August 8th, 2007 by beccawitz | Category: Amnesty International, Darfur, Physicians for Human Rights - Israel

As reported on Ynet August 8, the Israel branch of Amnesty International, in cooperation with Hotline for Migrant Workers and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have launched a campaign calling on the Israeli Interior Ministry not to deport the Sudanese asylum seekers who have entered Israel illegally. The campaign features a highly emotive video clip, where a chilling version of ‘Hatikva’-the Israeli national anthem-is sung. The video features what appear to be Sudanese women and children, standing behind fences and barbed wire- images which invoke Holocaust imagery and German concentration camps. (In some camps, Jews sang Hatikva in defiance on their way to the gas chambers.)Significantly, this campaign appears to make no mention of the appalling treatment that the Sudanese have faced at the hands of the Egyptians. As the Jerusalem Post has reported, Egyptian soldiers killed four Sudanese refugees near the Israeli border August 1 in full view of IDF troops Israeli army video-surveillance showed that: “Egyptian troops who also discovered the refugees, fired upon them, immediately killing two and wounding a third. A fourth refugee ran towards the fence and an IDF soldier stretched out his hands, trying to help him cross. At that point…two Egyptian soldiers arrived and started pulling at the refugee’s legs…the Egyptians then carried the man several meters away from the border fence, and proceeded to beat him and another wounded refugee to death with stones and clubs.”

Amnesty Israel’s focus on the plight of Sudanese refugees is consistent with its mission statement focusing on universal human rights, and is welcome change from the frequent Israel-bashing reports that exploit the rhetoric of morality.  But the use of Holocaust imagery and its silence on the Egyptian dimension suggests a simplistic approach and lack of sensitivity.

For more on this issue, see “Israel’s Darfuri dilemma”.