A new report by Israeli news site Haaretz exposed a practice that the Israeli military has adopted to force African asylum seekers to serve in the military in Gaza in exchange for permanent residency status in Israel.
According to Haaretz, “a man who asked to be identified only by an initial, A., arrived in Israel at age 16, as part of the big wave of asylum seekers. The temporary status he holds provides him with most of the rights afforded to Israelis, but it must be renewed periodically with the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority and does not guarantee him permanent status…In one of the first months of the war, A. received a phone call from someone who claimed to be a police officer and who instructed him to report immediately to a security facility, without providing any explanation.”
The investigative journalism report, by journalists Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, includes this account of the conversation between A. and his Israeli military “Get here, and we’ll talk,” A. says he was told. When he got there, he realized that he had come to meet with “security guys,” as he called them. “They told me they were looking for special people to join the army. They told me this was a life-or-death war for Israel,” he told Haaretz. This was the first of what turned out to be a series of meetings with a man who introduced himself as a security official who was recruiting asylum seekers for the army. The meetings took place over the course of around two weeks and ended when A. decided not to enlist.
According to the report, Israeli Defense officials, speaking off the record, told the reporters that this is a widely organized recruiting campaign originating from high levels of the defense establishment.
They also reported that, as of the publishing of their report, no asylum seekers have been granted legal status for serving in the military in Gaza.
Around 30,000 asylum seekers from Africa live in Israel, mainly young men brought in by the Israeli government after banning most Palestinian laborers from working inside Israel after 2006.
TRTWorld has also reported on the Israeli attempts to recruit and import people from India to participate in the genocide of the people of Gaza, in exchange for asylum and financial incentives.
According to the South Asia Index, 215 Indian citizens have joined the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza and 4 Indians have been killed in Gaza while fighting for Israeli forces as foreign mercenaries.
