My whole childhood in Gainesville, Fla., I listened to her wax poetic about “the city”—her native New York. “I should have never left the city,” she said, as we puttered along in our battered, blue Ford Pinto. A Jew, she felt oppressed by the evangelical Christianity she sometimes encountered in the Deep South—people who urged her to convert, who told us we were going to hell because we hadn’t accepted Jesus Christ as our personal lord and savior.

“Look at this place,” Mom would say. “There’s a church on every corner.”

She’d made me wear a chai pendant. The Hebrew word for life, my classmates had pointed at the necklace and teased me. It was strange, it was foreign. I wanted out but a scholarship to the local university kept me in the South and my college sweetheart anchored me. When our relationship failed in my late 20s, I went as far away as I could.

Sitting at my computer in Israel, I wondered when Mom had made her peace with everything, when she’d embraced the South enough to publicly express her adoration for Savannah—a place as Southern as collard greens.

I considered the emotional distance between us and wondered if we’d be closer if I didn’t live half way around the world.

I tried to remember the last time we’d asked each other questions that went beyond the superficial details of our lives.

There’d been hints that we didn’t know each other very well anymore. When Mom came to visit me in Israel in 2008, she brought me a pink sweater—a throwback to the days when I was a little ballerina who hung her pink toe shoes on the handle of the door that led to her pink bedroom.

Today, I am a woman who categorically rejects pink. I do not wear it. Under any circumstances.

This summer, when I visited the States, I made a guilty confession to my mom: Yes, I go out for a jog once in awhile, but I don’t enjoy it. My parents are avid runners and my father is a track and cross-country coach. Mother-daughter runs were the core of our relationship during my teenage years. She didn’t take the news well—she continued to protest, “But you told me once you wished you hadn’t quit the team …” she said, on Skype.

So I emailed my mom, asking her about the update to her Twitter profile and if she was doing photography. I worried that this admission of how little I knew about her life would hurt her feelings. But I asked myself what would trouble her more—that I didn’t know? Or that I didn’t ask?

I hit send.

Mom is usually a little slow to respond. But, this time, I got a reply the same day:
I’ve been feeling very frustrated creatively for quite some time, since I no longer do design for a living … I’ve been searching for a creative outlet for a few years. And I’ve been quite interested in rug hooking. It is a little expensive to start up. But, finally, I have all the major supplies I need.

So I started rug hooking. My own design.

I attend a class once a week. It’s mostly older women. I enjoy just sitting there hooking while listening to them chitchat.

This didn’t jibe with the image I had of my mom. She’d been a New Yorker—impatient, walk fast, talk fast. And she’d always turned her nose up at crafts. Who was this woman who sat, quietly, hooking rugs, listening to the ladies around her? I struggled to picture it.

As for the photography, she continued, I’ve been missing that as well …

It turns out that she’d always taken black and white stills. How can it be that I hadn’t noticed?

She went on, explaining that her new hobby had led her to some realizations of her own. Mom had had a strained relationship with her stepmother, who passed away recently. When she’d gone to New York to console my grandfather, guess what Mom noticed on their shelves? Books on rug hooking. They’d had more in common than they’d known.

You know, Mom added, when I was young, I kept these little notebooks. I wrote everything down. I wanted to be a writer, too. Like you.

Our pictures of each other need updating. But, I realize, we know each other’s core, some essence that stands still, unmoved by time. Yes, the adult me can’t stand pink. But I always wanted to be a writer. And that never changed.

I tapped out a quick email asking Mom, “What’s all this about loving Savannah? What about New York? Do you still want to move back to the city someday?”

She sent me a short answer: I do.

The housing struggle you haven’t heard about: Kfar Shalem

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

dsc03696+972 Magazine, July 28, 2011

It was news when tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest over housing prices. So where was the media in February when dozens of Israelis—facing not unaffordable apartments but eviction and homelessness at the state’s hands—managed to shut down several busy roads using nothing more than their bodies?

Both the tent camps and the winter demonstration are the result of the state favoring the interests of an elite oligarchy and settlements over those of citizens who live inside the Green Line. But the latter, smaller protest took place in Kfar Shalem, where housing issues have deep historical roots.

Now an economically depressed neighborhood of South Tel Aviv, Kfar Shalem was once a Palestinian village, Salame. Jewish forces ran the Arab residents out in early 1948, months before Israel was established and (what some refer to as) the War of Independence began.

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“We don’t have another country”

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

dsc00262Al Jazeera English, March 7, 2011

Last week, as Israeli president Shimon Peres was calling a South Tel Aviv school to congratulate it for its role in Oscar-winning documentary, the state was preparing to expel 120 of the school’s students, including a twelve-year-old girl who starred in the film.

“Strangers No More” was produced and directed by American filmmakers Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. The film focuses on South Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin school, which is attended by children of African refugees and migrant workers. The film side-steps the subject of deportation and focuses, instead, on the story of three kids who adjust, successfully, to life in Israel.

Despite the fact that the film is American-made, Israelis have widely celebrated the Oscar win as their own.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs—the government body that, amongst other duties, actively promotes a positive image of Israel—was quick to add a congratulatory headline to its website. And Israeli president Shimon Peres called Bialik-Rogozin’s principal, Karen Tal, to remark that the school “had cast a beam of light on the country’s humanity.”

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Israel braces for “new Middle East”

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

egyptprotests1Al Jazeera English, January 31, 2011

As massive protests rocked neighboring Egypt, the Sunday edition of a popular Hebrew-language daily announced the arrival of “the New Middle East.” While most Israelis aren’t ready to make such bold claims, they’re keeping a close eye on Egypt, watching with a mixture of excitement, admiration, uncertainty, and fear.

It’s widely understood here that a change of guard in Egypt could bring about a seismic shift in regional politics—and some worry that this might upend the uneasy peace between Israel and Egypt, never mind the treaty that the two signed in 1979—so it’s unsurprising that few Israelis are indifferent. But interviews revealed something shocking: some Jewish Israelis, fed up with the stalled peace process and frustrated with the status quo, said that they hope to see an uprising similar to Egypt’s sweep their own country.

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An undiplomatic move

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

dsc00268The Jerusalem Post, August 20, 2010

As Shabbat drew to a close Saturday, more than 2000 protestors marched against the deportation of migrant workers’ children. On August 1, the Israeli cabinet adopted criteria that will make 800 children eligible for naturalization, subjecting another 400 to deportation. Observers have pointed out that many minors who seem to meet the criteria for naturalization could fall through the bureaucratic cracks, significantly raising the number of those who face expulsion.

Amongst Saturday’s demonstrators were the embassy cases—families that, in a twist of irony, are threatened with deportation because they spent many years working in Israel legally.

In 2005, Israel announced that it would give residency to migrant workers’ children. A one-time decision, similar to that made in early August, parents rushed to file the paperwork.

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The view from there

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

joelschalit_2The Jerusalem Post, May 7, 2010

Not long after US Vice President Joe Biden touched down in Israel, Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced plans to build 1600 new homes in an East Jerusalem settlement. The move, publicly condemned by Biden, seemed like a slap in the face of the American administration. Biden criticized the “substance and timing of the announcement” adding “We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them.”

But Yishai’s move, and the crisis that followed, was unsurprising to some, like Israeli-American author Joel Schalit.”Biden’s visit offered Yishai the opportunity to act out Israel’s desire to be ‘free’ of its dependency on the Americans.”

“Even though the Americans remain military allies, they have never been more diplomatically and, even more significantly, ideologically alienated from Israel,” Schalit explains. “Yet our government continues to chip away at American goodwill…”

Continue reading “The view from there”

Urban sanctuaries

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

dsc09026The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 2010
The National, May 17, 2010

Nearly half of Ruby Austria’s 150 congregants have disappeared since the Oz Unit, a strong arm of the immigration police, took to the streets in July. Thousands of foreign workers have left the country out of fear. Hundreds have been deported.

In recent months, many churches that minister to migrant laborers have seen their numbers grow so thin that they’ve been forced to close. But Austria is busier than ever. She receives a constant stream of congregants worried about Israel’s plan to expel some 1200 minors, along with their parents, at the end of the school year.

Austria, who also runs a kindergarten for children of foreign workers, often finds herself consoling mothers and fathers when they pick up their kids. “They come to me and cry—what will happen, what will be? The mothers have fear all the time, the [sense of] being threatened,” she says. “The moms are harassed and interrogated. [The Oz Unit] takes them in the [police] van and drives them around.”

“Even if you don’t tell the children, they feel what the mother feels,” Austria continues. “When the Oz Unit first came, the children were crying all the time, some weren’t eating, some stopped speaking. They were very fearful. It was very hard…”

Austria says that it’s important to her to “be strong” for the families who need support right now. But it’s hard. Austria, 36, is also an illegal resident. She, along with her husband and their seven-year-old daughter, faces deportation to the Philippines.

Austria, who holds a college degree in nursing, arrived in Israel 13 years ago to work as a caregiver. Her employer died and her visa ended in 2002, just before a major wave of arrests and expulsions began. Israel targeted men, in hopes of encouraging families to return to their countries of origin. Husbands and male pastors were deported; giving rise to single moms and women at the pulpit.

The difficulties facing the community were inspiration for Austria to become a pastor. Despite her illegal status, she began attending the Bible Institute of Jerusalem and, after completing her studies, was ordained as a minister.

Austria isn’t your typical Christian pastor, however. Her approach to religion is deeply informed by Judaism. Austria’s pulpit is adorned with a hannukiah. She dons silver earrings of a menorah and a fish, a symbol of Christianity, joined together by a Star of David. She touches the jewelry and says, “This means that the Jew and the Christian are one.”

Austria incorporates Hebrew into her services, makes Kiddush, and lights Shabbat candles. And some members of her congregation wear talit during prayers. It helps them “feel the presence of God,” Austria explains.

As is true of many Christians, particularly Filipinos, Austria feels a strong connection to Israel. “We have one God, because we [Christians] also believe in the [Old Testament]. We thank you—thank Israel—for giving us the Bible. If not, we would still be worshipping the stars, the woods, the sun,” she says.

But when she considers the way the government treats migrant laborers, she is fraught with “great friction, emotionally.”

Today, Israel is home to approximately 300,000 migrant laborers, primarily from the Philippines, Thailand, China, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, with the Filipino community making up the largest group. It is estimated that 250,000 of the workers are illegal. A majority arrived legally but became illegal after overstaying or losing their visas.

Due to the plans to deport Israeli-born children, the current crackdown has drawn tremendous criticism. And, pointing to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claims that foreign workers threaten the Jewish character of the state, some observers have called the campaign racist.

Sabine Haddad, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, denied that moves against migrant laborers are related to preserving the Jewish character of the state. “There is no problem with legal workers,” she said. The Oz Unit is simply trying to enforce the law. “Our unit is doing what the government says.”

Haddad emphasized that the Oz Unit is not currently arresting or deporting children or their parents. A special committee is convening to consider the deportation of families, Haddad said. If the plan is finalized, it represents a move against illegal residents, not against children, parents, or foreign workers in general.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post recently, Tamar Shwartz of the NGO Mesila—Aid and Information Center for the Foreign Community—remarked that recent events have “threatened the social network” of migrant laborers and refugees.

While children have been particularly affected by the crackdown, Shwartz said the whole community “is very much weakened by the activities of the immigration police…. Everything that makes this community strong is a blessing.”

In the midst of the crisis, Austria offers weekend services as well as impromptu prayer sessions. When the church is occupied by the kindergarten, Austria ministers upstairs on the roof. “Almost every day, there are men and women stopping by to pray,” she says. “Almost every day, my cell phone is full of text and [voicemail]. What do the messages say? “Please pray for me.”

When someone is in urgent need of spiritual guidance, Austria grabs child-sized chairs from the gan and heads to the roof, an urban sanctuary. Although it’s close to the Central Bus Station, it’s quiet and still up here.
But sometimes, the Oz Unit is in sight below.

Austria’s church is not always a safe haven. About a year ago immigration police showed up, without a warrant. “They thought I was hiding someone here,” she says. “They searched all the rooms and the roof.” The police also threatened to shut down her kindergarten.

In December, the Oz Unit conducted a similar raid on a South Tel Aviv church popular with African asylum seekers—despite the fact that protocol forbids immigration police from entering houses of worship.

Still, the women pastors see the church as a place to hit back.

On a recent weeknight, a large group of foreign workers and African refugees gathered in Christ the Redeemer Assembly, where Filipina Marife Adriano is a pastor. But they weren’t there for a sermon. Congregants were participating in a seminar titled “Know your Rights,” which included speakers from local human rights organizations.

Sitting in the audience, Adriano, 38, remarks, “Church is also a way to help people, to communicate… We can organize something for [migrant laborers and asylum seekers], give counseling to the people.” She estimates that since the Oz Unit has begun its work, however, about half of the ministries frequented by foreign workers have closed.

But Adriano’s work is not only in the church. “It’s also outside. If people have questions, hear rumors, they are calling.” In turn, Adriano contacts NGOs and does her best to get more information for her congregants. She is also active with Israeli Children—a grassroots movement that is fighting the deportation of minors who lack legal status.

Although Adriano and her nine-year-old son received permanent residency in 2006, and are safe from expulsion, she understands the fear plaguing the community now. “When they started deporting the first time [in 2002], I decided to go home,” Adriano, a single mother, recalls. “My pastor said ‘Pray and fast and see what the Holy Spirit will lead you to do.’ I decided not to go home. I felt there is something more I have to do here in Israel.”

Shortly after this epiphany, Adriano began to lead a bible study in her South Tel Aviv apartment. She gradually became more active and in 2007, she was ordained as a minister by a pastor visiting from the Philippines.

“I feel like I have freedom here [in the church],” Adriano says. She hopes that faith will bring the same feeling to those who seek her ministries.

Like Austria, Adriano counsels her congregants spiritually and emotionally around the clock. “Their problem is your problem,” she says. “As a minister, a pastor, you have to sacrifice yourself.”