Page 24 - C.A.L.L. #44 - Fall 2018

Rowha continues, recounting some of the harrowing moments in Eritrea that led her to seek
asylum in Israel, Eisner takes the girls to visit the kibbutz cowshed.

Outrage at official policy
So far twelve asylum-seeking
families have been placed on

kibbutzim, and the goal is that
100 families will be hosted by the
end of the year. The grassroots
initiative was undertaken by
individual members within the

national kibbutz movement. They
were first mobilized to help
refugees in Israel early this year,

outraged by government plans Ada Gross (l.), the kibbutz volunteer coordinating the resettlement
effort of refugees on Kibbutz Maagan Michael, with Yael Eisner, who
for a mass expulsion of asylum
has ‘adopted’ one of the families.
seekers, whom officials referred to
as “infiltrators.”

The plan was to deport the asylum seekers, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan, to third-party
countries in Africa. Those expulsion plans were at least temporarily thwarted, but the fate and
legal status of the asylum seekers, who number some 38,000, remains uncertain. A decision
was made by some kibbutzim to host families temporarily, for 12 to 18 months, in hopes of

providing them and their children with stability and support during a desperate time in their
lives.

“Even though the refugees have been here for as long as 12 years, the expulsion order woke

up people in a way that is hard to describe,” says Avi Ofer, a member of nearby Kibbutz Maanit
who is overseeing the effort. “I’m more proud to be Israeli now. There are people who really are
there to help.”

“The plan is to help first those considered high-risk emotionally and economically,” Mr. Ofer
says. “There are those who have resorted to prostitution or feel so on the brink of despair that
they would take the government offer (a one-time payment of $3,500) to go to Rwanda,” a

country Israel has encouraged asylum seekers to go to. Testimonies of migrants who have
gone, however, warn of bleak consequences – of being robbed of the payments and even of
human trafficking and death as the migrants continue on toward Europe.

The kibbutzim, originally founded as socialist agricultural collective communities in the days
preceding Israeli statehood, have a tradition of taking in people in distress, beginning with
Jewish children orphaned during the Holocaust. Ofer’s own mother was one of them. In more

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