Israeli-Palestian conflict

The 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and the subsequent flight of refugees, became central formative events
that characterized both Israelis as well as Palestinians as well as define the current conflict.
In 1947 The UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Palestinians heavily opposed.
This led to riots, from the blockade of Jewish Jerusalem, to the ambush of buses and other public transports.
There are currently about 4.6 million displaced 4.6 million displaced persons, as well as about 3.7 million refugees
registered with the UNRWA, a drastic increase from the estimated 726,000 refugees directly following the war.
Since 1949 the Palestinian refugee crisis has been at the heart of peace negotiations in the middle east, though refugees
find camp conditions poverty stricken and overcrowded. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 stated that the
refugees that wished to return to their homes and live peacefully amongst their neighbors would be permitted to do so.
However, this has not been informed, and though they have international legal claim to return home, many Palestinians
have not been allowed to return home as these are part of the General Assembly and no binding in the international law.

Many Arab states are unwilling to accept refugees. with the exception of Jordan, they are largely unwilling to give refugees
citizenship. There has been a proposition to allow for a Palestinian state, however many argue that the delegated land
would be too small to properly house the refugees. The other issue is that Palestinians have a claim to the land they have
been removed from, and they should be allowed to return to their homeland. The issue is vastly more complex and neither
side is right nor wrong, and therefore finding a happy equal for both sides to negotiate will be near impossible.

http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees1.htm

Refugee mother and Child (Palestinian) 

https://www.thenational.ae/world/nakba-day-un-documents-palestinian-exodus-1.246294

Palestinian refugees http://www.thejournal.ie/palestinian-refugees-how-statehood-bid-at-un-affects-us-234647-Sep2011/

Anti-Refugee Groups--Fallacy at its Finest

It is incredible to see the juxtaposition between groups who open-heartedly welcome refugees and the organizations that hold anti-refugee/immigrant sentiment, especially those who claim the name of Jesus Christ or identify themselves as Christians. This targets at the root of my personal worldview regarding the nature of humanity, therefore I will at least in part discuss the subject matter from this perspective.

The former (the welcoming group) is a reflection of a personal belief that runs deep, namely, that all are created in the image of God, therefore all should be treated with dignity and esteemed as valuable. The latter (anti-refugee groups) is deeply repulsive and woven with entangled threads of ignorance, hatred, and bigotry. One example of such a group is the Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian.

Fundamentally and very importantly, the fact that they claim Jesus Christ as an identifier of their white supremacist group is heretical and totally against the biblical command to self-sacrificially love your neighbor, despite race or ethnicity; and that Jesus Christ (specifically) “..is our peace…and tore down, in His flesh the dividing walls of hostility” between races (Ephesians 2:14). The Christian worldview holds that ultimately, people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation will be together in true and perfect unity. The Aryan Nations Church of Jesus Christ group is both anti-Christ and anti-people who are not like them.

Photo credit: Quora

To move past what I perceive as most fundamentally wrong about this group’s identity, I see an incredibly dangerous outworking of what they believe, including their support of Adolf Hitler as a modern neo-Nazi outpost. Some of their ‘precepts’ that directly assault the practice of welcoming multiple races/cultures include:

·             “Religion in its most beneficial form is the symbology of a People and their culture. A multi- racial religion destroys the senses of uniqueness, exclusivity and value necessary to the survival of a race.”

·             “The White race has suffered invasions and brutality from Africa and Asia for thousands of years…”

·             “People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.”

·             “These are sure signs of a sick or dying Nation. If you see any of them, your guardians are committing treason: Mixing and destruction of the founding race…” (Lane, 2013)

Photo credit: CTV Barrie-CTV News

This group’s thoughts and doctrines are logically fallacious in themselves, and that is even before we begin to talk about how morally reprehensible it is. Racism in general is increasingly on the foreground of current problems we see in America and throughout the world, but to see the frame of mind so explicitly portrayed is astounding.

On the other hand, as we know, there are many who counter these vain efforts to extinguish ‘other races’. They shine light in the dark margins of hatred by lovingly welcoming the stranger, despite race, religion, or background. This video from the UNHCR demonstrates the immeasurable good that comes from this as a group of such individuals do so in the video here.

Photo Credit: Pünkösdi Teológiai Föiskola

 

References

Lane, D. (2013). 88 Precepts by David Lane (P.O.W.): Member of the order. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20130327003354/http://web.archive.org/web/20070202231101/http://www.aryan-nations.org/88_precepts.htm

A News Article on Refugees (one that you will actually be glad you read)

https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/cover-story/article/20852845/refugees-are-people-six-stories-of-refugees-in-nashville 

The search for what to discuss in this blog post began with a somewhat belated and disconcerting realization that President Trump’s initial travel ban took place over a year ago now. And yet, in my fairly limited news consumption, I was still seeing it mentioned pretty regularly and come to find out the latest version has been coined travel ban 3.0 in the news. Additionally, our class had the opportunity to hear from Katie Willocks who works at Bridge Refugee Services in Knoxville. She described the initial resettlement process and assistance refugees receive from Bridge, as well as, highlighted some new challenges Bridge has faced since President Trump’s election, the travel ban, and the lowered quota for resettlement (the new quotas are less than half of those from the Obama administration and even the approx. 45,000 are not on track to be achieved). In addition, to a changing political environment, resettled refugees are also introduced into new and sometimes less than ideal economic environments. Currently our class is reading ‘Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine’ and had questions about Somali refugees’ current situation, as it turns out Katie told us there is a community of Somali refugees resettled in my home city of Nashville, TN. 

This brings us to the topic of this blog post. The Nashville Scene is a newspaper that I have seen millions of time back home and it is usually a good spot to find local art and music. Well in my search I found the article “Refugees are People,” written by Jennifer Justus and published Feb. 23, 2017, only weeks after the original travel ban took effect. The piece leads of with the news of the ‘Muslim’ travel ban then moves into what the resettlement process looked like at the time it took effect. Jennifer discusses many of the same challenges that Katie described to our class including the time waiting for resettlement and the financial and time expectations placed on refugees upon arrival. I chose to feature this article in this blog post because on one hand it challenges the current mainstream media portrayal of refugees in a negative light, and on the other hand it actively demonstrates how the life trajectory of refugees is not one size fits all. Jennifer interviewed six refugee families from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East who come from a range of religious, economic, and educational backgrounds. Some are more recent arrivals while others have been in the U.S. or Nashville for years. Their stories demonstrate many of the same dynamics found in Catherine Besteman’s book (Making Refuge) concerning interactions with the local population, the significance of community, and most importantly that there is no common trajectory for assimilation. Lastly, it highlights the variety of ways refugees are deciding to navigate the current political and economic climate in the U.S. by engaging at the local level to combat stereotypes and bring about positive change.

P.S. to fellow Nashvillians: This article shows us a picture of the future of Nashville as an inclusive city, and I for one would consider the presence of a Somali owned coffee shop next door to a meat and three café a positive improvement for the character of the city.

Extraordinary People

While I have been researching different hot topics on refugees, reading different articles and seeing different pictures, I got in a pretty low mood after seeing all the hatred and negativity pointed towards an already exploided people group. The public dialogue concerning the refugee population never ceases to create a negative conotation behind the refugee people.  When the words “refugee crisis” and “terrorist” are used together, the conversation neglects to talk about the human rights’ infracting groups that create refugees, the media instead creates the idea that the refugees are the problem, almost like a menace to society. On the contrary, refugees are people who had well founded lives and professions, who only left those lives behind because they were in fear of their fate. Instead of the usual internet post describing refugees as a “sad” or “needy”  social group, or give attention to any negative ideas even furhter, here is a positive post to remind us that refugees are people too, and it’s our job to publicize and remember that, even if the media will not.

In 1948 Madeline Albright’s family fled an oppressive Czechoslovakia I fear for their lives during the  years of the USSR in Eastern Europe. Madeline Albright is the first female secratary of state, former US ambassador under Bill Clinton, but first she was a refugee. In an attempt to bring education towards refugees, Albright continues to fight oppressive forces over refugees, as her latest Facebook addresses Trumps comments tomoward refugees.

During the reign of Nazi occupied Germany, thousands of Jewish people left Euorope in fear of their lives due to the genocide of the Jewish population. Among those refugees were the wonderful minds of men like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Einstein’s work in physhcics and the theory of relativity were Nobel award winning, which is more generally known than the fact that he was a refugee who got a position at Princeton to make his move. Freud is a well know Austrian neurologist  and discovered phenominal work in psychology and psychiatry, but due to his work in education he was personally threatened by the Nazi Regime on several occasions. Sigmumd and his daughter both left for the UK.

There are hundreds more refugees who influenced the world through their work, like Haitian rapper Wycleft Jean, Sudanese NBA All Star Luol Deng, and other popculture figures. It’s unfortunate that this infomation is not publicly known, almost as if the refugee crisis is suppressed in media and government works. These refugees are people just like everybody else, some who are more extraordinary than most of us, and that fact is not as publicly announced as it should. Makes refugees welcomed and known for their individuality and culture, not hated for it.

Israeli- Palestine conflict

The 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and the subsequent flight of refugees, became central formative events
that characterized both Israelis as well as Palestinians as well as define the current conflict. In 1947 The UN voted to partition 

The Palestinian Voiceless.

Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Palestinians heavily opposed. This led to riots, from the blockade
of Jewish Jerusalem, to the ambush of buses and other public transports. There are currently about 4.6 million displaced 4.6 million displaced persons, as well as about 3.7 million refugees registered with the UNRWA, a drastic increase from the estimated 726,000 refugees directly following the war. Since 1949 the Palestinian refugee crisis has been at the heart of peace negotiations in the middle east, though refugees find camp conditions poverty stricken and overcrowded. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 stated that the refugees that wished to return to their homes and live peacefully amongst their neighbors would be permitted to do so. However, this has not been informed, and though they have international legal claim to return home, many Palestinians have not been allowed to return home as these are part of the General Assembly and no binding in the international law.

Many Arab states are unwilling to accept refugees. with the exception of Jordan, they are largely unwilling to give refugees citizenship. There has been a proposition to allow for a Palestinian state, however many argue that the delegated land would be too small to properly house the refugees. The other issue is that Palestinians have a claim to the land they have been removed from, and they should be allowed to return to their homeland. The issue is vastly more complex and neither side is right nor wrong, and therefore finding a happy equal for both sides to negotiate will be near impossible.

http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees1.htm

Refugee mother and Child (Palestinian) 

https://www.thenational.ae/world/nakba-day-un-documents-palestinian-exodus-1.246294

Palestinian refugees http://www.thejournal.ie/palestinian-refugees-how-statehood-bid-at-un-affects-us-234647-Sep2011/

Reflection on the Realities of Refugee Resettlement and the Future of Refugee Resettlement and Asylum in the U.S.

Last week, Katie Willocks of Bridge Refugee Services in Knoxville came and spoke to our class. She explained her job as a case manager and walked us through from start to finish the process of resettling refugees in Knoxville. It was astounding to hear just how quickly refugees must adapt to life in the United States, and that “self-sufficient” really just means financially independent to the point that you are able to feed yourself and your family, and pay your bills. Despite all of the help and guidance Bridge provides to newly arrived refugees, this support cannot last forever due to limited resources, and is gone after a refugee’s first year in Knoxville. Even with more support, acclimating to a new country and a new culture where you don’t know the language, have to find a job, and a place to live is an overwhelming experience at best. Newly arrived refugees are provided a place to live, basic necessities, and cultural orientation and language classes, but actually learning the language and finding a job is, in the end, up to them.

As hard and scary as this process sounds, it is important to recognize that most refugees never make it to this point. Less than 1% of all refugees in UNHCR camps are resettled annually (www.migrationpolicy.org 2017). Of those that are resettled, even less are resettled to the United States, and before that can happen refugees must endure many layers of screening to ensure that they are who they say they are, and do not pose a threat to the United States. However, no matter how far into the screening process they are, refugees can still be denied at any point in the screening process (www.state.gov).

            Despite the low acceptance rate of refugees into the United States, President Trump wants restrict resettlement and make it more difficult for asylum seekers to claim asylum on U.S. soil. In Fiscal Year 2016 (FY2016) the United States resettled 84,994 refugees (www.migrationpolicy.org 2017). This may seem like a lot, but that is 84,994 out of 65.6 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, with 22.5 million of those having received the legal and administrative label of “Refugee” (www.unhcr.org). For FY2017 President Trump wants to lower the admission ceiling from 110,000 refugees to 50,000 (www.migrationpolicy.org 2017). That does not mean that the U.S. will resettle 50,000 refugees, it means we can settle up to 50,000 refugees if we chose too (www.migrationpolicy.org 2017)

In addition to lowering the refugee resettlement ceiling, President Trump wants to make it more difficult for people to claim asylum in the United States. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has proposed revoking the policy that allows asylum seekers to have a hearing so that they can argue their asylum claim in order to free up the backlog of cases awaiting to be heard in immigration court. Trump’s proposed policy changes would also roll back the Obama administration’s protections for unaccompanied minors who cross the U.S./Mexico border allowing border patrol to apprehend them and immediately deport them back to Mexico (www.nytimes.com; theintercept.com). It is already very difficult to be granted asylum in the U.S. There must be no inconsistencies in your story, you cannot be affiliated with terror or guerrilla groups, you cannot have participated in the violation of human rights, and you must convince an asylum case officer that you have a credible fear of persecution if you are returned to your home country. It is an incredibly subjective process leaving most of the discretion to the asylum case officer (Bohmer and Shuman 2008). Even without Trump’s proposed changes to the asylum system, changes are already evident as more and more people without criminal records are held in detention centers while they await their hearing, and border patrol has become more aggressive in its apprehension and detention of asylum seekers (theintercept.com).

The right to ask for asylum is a human right. The right to leave one’s country to escape persecution and to find a safe place to live free from fear and violence is a human right. Refugee status and the right to claim asylum are rights protected by international human rights law. However, these rights are being directly attacked by the current administration. The process is and will continue to be made more difficult and hostile towards asylum seekers, and fewer and fewer refugees will be resettled in the United States due to xenophobia and racism masquerading as national security concerns. This may very well be the end of United States Refugee policy and the end of any asylum case being granted in the United States. As a country that often shames the human rights records of other countries and prides itself on being defenders of human rights abroad, it may be time that we turned that finger around, took a long hard look in the mirror, and asked ourselves how committed to defending human rights we really are if we won’t even defend and uphold them on our own soil.

References Cited:

Print:

Bohmer, C., & Shuman, Amy. (2008). Rejecting refugees : Political asylum in the 21st century. London ; New York: Routledge.

Webpages:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/immigration-detention-asylum-seeker-medical-exam/

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/refugees-and-asylees-united-states

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/us/politics/trump-immigration-mexico-daca.html

https://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/admissions/

http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html