A Different Perspective on Deportation

The subject of the planned deportation of children born to foreign workers who are illegally in Israel (see here and here, for example) has been a major theme of the staining of Israel. Human rights groups assert that deporting children is inhumane. There is also a "good feeling" theory involved.

How does a major democracy, one steeped in civil liberties and human rights act in a similar case but much worse? Can Israel learn?

Well, read this story:-

TACOMA, WASH.—A U.S. immigration judge has ordered a 38-year-old woman adopted by an American couple from Mexico when she was five months old to be deported back to her native country.

Tara Ammons Cohen, who has been in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma since July 8, 2009, has been fighting to stay in America ever since. She fears being deported to Mexico—where she hasn’t lived since she was an infant, doesn’t speak the language and knows no one—would place her in danger.

...Immigration laws do not recognize adoption as a special circumstance in deportations.

Judge Tammy Fitting’s ruling essentially denied every aspect of Cohen’s appeal except to agree that a drug conviction that led to her deportation problem was not a serious crime requiring her automatic removal.

...The ruling this week stunned Cohen and Rios. After an October hearing, both had hoped she might be home with her husband and two young children in Omak for the holidays.

“I’m devastated,” Cohen said Thursday in a telephone interview from the detention centre. “My husband (Jay) is appalled by the system and angry the system says his wife is not going to be in danger if she goes back to Mexico.

“I know nothing about Mexico.”

...Her parents didn’t get her naturalized nor did she when she had the chance. By the time she tried to get citizenship as the spouse of an American, she was already in trouble with the law.

Cohen was arrested in 2008 on theft and drug-trafficking charges...Because she was not considered a citizen or a legal resident, her drug charge made her an automatic candidate to be deported...

Besides the name Cohen, our interest is piqued.

Can Israel - and its detractors - gain a perspective from this?

^

I Think Hagai Is Wrong

Hagai Segal, in an op-ed over at Ynet, Civil rights for all, claims that "Leftist rights groups only concerned with people who share their worldview" and explains:

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel is deeply shocked. Its director, Hagai Elad, had been detained for 36 hours recently after taking part in a protest watch (a legal one, he claims) outside the homes of Jews in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood...

Yehuda Glick, one of the most prominent rightist activists in the struggle for equalizing the rights of Jews and Arabs on Temple Mount, indeed expressed his protest. He distributed a very harsh condemnation of Elad’s arrest among rightist activists. By doing so, Glick adhered to the democratic principle whereby even if one does not agree to anything another person says, one would nonetheless fight for the other person’s right to speak up.

Yet does the Association for Civil Rights in Israel also adhere to this principle? Not at all. On most days, it does not offer legal and moral assistance to citizens who do not share its worldview on the matters of peace and territories.

...In fact, these associations barely made a sound when the rule of law abused rightist protestors during the period of the Gush Katif uprooting operation. Shamefully enough, these groups endorsed the uprooting operation, thereby making their current struggle in Sheikh Jarrah seem ridiculous. Yet despite all of the above, as noted, these people must not be detained. A genuine democracy is supposed to be able to contain even outrageous demonstrations.

My memory seems to tell me that some 15 years ago or so, ACRI actually did express its support for Noam Federman and so, I called Noam up and he informed me that as regards the Temple Mount, they did intervene on the matter of lists of persons who had to undergo special security checks or were pro forma prohibited from entering without any reason given. In another instance, they used him after being in administrative detention following the Baruch Goldstein incident in Hebron by representing him in the first court of appeal but never followed up up with an appeal to the High Court of Justice.

So, my memory did serve me well.

B'Tselem's Apartheid

Over at the new B'Tselem Gaza blog, you'll find this list of what they call "Israeli human rights groups". But they're not. They are "Arab rights" groups. There are several "Jewish rights groups" but they are not listed. Is that apartheid?

Adalah - The legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Amnesty International - Israel Section
B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights
Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Hamoked - Center for the Defense of the Individual
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
Rabbis for Human Rights
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
Yesh Din - Volunteers for Human Rights

There is Honenu.

There is The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel.

And there is another group, The Yesha Organization for Civil Rights which doesn't have a site, as far as I've searched: ארגון זכויות האזרח ביש"ע.

Israel Also Has a Pig Story

In the US, it's Obama and the "pig with lipstick".

In Israel, it's a three year-old story of civil liberites that has now come to a semi-conclusion:

Judge Upholds Arrest of Teenage Protester

Jerusalem Magistrates Court Judge Shirli Renner has ruled that a teenager who was arrested while protesting outside the Supreme Court building in 2005 will not be compensated for wrongful arrest. While police should not have arrested protester Malkiel Ben-Yosef, then 16, Ben-Yosef was also at fault for failing to identify himself, Renner decided.

In March of 2005, Ben-Yosef participated in a prayer rally called in protest of several Supreme Court decisions, including a decision allowing the sale of pork. Ben-Yosef was detained while holding a sign saying, “Pigs Love Pigs.” Police decided to arrest Ben-Yosef and take him to a nearby station despite his explanation that the sign had been confiscated but later declared acceptable by a previous group of officers.

Source: IsraelNN
Original Hebrew story


Gotta give those policemen credit, at least they could read the sign.

Uncivil Rights

"Around 2 am, my house was surrounded by large police forces, who handed me this warrant, which bans me from my home and Judea and Samaria in general," Meir Bertler of Adi-Ad told Ynet.

Bertler, a father of two whose wife is expecting, denied the army's claims that he was planning to disrupt the coming olive harvest. "All they (the IDF) want to do is to silence the settlement movement and stop us from forming new outposts and stage marches across Judea and Samaria," he added.

As for the timing, Bertler said that since the harvest was weeks away, "this can't have anything to do with it. We will have to see what we can to against these warrants. This will not be ignored."

Bertler, along with Akive Hacohen from Yitzhar, has been banned form the area for four months. The IDF is now searching for David Liebman from Adi Ad, in order to serve him with a similar warrant.

Once news of the restraining orders became public, the Yesha Council demanded that they be immediately rescinded: "The Yesha Council firmly objects to such draconian orders. If a person or a group of people is suspected of planning to break the law, it is the law enforcement authorities' right and duty to deal with the matter," a council official said.

Protest Over Honor of Jewish Girls

Tuesday, 5PM, opposite Binyamin Region Police Station, Sha'ar Binyamin Industrial Park

Who is Underming Who?

Civil rights groups have demanded that the attorney general lay down rules to restrict the activities of the Shin Bet security services against the Arab community and its political groups.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a petition to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last Thursday to order the Shin Bet to stop trying to block what the group called legitimate political activity.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, is demanding a criminal probe into the Shin Bet's activity, accusing the security service of exceeding its authority and causing incitement against the Arab public.

ACRI's petition follows a letter the Shin Bet sent the previous week to the predominantly Arab Balad party's journal, Fasal al-Makal, warning that it would foil the activity of anyone seeking to harm Israel's Jewish or democratic character, even if that activity was carried out by legal means.

The issue was raised following the recent drafting of four documents in the Arab community calling for a revision of Israel's character. The documents are: the Musawa organization's Ten Points, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee's Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the Adalah organization's Democratic Constitution and the yet-unpublished Haifa Treaty.

ACRI's letter said that the Shin Bet's assumption that it was authorized to curtail activity not explicitly prohibited by law "undermines the foundations of democracy and reflects a basic lack of understanding of the concept of democracy."

"The attempt by the Shin Bet to redefine the rules of the democratic game is a serious violation of the rule of law," it said.

The letter also stated that the concept of freedom is a preeminent value of democracy, and from it derives the principle that all that is not explicitly prohibited must as such be permitted.