Creating Fake Targets

Playing with the fire of racism and creating inappropriate fears against a different category of population never did good, especially to a democracy. Elections in time of health, economic and social debacle prove to be an unusual ground for outburst of absurd yet well targeted declarations.

The latest in the row of the neverending electoral cycle in Israel is the assumption the prime-minister in office Benjamin Netanyahu made this week - calling himself several times ´the pilot´, the one and only qualified to fly the plane that is Israel -, in an interview for the English-speaking voters in Israel - Anglos - with senior editor of Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov: the latest decision of the Supreme Court requiring to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel will encourage ´fake converts´ among the asylum seekers/refugees currently in a limbo in the country. As simple as that...

A couple of elections ago, the same ´pilot´ was warning that Arabs are coming ´in droves´ to vote on behalf of other candidates, and many many years ago, he was very vocal against the late Yitzhak Rabin, participating at very violent gatherings that were stirring the boiling environment that finally leaded to the assasination of the prime minister. The same ´King Bibi´, with his diplomatic experience, spindoctoring in a fine English, who is shaking hands with a Kahanist like Itamar Ben Gvir and the delirious Betzalel Smotrich. Nothing new under the sun, as already expressed in a very good book I´ve reviewed on the blog about the ´turbulent life and times of Benjamin Netanyahu´.

The story with the ´fake converts´ is not new and was also shared by Shas, the party who promises to represent the interest of Jews from the Middle East, leaded by the former convinct for embezzlement ladies and gentlement, the Minister of Interior, Arye Deri. Deri who theoretically should consider the applications for asylum on behalf of the refugees that entered Israel illegally. 

Currently, there are around 30,000 asylum seekers in Israel, mostly coming from Sudan and Eritrea and claiming they in life-threatening situations, the majority having been entering the country via Egypt. The Shas Facebook post said that following the decision of the Supreme Court ´thousands of infiltrators and foreign workers will become Jewish as Reform converts´. There are no evidences suggesting that there is any interest on behalf of people belonging to this category for converting to Judaism. Not few of them are just in a limbo, with no place to go and finding themselves in an incertain risky situation. 

Gilad Kariv, reform rabbi and activist on behalf of the Reform Movement in Israel, and Labor candidate, explained in a Facebook post: ´The Conservative and the Reform movements in Israel convert only those who have residency status. No labor migrants. Not asylum seekers. Not tourists´. A basic information that Arye Deri would have known already in his long assignment as Ministry of Interior. 

But obviously, no one is naive enough to expect any logical thinking in this case. King Bibi, ´the pilot´, is playing his manipulative card, again. Together with the Kahanists and Shas and the Haredi parties and who knows who else, he just doesn´t want to give up. The other news is that, again, his opposition is as weak as the argument of the conversions...Which means there will be another - and another - election soon?