Israel has a history of accepting refugees. In its early days it doubled its population just by absorbing 2 waves of Jewish refugees, 1 from Europe and 1 from the Middle East. In the 80s and 90s it took in more waves from Ethiopia and from the USSR. Of course those were all Jews or of Jewish descent. In the 70s Begin had a big PR coup when he accepted the Vietnamese boat refugees that no one else would accept. It had a years-long humanitarian mission in Syria and treated thousands of Syrians in its hospitals in recent years.
But it does not accept illegal immigration and is constantly trying and failing to deal with the thousands of illegal immigrants in southern Tel Aviv.
Israel feels that it has an obligation to provide a safe haven for Jews. Helping others is good, but it isn't an obligation and Israel can only do what it can do.
The US could conceivably have an obligation if all these people would go through the legal process of immigration. But it has no obligation towards law-breakers. Enforcing the law is the first obligation of any country.
The arguments for being soft on illegal immigrants are based on how the US and most of the world refused to take in Jews in the 1930s when Hitler began persecuting them, ultimately leading to there being nowhere to escape from the Holocaust. The St. Louis is the poster-child for that. But people who make this argument don't distinguish between people fleeing persecution and economic migrants. It would apply to the Yazidis, and it looks like it may apply soon to the Kurds, if Erdogan carries out his threats. But it does not apply to people like those in the recent caravan.
One of the big talking points from amnesty types on the refugee "crisis" is that "we" might need someone to take "us" in at some point. We see the record of Middle East countries in refugees is dismal. The Palestinians are STILL refugees 80 years after the war.
I support Israel's fence. If they ever went with open borders, the country would collapse inside a week. Israelis seem to think their country and culture are worth preserving.
Strangely enough, I think the American Culture and country are worth preserving.
Israel gets plenty of flack for its migrant policy. The government tries to crack down on illegal immigrants every so often, but each time either their own Supreme Court or international pressure forces Israel to back off attempts to either jail or deport them. Its border fence keeping new illegal immigrants out isn't controversial, however, since ISIS and other jihadist groups are very active across the border in Sinai.
It's often forgotten that over half of Israel's Jewish population is in fact Middle Eastern and not 'Ashkenazi' or 'European.'
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2019/01/06/klein-past-time-to-hold-arab-nations-accountable-for-booting-hundreds-of-thousands-of-jews/
Everybody should remember this when discussing the "refugee crisis."
Also, very few of the amnesty types complain about how Israel has closed borders.
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