Bhutanese resettlement in America surpasses 60,000 headed to 70,000

In 2006, then Bush Assistant Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, announced that the United States would begin to “clean out the [refugee] camps” in Nepal where people of Napali origin had been living since being expelled from Bhutan.  She said we would take 60,000 of the 100,000 refugees.

We have resettled over 66,000 and there is no end in sight.  In fact, one has to laugh because the camp population appears to be growing.

Some of the Bhutanese are doing well in America, others are not.  Type ‘Bhutanese’ into our search function for many reports on how they are faring around the country.  One problem that has become apparent is that the Bhutanese have a very high suicide rate.

From UNHCR:

KATHMANDU, Nepal, April 26 (UNHCR) – The resettlement of refugees from Bhutan reached a major milestone this week, with 100,000 people having been referred for resettlement from Nepal to third countries since the programme began in 2007. Nearly 80,000 of them have started their new lives in eight different countries – an important step towards resolving one of the most protracted refugee situations in Asia.

[.....]

The acceptance rate of UNHCR’s referrals in Nepal by resettlement countries is the highest in the world – at 99.4 per cent of total submissions. The United States has accepted the largest number of refugees (66,134), followed by Canada (5,376), Australia (4,190), New Zealand (747), Denmark (746), Norway (546), the Netherlands (326) and the United Kingdom (317).

The math is a little fuzzy here, or is it me?  There were 108,000 in the camps originally, 100,000 have been dispersed to the “four winds,” yet 38,100 remain to be resettled?

Of the original population of 108,000 refugees originating from Bhutan and living in Nepal, some 38,100 remain in the Sanischare and Beldangi camps in eastern Nepal. Most of them have expressed an interest in the resettlement programme.

Ellen Sauerbrey, Bush Asst. Secretary for PRM. We have to resettle them to keep them from becoming terrorists.

Controversial decision!

Sauerbrey’s original decision in 2006 was highly controversial, not so much controversial to Americans (most had no clue this was happening) who might question the wisdom of cleaning out refugee camps in the third world (especially where the refugees were in no danger) and adding to our unemployment and welfare rolls, but from a segment of the Bhutanese camp dwellers themselves.

We wrote about the camp conflicts in many posts in the first years of RRW’s existence, but here is a story from 2010 I hadn’t seen in which former GOP candidate for Governor of Maryland explains what happened.

From Inside the Bay Area:

“We all expected repatriation but it did not happen,” said Amalraj, a Jesuit priest from India. “Fifteen rounds of talks. Nothing happened. All the countries pressurized. Nothing happened.”

Then came Ellen Sauerbrey. With a few choice words delivered at a United Nations meeting four years ago, the Bush administration official triggered an end to repatriation talks and put the American dream on the minds of thousands of refugee children and their parents.

The United States would take them — up to 60,000 of the more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees stranded in Nepal — and find homes for them in American cities and suburbs. That was the surprise message Sauerbrey brought to a meeting of diplomats in Geneva in fall 2006.

Some in the audience were stunned. Sauerbrey knew her words would put immediate pressure on other wealthy countries to act, but she did not tell many of them in advance.

Like most Americans, the former Republican state legislator from Maryland spent most of her life knowing little about the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, home to fewer than 700,000 people. That changed when President George W. Bush nominated her director of the State Department’s refugee division in 2005, brushing aside Democrats — including then-Sen. Barack Obama — who argued at hearings that Sauerbrey lacked experience for the job. She was appointed in early 2006. Bhutan quickly became a priority.

“I remember saying to some of my heads, some of my offices, we’re going to settle this,” Sauerbrey said in an interview this year. “Next year is going to be the year of Bhutan. We’re going to settle this problem.”

Sauerbrey said getting the refugees to “third countries” — someplace other than Bhutan and Nepal — was the best and only remaining solution to an intractable humanitarian crisis in the Himalayas. Bhutan refused to recognize as citizens those who fled in the early 1990s, arguing their departure was voluntary and permanent. Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, did not have the economic capacity to integrate them. The United Nations could not run the camps forever.

Really!  The UN could not run camps forever?  Isn’t that exactly what the UN is doing with the Palestinians.  Why isn’t the UN, after 50-60 years! not dispersing the Palestinians to the four winds?  We know why—they must remain right there as a constant thorn in the side of Israel!

Sauerbrey said in 2007, apparently about Muslim refugees, that we had to take them so they wouldn’t become terrorists, here.  Below she suggests the largely Hindu and Buddhist Bhutanese/Nepalese might turn to radicalism if we didn’t take them to your cities.

Why are these UN camps our problem?  And, with the US’s mighty economic influence, couldn’t we put some pressure on these tiny poor nations to repatriate their people?  By the way, Bhutan considered the Nepali people as illegal aliens who were diluting their ethnic population.

Observers also worried the situation in the region might grow dangerous as refugees, frustrated by years living in limbo, looked to radicalism or political violence, Sauerbrey said.

“My perspective became, we could be arguing about who’s to blame for 100 years,” Sauerbrey said. “The U.S., we’re not here trying to make political statements about who’s right or wrong. There’s a big problem, a humanitarian problem, when children are born and raised and have never seen anything but a refugee camp.”

State Department officials predict the U.S., by 2014, will be home to at least 60,000 Bhutanese refugees, more than half the total. Seven other countries, led by Canada and Australia, have accepted the rest.  [The US surpassed 60,000 by late 2012.---ed]

“When I made the statement that the U.S. was willing to take 60,000,” Sauerbrey said, “it was with the knowledge that between Canada and Australia and to a small degree, European countries, we could almost clean out the camps.”

“There were a lot of refugees who say for the first time there was a solution,” said Sauerbrey, who resigned at the end of 2007, just as the resettlement began. “There were other refugees who wanted only one solution, which was to return to Bhutan. It started a real debate.”

Violence erupted in camps largely instigated by those who objected to their people being dispersed to the four winds to live “like beggars.”

A contracting agency, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, was met with resistance when it arrived to the town of Damak to organize the resettlement in 2007. Some refugees enthusiastically took buses into Damak to sign up for resettlement and be interviewed. Other refugees pelted those buses with stones. Families known to harbor thoughts of leaving the camps faced death threats. In one nighttime attack, assailants lobbed small explosives over the gates of the IOM office, injuring no one.

The most influential protests came from refugee political leaders and their allies in Nepal who wanted to keep the pressure on Bhutan to take the refugees back.

“Instead of pressurizing Bhutan, which violated our human rights, America initiated the resettlement process,” said Tek Nath Rizal, an exiled Bhutanese politician who now lives in Katmandu and opposes the mass resettlement to the West. “We have to go there like beggars. We cannot live in dignity.”

So when do we start cleaning out the Palestinian camps so as to stop the radicalization?

Israeli Interior Minister gets an earful about migrants in Tel Aviv

This is the latest news on the ever-growing conflict between African migrants and the residents of lower income neighborhoods in South Tel Aviv.  See our previous post, here.

I sure hope the US isn’t considering extending its Malta doctrine to Israel.  What is the Malta doctrine (my name for it)?  That is where we take illegal aliens off the hands of another country after declaring they are legitimate refugees when they are largely economic migrants.  (Just type ‘Malta’ into our search function and you will see how we have helped to make Malta an even bigger target for illegal aliens to aim for by holding out the hope that getting there is a ticket to America’s streets paved with gold!).

Here is the Times of Israel:

African refugees wait for a job offer near the central bus station in southern Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo by Abir Sultan/EPA/Newscom

Touring South Tel Aviv Tuesday, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that the issue of African migrants is one of the most vexing problems facing Israel, and that the government would keep working to deport illegal migrants to their nations of origin or to third countries.  [Heads up!  What third countries?---ed]

Billed as his first working tour in his new post, Sa’ar walked around Neve Sha’anan, a low-income and middle-class neighborhood in south Tel Aviv that’s become an epicenter for many of the tens of thousands of African migrants in Israel, to get a firsthand glimpse of the area.

“This is one of the most difficult, sensitive and charged issues Israel has had to deal with,” Sa’ar noted.

One of the main controversies surrounding the migrants is that the government permitted them entry but doesn’t grant them work visas, creating a situation that fosters crime and illegal activity. Residents have become increasingly vocal about their frustration with what they say is the government’s inaction on the issue.

“There’s no life here anymore. Everyone here lives in fear,” one resident said, while others complained that their businesses have greatly suffered in recent years.

“If they are refugees, give them what they deserve. If they’re infiltrators, then deport them,” a resident said as the minister toured.

[.....]

Human rights groups contend Israel isn’t doing enough for the asylum-seekers, including not giving them the right to work, and that it lags behind much of the West in handling cases of migrants seeking asylum. The government, however, claims that many of the migrants aren’t actually refugees but individuals seeking better economic opportunities. [Readers, by definition economic migrants are not refugees or asylum seekers under UN law---ed]

Funny thing how those border fences do work!

The stream of migrants into Israel, which saw tens of thousands enter the country, has slowed to a near-halt since Israel accelerated construction of a much-upgraded fence along the Egyptian border last year.

About the photo:  It is from this Jewish Journal article from January reporting that US activists are telling the Israeli government what they should do—let them stay and give them jobs!

Tel Aviv: Attempted rape of a child by African migrant stirs controversy again

I wonder if Obama heard about Israel’s illegal alien problems when he landed there today?

We’ve been reporting the on-going controversy in Israel about African refugees, asylum seekers, illegal aliens (whatever!) coming across Israel’s borders especially now that Egypt has become even more unfriendly to the Jewish state.  See our category Israel and Refugees.

Israeli citizens in South Tel Aviv protest the presence of African illegal migrants in May 2012. photo credit: Tomer Neuberg/Flash90

In the past week, things boiled over again when a Sudanese man broke into a home allegedly intending to attack a child.

From Haaretz on March 13th:

A Sudanese man broke into a home in the south Tel Aviv neighborhood of Yad Eliyahu at 5 A.M on Wednesday morning and apparently tried to sexually assault an 8-year old girl.

According to an initial investigation, the man entered the home and headed straight to the child’s bedroom, at which point the mother, 40, heard her daughter crying and rushed into the room. She tried to stop the man, who stabbed her in the stomach with a knife and left her with moderate wounds.

When the father heard, he rushed to the room and managed to overpower the assailant, injuring him seriously.

Magen David Adom rescue services arrived after the family called the police and evacuated the man to hospital in unconscious and in serious condition, with injuries to his head. The mother and daughter were also taken to hospital and the daughter is now being examined.

The next day, March 14th, 100 people took to the streets to demonstrate against the presence of the Africans in their neighborhood:

From Indepth Africa:

Some 100 people burned a trash bin and blocked a major intersection in south Tel Aviv yesterday to protest the presence there of African migrant workers, following the attempted rape of an 8-year-old girl and stabbing of her mother…

By the way this then sends us back to Haaretz where there was an article about the demonstration the other day, but it appears to have been taken down.  I’m wondering if Haaretz downplayed the demonstration story because it coincided with the release of the Human Rights Report critical of the Netanyahu government which also came out on March 14th?

Just one more incendiary incident in South Tel Aviv

Here is a lengthy article at Al-Monitor critical of Israel for trying to deport illegal aliens/asylum seekers back to Africa.  You can read the whole thing yourself, but here is one segment near the end of the story:

Israeli politicians have been at the forefront of a campaign aiming to expel African asylum seekers from Israel. African refugees have been regularly referred to by politicians, and in media reports, as “infiltrators,” and accused of carrying diseases, stealing and raping Israeli women.

In May 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the presence of African refugees in Israel “is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity.”

Recently, this rhetoric has translated into violence.

Molotov cocktails were thrown at a refugee-run day care center last year, and violent riots broke out during right-wing protests against refugees through South Tel Aviv, an area where many African asylum seekers live. Asylum seekers have also been attacked in streets throughout the country.

On the same day as the alleged attempted rape last week, Human Rights Watch released a critical report on the Israeli government’s attempt to send “asylum seekers” back to Africa.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Human Rights Watch and the Hotline for Migrant Workers released a report on Wednesday stating that Israel is threatening detained Eritrean and Sudanese nationals, including asylum-seekers, with prolonged detention to pressure them to leave Israel.

The report said that since December 11, 2012, “Israel’s pressure has convinced several hundred detained Sudanese and one Eritrean to leave Israel, and in February 2013, some 50 detained Eritreans agreed under similar pressure to leave for Uganda.”

According to the report, all 50 of the detained Eritreans remain in detention.

HRW and the Hotline for Migrant Workers said that Sudanese and Eritreans face a real risk of harm if they return to their home countries.

The report said that under Sudanese law, anyone who has visited Israel faces up to 10 years in prison in Sudan and Sudanese officials have said the courts will apply the law.  

Next, the report stated that because of “credible persecution fears relating to punishment for evading indefinite military service in Eritrea, 80 percent of Eritrean asylum seekers worldwide are granted some form of protection.”

“Israel’s prolonged detention of asylum-seekers apparently aims to shatter all hope so they feel they have no real choice but to leave the country,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Read it all.

It is happening everywhere in the world—the third world wants in to the first world plain and simple.  The first world has to say NO! at some point or ultimately risk collapse.   I think we have reached that point.

About the photo:  The photo and its accompanying story can be found here at The Times of Israel published in December 2012.

Tel Aviv rocked by demonstrations in wake of arrest of African in rape of elderly woman

Residents of the neighborhood in south Tel Aviv say their community has been taken over by “refugees” and they want them deported.

Here is one of several stories on the latest crime, from YNet news:

“Today was a really hard day since aside from going to work, we didn’t leave our homes. We are afraid of the police and afraid of the Israelis, hatred is felt on the streets.” This is how Salman, 32, a Sudanese asylum-seeker has described the situation in south Tel Aviv.

Salman, like many of his friends and acquaintances who live in the vicinity of Tel Aviv’s central bus station, fears the vengeance likely to take a toll following the arrest of the Eritrean man suspected of raping an 83-year-old woman.

Go to the YNet story from the day before about how the “horrendous rape” of an old woman rattled the neighborhood, here, leading to the demonstrations.

“Refugees” say they aren’t all criminals and say the Israelis just don’t like blacks.  The migrants to Israel have had it good so far, they aren’t placed in detention as they are in Australia.  (Australia faces criticism daily for that detention policy).

A refugee from Darfur, who infiltrated Israel two years ago said that “the situation is really difficult here, we hear people calling out ‘we don’t want the Sudanese’ and we stay in our homes. The Israelis don’t differentiate between us – to them, we are all black.

“I want to tell them that we are not criminals we are refugees who fled war. Just like in every place, there are people who commit crimes but most of my friends and I just want some peace and quiet.”

Residents:  deport them all.

As a result of the horrifying rape of the elderly woman, an uproarious demonstration was held on Monday night in which dozens of south Tel Aviv’s residents and right-wing activists demanded the deportation of the African migrants.

Maybe the Israelis should go study that Greek border security success story.

Huge Christian refugee problem is coming

I’m watching C-SPAN’s Book TV this Sunday morning. An author, Lela Gilbert, is discussing her book, Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel Through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner. She was talking about the hundreds of thousands of Jews in Arab lands who had to flee after the founding of Israel. That went on from 1948 until the 1970s, but it’s only now being taken note of. Then she talked about what is going on with Christians in the Middle East. The Iraqi Christians didn’t see it coming, she said. They are still being attacked, and their numbers are a fraction of what they were. (We’ve written about this.) But Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria, and now they are in danger there. Egypt has millions of Christians, and the ones who have enough money to get out are getting out. The others will leave any way they can, lots of them.

There will be no Christians in the Middle East in a few years, except, ironically, in Israel. Lela Gilbert said the Christians’ plight is desperate. “Christians have no Israel,” nowhere to go where they will be automatically accepted. And Christians in the west do not take much interest in these beleaguered people. Their ancient liturgies and ways of worship are strange to most American Christians. Evangelicals consider them Catholic (which they are) and want to “convert” them. Christians usually don’t think of themselves as one people, the way Jews do, and that’s a sad thing. It wasn’t always that way.

I don’t see any solution. We unleashed “change” in the Middle East, and the change turned out to be all in the direction of Islamists taking power. The Jews found there was no room for them decades ago, and now the Christians are finding the same thing.

Iraqi Palestinians suffer in Chicago; mental illness is one major problem

This is a very interesting article about a Palestinian family (from a camp on the border of Iraq and Syria).  I am posting a lot of it because it in so many ways summarizes many different topics we discuss here daily.

A little background:  We don’t normally take Palestinian refugees (or at least we haven’t) because they are needed to keep the pressure on that evil Israel.  If they are resettled and scattered around the world, Arabs wouldn’t have anything to complain about and no reason to continually send rockets into the state of Israel (just call me cynical!).

However, Palestinians were welcomed into Iraq by Saddam Hussein, one of the few Arab countries that wanted them.  When the war came in 2003, ol’ Saddam went into his ‘spider’ hole, and the new Shiite government didn’t like those Sunni Palestinians and so many Palestinians (34,000 we are told in today’s article) tried to get into Syria, another Muslim country that didn’t want them.  They ended up in a refugee camp on the border and we decided to take a thousand or two of them (numbers vary).  That is where we pick up our story from Chicago.

From New America Media:

CHICAGO — A fragile sense of security often robs Zuhair Sulaiman of the luxury of a good night’s sleep. “The fear is embedded inside,” he said in Arabic at a meeting at Arab American Family Services in Bridgeview, Ill., just outside Chicago.

Along with more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, who abandoned their homes, his family fled to Iraq when Israel was born in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He lived in Iraq as a Palestinian refugee with no citizenship papers for 54 years before applying to come to the United States as a refugee.

Now, living in Chicago as an Iraqi refugee, Sulaiman, 58, is grateful to be in a safe and secure country, but nightly dreams of death, and fears for his children when they leave the house. “I saw too many things in Iraq; too many dead bodies, too many dead children, too many heads cut off in the street and too much blood.”

But here he faces new struggles—many of them not unlike those faced by others seeking sanctuary in America. He struggles with poverty because of the limited help offered by the U.S. government. He struggles to pay the government back for his family’s flight to America. And he struggles to find his feet in a place that’s so different from what he’s always known.

Living in the Al-Waleed refugee camp in Iraq, near the border with Syria and the Al-Tanf crossing, Sulaiman applied to come to the United States through the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). With the help of World Relief-Chicago, Sulaiman, his wife Allaay, and their five children, who were born into refugee status in Iraq, were relocated to various areas of Chicago in 2010. Sulaiman now lives with his wife and three of his children in the North Side Chicago neighborhood of Albany Park.

US government not doing enough for refugees!

As refugees, he and his family received assistance from the U.S. government when they arrived, but were eventually forced to seek aid on their own. Sulaiman found help at the non-profit organization Arab American Family Services, but he says more could be done to assist the refugees.

Resettled by World Relief,* one of nine primary federal contractors (they have spun off hundreds of subcontractors) which is almost completely funded with your tax dollars.  Here is a succinct little summary of what refugees get from you managed by World Relief:

For the fiscal year 2012, the State Department provided a one-time payment of $1,100 per refugee upon arrival in Illinois. Refugees arriving in the U.S. are placed with a resettlement agency, such as World Relief-Chicago, that has signed a cooperative agreement with the State Department. The affiliates are responsible for assuring that the refugees receive aid for the first 30 to 90 days after arrival, arranging for services such as food, housing, clothing, employment services and follow-up medical care.

Income eligible single adult refugees, and married couples without children, are eligible for Refugee Cash and Medical Assistance, from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services (ORR), for eight months from the date of arrival. Families with children are eligible for Transitional Aid for Needy Families (TANF) for up to five years. Eligibility criteria for these services often parallel the state’s Medicaid programs.

Refugees must pay for the cost of their plane ticket, though. The U.S. government is reimbursed for the costs expended of the refugees’ flights by the refugees’ sponsor agencies. These agencies then set up payment plans for the refugees. Sulaiman said when he resettled in Illinois in 2010 the U.S. provided every member of his family $900.

On this plane ticket repayment business, keep in mind that World Relief, in this case, gets a cut of whatever money they collect from the refugees for the plane ticket loan.  The full repayment, if it ever happens, does not go back into the US Treasury (which originally supplied the plane ticket funds).

World Relief   “took their hand away,” said Sulaiman:

He received two months of aid from World Relief-Chicago before they “took their hand away.” Now he pays about $50 a month to cover a $5,000 debt for the plane tickets that brought him and his family to Chicago. Once World Relief-Chicago stopped supporting Sulaiman and his family, he had to seek out aid from a social service agency. One of his married daughters was resettled in Bridgeview, Ill., just outside Chicago, and through word-of-mouth he was able to reach out to Arab American Family Services, for services such as English-language tutoring.

He and his wife are also seeing a therapist through Heartland Alliance.

Although this reporter is trying to make it sound like these good-hearted charitable organizations like Heartland Alliance are picking up the slack where the bad US government has dropped the ball, know that Heartland is largely funded with taxpayer dollars too.  See their recent Form 990 (here) (page 9).  It is a $20 million organization which gets over $13 million from GOVERNMENT GRANTS.

The article continues:

Shalabi said the resources available to refugees are often good in theory, but executed poorly. “Refugees’ expectations are very high based off what the American government promised them, but the response is not always as dignified as it should be; a lot of them are left to fend with inadequate furniture and clothing, mental health issues, children trying to adjust to new schools and parents who don’t know their rights because they come from countries where they had none.”

“Things are given to refugees when they first arrive, but often they are given fish and not taught how to fish,” said Shalabi.

The US government made no such promises!   And, frankly the federal contractors, World Relief is one!, were supposed to be in a PUBLIC-PRIVATE partnership to care for the refugees.  However, when the government money runs out it’s bye-bye to the refugees, you are on your own now while we (World Relief) “welcome” our next batch of new refugee clients who still have government ‘resources’ attached to them.

* World Relief  (Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals) also headquartered in Baltimore is not as rich as the IRC I reported on yesterday.  According to its most recent Form 990 (here), it is a $53 million a year federal contractor receiving $31 million from YOU, the taxpayer.  World Relief Chicago is a subcontractor of contractor World Relief.  No separation of church and state when it comes to your tax dollars flowing to “non-profit” “charitable” religious organizations!

Recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries

As the United Nations continues to bemoan the fate of so-called “Palestinian refugees,” the history of Jewish refugees from the time before and shortly after the creation of the State of Israel has been long forgotten—until now.   Regular readers know this is a topic we’ve discussed on several occasions recently and previous posts can be found in our Israel and Refugees category.

Here is another good article on the issue and it’s worth repeating because any future discussion about the Palestinians and “peace” attempts will necessarily include consideration of fairness to former Jewish refugees.

Here is Michael Curtis writing at the Gatestone Institute (Hat tip:  Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum):

The status of those Jews as refugees has been found to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR announced on two occasions, in February 1957 and in July 1967, that Jews who fled from Arab countries “may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office,” thus regarding them, according to international law, as bona fide refugees.

The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, emphasizing the pitiful condition of Palestinian refugees, and portraying them as the world’s major refugee problem, has convinced many in the international community to accept this version of their unfortunate plight and the injustices done to them.

That narrative, however, essentially one of historical revisionism, denies the truth that the Jews who left, fled, or were expelled from Arab countries can really be regarded as refugees, as well.

The story of these Jewish refugees has been much less well known than that of the Palestinian refugees, about whose fate international resolutions have been passed, and on whose behalf thirteen UN agencies and organizations have provided aid. The issue of the legitimate rights of the Jewish refugees, and the individual and collective loss of their assets, have not yet been seriously addressed; nor have there been any real attempts in international forums at the restitution of their rights and assets.

The contrast is startling. Between 1949 and 2009 there were 163 resolutions passed in the UN General Assembly dealing with Palestinian refugees; there was not one on Jewish refugees. Similarly, since 1968, the UN Human Rights Council (formerly Commission) has adopted 132 resolutions dealing with the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but not one directed to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Other specialized agencies of the UN have been specifically established, or charged, to pay attention to the Palestinian refugees. These refugees have benefited from international financial assistance; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), since 1950, has provided over $13 billion (in 2007 prices). Jewish refugees have received nothing from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international organization dealing with refugees all over the world except Palestinians, who have the UNRWA solely devoted to them.

There is more, read it all here.

Forever a thorn in the side of Israel

It should be stunning to those who don’t know already—Palestinian “refugees” are the only people the UNHCR never tries to resettle in other countries.  Indeed they have their own UN agency—UNRWA—to which we in the US send billions of dollars to help maintain them as permanent refugees generation after generation (60 plus years!) while demanding their “right to return” to the land that is now Israel, whereupon Israel would promptly become a Muslim country.

Contrast that to how we quickly did the UN’s bidding and scooped up tens of thousands of Bhutanese/Nepali people expelled from Bhutan (as one reader said because Bhutan feared the ethnic Nepalis would end up out-populating them in their own country—sound familiar!).   The UN and the US did not demand a “right of return” for the Bhutanese/Nepali people to either of those countries which we very easily could have done through financial aid sweeteners (if we needed to get involved at all!).   Instead we simply moved them out to your cities.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am not promoting the mass resettlement of Palestinians (to western countries, let the Arabs take them in) now that Hamas is running the place, but just pointing out the hypocrisy of the United Nations (and fascist one-worlders) when it comes to Israel and refugees generally.

Did we really help the Bhutanese/Nepali “refugees” by bringing them to America, ripping them out of their Buddhist culture, subjecting them to crime and murders in rotten US slum neighborhoods, and jobs in chicken factories?  Really?

LOL!  There is a lot of hypocrisy in the refugee industry and pointing it out keeps me going every day!

Muslim countries treat Palestinians like c***

Where have we heard this before, oh yeh, here at RRW.   As Israel is beaten over the head continually for its supposed poor treatment of Palestinians, neighboring Muslim countries don’t want them either, but the mainstream media rarely mentions that little-known fact.

So, I was surprised to see it mentioned at the Washington Post albeit only in an opinion piece, but none-the-less uttered in print.

This reminds me of the outrageous UN report a few years ago where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that the world’s tradition of protecting refugees and asylum seekers comes not from a Christian charity heritage but from Islamic Shariah Law.   I can’t resist repeating what that Socialist Antonio Guterres said in 2009 (here):

New York, 23 June (AKI) – The 1,400-year-old Islamic custom of welcoming people fleeing persecution has had more influence on modern international refugee law than any other traditional source, according to a new study sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said that more than any other historical source, Islamic law and tradition underpin the modern-day legal framework on which UNHCR bases its global activities on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced from their homes around the world.

This includes the right of everyone to seek asylum as well as prohibitions against sending those needing protection back into danger, Guterres said in the foreword to “The Right to Asylum between Islamic Sharia and International Refugee Law: A Comparative Study.”

In the study, Professor Abu Al-Wafa, Dean of the Law Faculty at Cairo University, describes how Islamic law and tradition respects refugees, including non-Muslims; forbids forcing them to change their beliefs; avoids compromising their rights; seeks to reunite families; and guarantees the protection of their lives and property.

I went on in my post in 2009  (UN High Commissioner for Refugees lies) to list all of the MUSLIM countries that were treating refugees like crap (and in virtually all cases the refugees are Muslims themselves!).  So the only surprising thing about this opinion piece in the Washington Post is that this topic is mentioned in the Washington Post.

Here is the piece by Olga Khazan:

The news media have reported frequently on Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip, but the experience of Palestinians in surrounding Arab countries is less well-known.

[....]

The news media have reported frequently on Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip, but the experience of Palestinians in surrounding Arab countries is less well-known.

Khazan goes on to report about the poor treatment of Palestinians in Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq.   Read it, it further confirms what we have written here for years that the concept of Muslim charity is a myth!  Type ‘UN Muslim Charity’ into our search function for many posts on the subject.

LOL!  I remember discussing the issue of Muslim refugees coming to my county with my Congressman back in 2007.  (That’s about when I figured RRW needed to be written).   He was shocked to learn that the Virginia Council of Churches was doing such a thing in Maryland, dropping off impoverished Muslims, and he wondered aloud—’Why isn’t wealthy Saudi Arabia taking these poor Muslims in?‘   Why indeed?  The truth is, that the rich Muslim country—Saudi Arabia—doesn’t TAKE ANY REFUGEES!  Also, back in 2007 we reported that Saudi Arabia was building a state-of-the-art border fence, here.   Surprise!  They want to keep Saudi Arabia for their own kind!  None of those Somali, Palestinian or Rohingya riff-raff for them!

Syracuse: Palestinian lottery crooks thought their scam made sense (in their world!)

There is lots of interesting information in this story, and some questions.  First, I want to know where are all the Palestinians coming from?  We didn’t previously take Palestinian refugees.   So, what LEGAL immigration program are they using to get in?

Seems that two Palestinian brothers in Syracuse whose parents own a convenience store (ah-hah a convenience store again, there is a tip-off) scammed the legitimate owner of a $5 million lottery ticket out of his ticket.  Suspecting a fraud, the authorities then put out a bogus news story to smoke out the crooks causing some journalists to fret about whether that was ethical.

Without further ado, here is the story (hat tip: first to Gary, then a second reader who discovered a story where the reporter had the guts to reveal the nationality of the perps.).

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — The New York State Lottery put out false information to snare two Syracuse-area brothers accused of scamming a customer out of a winning $5 million scratch-off ticket.

Lottery spokeswoman Carolyn Hapeman put out the bogus story last month, saying that 34-year-old Andy Ashkar legitimately bought the ticket in 2006 but waited several years before trying to claim the prize in March. Ashkar planned to share the money with his brother, 36-year-old Nayel Ashkar, according to the Lottery.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said Lottery officials used the media to get the real winner to come forward after suspecting that the Ashkars were not the legitimate winners partly because they asked for a lesser amount if they skipped a news conference.

The brothers pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of attempted grand larceny, conspiracy and possession of stolen property. Officials allege they duped the real winner, a 49-year-old married father of two, when he tried to cash in the ticket.

The Ashkars’ lawyer, Bob Durr, said his clients maintain they bought the ticket legitimately and had good reason for not immediately cashing the winning ticket.

Feared potential embarrassment in their small Palestinian Muslim community from winning at gambling, a forbidden practice!

Fitzpatrick said the ticket owner came forward after the lottery’s planted story went public. He said the man had been fooled into giving up the winning ticket when he went to cash it at the Ashkar family’s Green Ale market in October 2006.

Fitzpatrick said Andy Ashkar told the man he had won $5,000 and successfully offered him $4,000 in cash to avoid taxes and other complications.

The brothers’ lawyer said Wednesday they did not immediately cash in the ticket because they worried about the family’s safety in the rough neighborhood if it became know they had come into money and about the potential embarrassment in their small Palestinian Muslim community from winning at gambling, a forbidden practice.

“They don’t understand why this is happening,” Durr said. “They think everything they did made sense in their world.” [So, what is their world versus our world?--ed]

According to the state lottery division’s original account, Andy Ashkar claimed in March that he bought the ticket at his parents’ convenience store in Syracuse in 2006, decided to share it with his brother, and delayed claiming the prize until shortly before it would have expired because he didn’t want the money to influence his engagement and subsequent marriage.

We are now taking small numbers of Palestinian refugees.  We didn’t previously take many because as long-time readers here know the Arabs would have a fit if we started taking too many because everyone knows they remain as “refugees” in Gaza—sixty years after they left their homes in what is now Israel— for the purpose of keeping a thorn in the side of Israel.

I just checked the stats at WRAPS (using the data for destination city by nationality by fiscal year) and it seems Syracuse has gotten a total of 4,986 refugees of all nationalities since 2007  and 102 Palestinians were distributed around New York state which had a total of over 22,000 refugees, again of all nationalities, resettled there in that time span.

However, it’s possible that this pair are not refugees but that the parents’ convenience store is part of the burgeoning foreign investment we allow into the US.  We give a special “treaty” visa for anyone (from certain countries) coming in to start a business (even if he/she is only employing a few family members).  Jordon is a Treaty investor visa country, here, and Jordon has a substantial Palestinian population, so that could be the explanation for how they got here and purchased a store (and the right to stay!).

There are also many other visa programs, here, through which the Ashkar brothers could have gotten into the US.

Question is, can we now deport them?  (after they do time that is)

Egypt confiscated documents that prove previous Jewish ownership of land and businesses

This is the latest news to come out of the efforts of Israel’s campaign to prove to the world that it’s not just the Palestinians who were refugees in the Middle East, that thousands and thousands of Jews were expelled from their homes by Muslims and lost property as they too became refugees.

It seems that the glorious Arab Spring resulted in the confiscation by the government of documents proving ownership by Jews of assets in Egypt.

From The Times of Israel (hat tip:  Legal Insurrection):

Egyptian authorities confiscated some 1.7 million documents reportedly proving Jewish ownership of land and assets in Cairo. The documents were reportedly about to be shipped out of the country to Israel, in what the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram is calling “the most dangerous case of security breach in history.”

The documents were found in 13 large cases, ready to be transported to Jordan and from there to Israel, Egyptian media reported Sunday.

Elaph, a Saudi-owned news site, reported that Egyptian police received notice that the packages were being held at a shipping company in the Nasser City district of Cairo. Upon arriving at the scene, police found over 1.7 million documents dating back to the 19th century, dealing with Jewish ownership of assets in Cairo. The documents, according to the security source speaking to the Saudi site, weighed over two tons.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the documents were supposed to be used in an Israeli lawsuit involving Jewish property lost in Egypt’s 1952 revolution, the site reported. According to Elaph, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is personally following the case, which it said affects Egypt’s national security.

The documents were reportedly stolen on December 16, 2011, from a Cairo research institution, the Institut d’Égypte, during public riots that erupted following president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.