Opinion & Commentary:
For Sudanese refugees, out of fire, into frying pan?

By Seth Mandel
The Jewish State

On April 29, 1999, Dr. Meryl Nass, one of the world's foremost experts in anthrax, stepped before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, to shine a floodlight on the dark history of the military's attempts to vaccinate its personnel against the chemical.

Nass's testimony was the beginning of an investigation that would reveal the lack of record keeping and dangerous experimentation with the anthrax vaccine. The perilous cocktail of good intentions and bad methods led to a staggering number of servicemen and women whose careers were ruined or derailed by the side effects from the inoculation that was supposed to protect them against the very symptoms they were now experiencing.

Put simply, the cure was worse than the disease.

Anthony Peter knows the concept well. Peter, a 36-year-old husband and father, told The Jerusalem Post his story earlier this month. Peter's family is from southern Sudan, and they escaped after Peter's parents were killed there.

But "escaped" isn't really the right word, because Peter's family "escaped" to Egypt, which is like escaping from the frying pan into the fire.

Who could imagine that life outside of Sudan could be worse? Peter took a chance and tried to escape again, this time to Israel. In June, Peter's family successfully sneaked into Israel.

"I would rather that the Israeli government shoot me here, in a clean, humane way, than send me back to Egypt. To send me, and my children, and my wife back there is to sentence us to a cruel and violent death," Peter told the Post. "I quickly realized that this new place (Egypt) was even more dangerous than Sudan had been."

If it seems as though Peter is exaggerating, he isn't. Peter actually tried to go back to Sudan.

"But they would not let me return," he told the Post.

By escaping to Egypt, Peter found out that the cure was worse than the disease.

Peter isn't alone. The Sudanese refugees struck gold when they crossed the border into Israel -- they found the freest press in the world. A Sudanese woman who wouldn't give her real name because of the danger to her family still in Egypt or Sudan told another Jerusalem Post contributor much of the same.

"Because we are black, the Arabs there don't like us, the same as in Sudan," said the woman, whose friend was shot and killed by Egyptian soldiers while trying to escape into Israel. She showed the Post writer welts on her left arm. "Once a car pulled up beside me in Cairo and some man got out and slashed me with a knife."

Many Sudanese refugees are working in Eilat hotels, where they have found work and safety. One of them spoke of his children being egged and stoned by Egyptian children.

"They laugh at you, make fun of you, call you 'black slave.' That's how the Egyptians see us -- because we're black, they think we're their slaves," he said.

Another refugee spoke of the rampant rape of the Sudanese that takes place in Egypt when the refugees are caught trying to escape to Israel.

You get the point.

While the fate of the refugees is still up in the air, one thing is for sure: their time in Israel, whether permanent or temporary, is a godsend.

Israel, to the chagrin of much of the world, has become something that wasn't available to Meryl Nass and the American soldiers she tried to help. Israel has become the unattainable "holy grail" to people like the ones affected by the anthrax vaccine, and other misguided experiments, which left those seeking help worse off than before.

In a situation where the cure is worse than the disease, Israel has become the cure for the cure.

The treatment of Sudanese refugees in Arab countries outside Sudan has done more than ruin the lives of those refugees; it has begun to destroy hope for those still in Sudan. If those who escape are begging to get back in, how long before they stop trying to escape?

Israel simply will not have that. Not when the Jewish people have often survived on nothing more and nothing less than faith. Not when its national anthem is called "HaTikvah," the Hope.

And while Egyptian blood libels are used to suppress attempted escape, the word, apparently, is getting out.

"The only thing I knew about Jews was what I heard about them in Egypt -- that they were evil, that they drank blood, and were killers and very cruel," Peter said, before intimating that the refugees began to believe it couldn't possibly be worse than Egypt. "I thought, though, that the people telling me this were also killers, so why should I believe them?"

Good thinking, Peter.

So Israel is now the cure. This is nothing new. Israel brought democracy, literacy, human rights, agriculture, and education with it to the Middle East when it was created nearly 60 years ago.

In the time since, it has become a world leader in medicine and technology, as well as small business startups and development. Just ask South Africa, who recently came to Israel for help in entrepreneurship. The two countries began working toward an agreement whereby Israeli experts would come to South Africa and train workers, giving them the skills they need to help keep startup businesses afloat.

Israel is also a world leader in search-and-rescue techniques. Just ask Kenya. After a five-story building in Nairobi collapsed in January 2006, Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki asked Israel to help his country develop and implement its own search-and-rescue teams. IDF soldiers will be traveling to Kenya to help train Kenyan soldiers in search-and-rescue techniques as soon as some of the Kenyan teams are assembled.

Those Israeli soldiers, under the command of Col. Shalom Ben-Arieh, went to Cyprus in June to help that nation extinguish major fires.

And when it comes to Sudan, it isn't only about the refugees. In May, Israeli Foreign Ministry Human Rights Division head Daniel Miron announced Israel will be donating $5 million to victims of the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

That announcement came less than a year after Israel fought an economically devastating defensive war.

"Israel cannot stand by while such a severe humanitarian crisis is taking place -- the most severe in the world today -- without trying to reach out and help," Miron said, according to Ynetnews.

But the situation is a difficult one for Israeli officials. The Sudanese are coming from an enemy nation -- a nation that has supported Israel's destruction for more than 40 years and has ties to al-Qaida. Additionally, they are coming from Egypt, which means there is a serious risk of those with connections to terror cells sneaking across the border among the refugees.

There are also the numbers; they say numbers don't lie, but how is the Israeli government to know which numbers are real? Are there three million refugees, as some say, who will attempt to cross the border into Israel? Or is it only several hundred thousand? Less? More? Somewhere in between? What about refugees from other African countries? What if half the continent gets word that Israel is the Land of the Free? Such is the current predicament of Israel and its refugees.

Also, as residents of Modi'in recently found out when the Shin Bet thwarted a planned synagogue bombing in the town by Arab terrorists based in Hebron, undocumented workers pose a security threat, which makes it harder for Israeli officials to simply release the refugees and look the other way. For obvious reasons, the border must be secured, while the temporary Negev tent city set up for the refugees can hold up to 1,000 people.

They may be sent back to Egypt in large numbers. Some see this as heartless, since nobody is even trying to get Egypt to behave itself. But can Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visit Egypt one day to attend a peace summit and then the next day say the Egyptians are too savage to return their escaped refugees?

I think he can say that. The reason he can is because Israel is regional healer, held to a higher standard -- albeit an odious double standard -- and has earned the right. There were 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries after the 1948 war for Israel's independence. Israel cured them of their homelessness, of their persecution, of their newfound destitution.

And we can't forget about Operation Solomon, the daring rescue and repatriation of Ethiopian Jews, who believed they would one day be reunited in God's land. In the sweltering jungle with death and disease all around, they clung to HaTikvah, the Hope.

When Fatima, Ahmed, and their three children crossed the Sinai border into Israel, their 5-month-old baby started crying. Israeli border patrols immediately shined a spotlight on them. Ahmed told JTA that the following conversation then took place:

"Do you know where you are?" asked the Israeli soldiers, in Arabic.

"Yes," Ahmed's family replied.

"Why are you here?"

"Because we were mistreated in Egypt."

"Who are you?"

"We are Sudanese."

Ahmed and Fatima then watched as the Israeli soldiers took off their green military jackets and gave them to the Sudanese children.

Last month, a United States Government Accountability Office report was issued regarding a group of centers that were opened to treat soldiers who received the anthrax vaccine. Nass was outraged by a statistic offered by the report that an estimated one to two percent of immunized personnel could experience severe reactions, "which could result in disability or death."

One to two percent? "Who in their right mind," Nass wondered in her blog, "would willingly agree to such odds?"

The Sudanese refugees' odds are worse in Egypt. But Israel has given them reason to believe. Israel has provided them with HaTikvah, the Hope.

Like Akoon Mou Tsina, who made it to Eilat after his mother and sister were killed in Sudan; after he was taken as a slave for three years; and after he escaped into Egypt where he was repeatedly arrested. Or 33-year-old Abaker Ali, who was starved and beaten in Egyptian prison until he managed to escape into Israel.

And especially Hawa, who fled Darfur, along with her husband and two children, to Egypt, and finally to Israel. Hawa's story is slightly different, because she arrived in Israel with two children, but wherever she goes from here, she will go with three. Hawa gave birth to a healthy baby boy July 10 at Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem.

Obviously the world has some work to do. Should Hawa's son -- seven pounds of faith, freedom, and hope -- be sent to Egypt or Sudan if they can't stay in Israel? Those are the options?

That is unacceptable when 65 percent of the world's 232 countries and recognized territories are larger than Israel. That means 150 countries and territories have more land mass, and probably the natural resources that come along with it, than Israel. If freedom and democracy go hand-in-hand, there should be 122 countries stepping up to the plate here; that's how many electoral democracies exist in the world, aside from Israel.

But for now, for these refugees, there appears to be only one Hope.