WhatsappLast week Israel’s Supreme Court nullified a law that was passed to entice illegal migrants to return to their native countries in Africa. The law allowed the State to hold on to one-fifth of an illegal migrant’s salary, held in escrow, to then be released to them upon them leaving to return to their native country. This was an effective motivation that encouraged migrants to leave, yet the Supreme Court ignored those facts and instead said ruled that is wrong to withhold part of their earnings from them. Totally ignoring the fact that they shouldn’t even be allowed to work legally as illegal migrants!
The Supreme Court ruling passed with a majority of six to one. Justice Solberg was the one minority judge and he wrote a poignant and telling minority opinion (see below) exposing how the majority decision is totally scandalous.
Israel has tens of thousands of illegal migrants who escaped to Israel for work. The media and NGO’s portray these illegal migrants as people who ran away from their countries to escape death, that they live in Israel in a destitute state and it is immoral for Israel to hold a fifth of their salary in escrow since they need that money to live.
However, the reality is totally different. As Sheffi Paz states in the full interview with her below, and Yisrael Vered, a resident of South Tel Aviv heavily populated with illegal African migrants, wrote in this weekend’s Makor Rishon paper “The Eritrean Embassy in Israel just raised 900,000 NIS from Illegal migrants from Eritrea in Israel to send back to the Eritrean government to fight the coronavirus.” Does that sound like a population of people running away for their lives, poor and destitute? Here is the link to the Hebrew article.
This is not the first law legislated by the Israeli government to deal with the illegal African migrants that the Supreme Court has nullified. They have done this countless of times!
This behavior of the Supreme Court is baffling. As my friend Adi Arbel commented on Facebook:
“It cannot be a High Court of Justice if time after time it prevents the Government from passing laws to *legally* solve a problem created by those who *illegally* infiltrated into Israel. The Supreme Court does not allow the law to deal with this illegal situation!”
Media personality Gadi Taub posted the following on his Twitter account:
“If we want to be a state of law, it is possible and recommended to simply ignore Supreme Court rulings until a new ruling is made.”
“Israel’s High Court of Justice is simply determined to encourage infiltrators to stay in Israel. I have no other explanation.”
“Here’s a statement by Supreme Court Judge Noam Solberg, in his minority opinion, in one paragraph, explaining the scandal caused by his colleagues in the ruling canceling the deposit law, and essentially eliminating the last economic incentive for infiltrators to leave Israel:
Solberg: “The arrangement creates an economic incentive for the infiltrating worker to leave the country. Their continued stay in Israel just strengthens the motivation of the infiltrators not to leave the state, even when possible. Against this negative incentive, the deposit arrangement sought to create a counterproductive, proportionate incentive for them to leave when they could. Thus it fulfilled the Israeli government’s immigration policy.
Illegal infiltration is harmful and bad. Public security is undermined, personal feelings of security have been compromised and crime has surged. Residents of Southern Tel Aviv, Netanya’s City Center, Petah Tikva, Eilat District A, Eilat District 2, in Ashdod, and other neighborhoods where infiltration concentrations, are all suffering. The burden on the public funding for the illegal migrants for welfare, medical, policing and education services is great.
It is not illegitimate to prevent infiltrators from taking root in Israel. The state is not only allowed to deal with this issue, the State must do so. The State of Israel as a sovereign state has a right, a right that is mandatory, to determine the state’s immigration policy. This principle, recognized in international law, gives the state a very broad area of discretion in designing immigration policy, and in setting tools that will enable its implementation. The state must take care of this problem before the tens of thousands of illegal infiltrators in Israel become a definite fact that can no longer be changed. “
Gadi Taub then quotes another anonymous voice strong against the activist Supreme Court, Adam Gold:
“Justice Solberg is the only judge in the composition that gives real weight to the personal and national interests of the citizens of the State of Israel.
“… the Supreme Court is a political body. A body that issues political-value decisions under the guile of legal rhetoric. A body that made a conscious decision to destroy the entire public’s trust, just to fulfill a political purpose. Or what they call it: proportionality. “
