A soldier from the Golan Brigades. (Photo: Israeli Army, via Wikimedia Commons)
African governments have an obligation to take a strong stance to urge Israel to end its murderous practice of using Africans in Gaza.
Visitors to Mahar’s website are greeted with a recurring pop-up reminder to “apply online,” and a repetitive beeping sound reminds them that the Israeli military is in a state of emergency, if not outright panic.
Mahr is one of several recruiting agencies aiming to attract mercenaries from around the world to fight Israel’s dirty war in Gaza and on all fronts.
Rumors of low participation rates among Israeli reservists began circulating soon after Israel’s war on Gaza began last October. This was compounded by Israel’s unprecedented political crisis, which led the army to insist on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews, a practice that until recently had been taboo among Israeli politicians.
Even when conscription orders were issued to thousands of Haredim in July, only a fraction of the men called up responded, according to Israeli media.
The crisis has not yet been resolved, and is unlikely to be resolved as long as the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu continues to expand the front lines. To understand the extent of Israel’s military crisis, it is necessary to compare recent statements with the exaggerated statements made by Israeli officials at the start of the war, when they promised complete victory.
For example, last July Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “The army needs 10,000 soldiers right now.” The figure of 10,000 is particularly interesting given that the Israeli army has said that at least 10,000 soldiers have been seriously or moderately wounded since the start of the war.
The number is likely much higher, based on media leaks and information provided by Israeli hospitals, and thousands of Israeli soldiers have been diagnosed as “disabled” due to psychological trauma suffered during the war, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Thus, according to Israeli reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik, the army is in a state of emergency: “small and weakened, with no spare troops.”
So where does Israel go from here? Instead of ending what has turned from war to genocide in Gaza, Israel has decided to turn to the very people it has been told are the most undesirable element of Israeli society: African refugee asylum seekers.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on September 15 that Israeli recruiters are working covertly to enlist as many African asylum seekers as possible into the Israeli army.
To lure them, recruiters promise permanent residency, but the paper said no African soldiers have received the coveted document.
“Defense officials stated that the project was conducted systematically under the guidance of defense legal counsel,” the report said. It also found that “ethical considerations regarding the recruitment of asylum seekers were not taken into account.”
By “ethical considerations,” both Haaretz and the defense officials quoted are referring to the rights of asylum seekers themselves, not the murders of unarmed Palestinian civilians in Gaza at the hands of poor and desperate refugees from Africa.
Israel is known for mistreating its own darker-skinned citizens as well as asylum seekers from Africa.
This racism is most evident against the estimated 30,000 asylum seekers from Africa.
Thousands of Africans have already been deported, but they will not be sent back to their original homes but to other African countries where human rights violations are rife.
In 2018, Amnesty International said the Israeli government was forcibly returning refugees to “persecution and indefinite detention.” The group accused Israel of “ill-conceived policies” and “reckless abdication of responsibility.”
Predictably, Israel’s mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees has drawn muted responses from Western governments and human rights groups, who often respond strongly to reports of mass abuses and illegal forced returns of refugees elsewhere in the world.
And, as is so often the case, failure to hold Israel accountable to international and humanitarian law emboldens it to continue with its “ill-considered policies.”
Imagine the cruelty of taking advantage of desperate refugees who have no political or historical connection to the Palestinian war to murder other refugees in displacement camps in the Gaza Strip.
In doing so, Israel has crossed all moral, ethical and legal boundaries governing state and military behavior in wartime, but this does not mean that the international community cannot deter Israel from doing so through concrete actions and direct sanctions.
Many countries across Africa have already voiced their solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people. The ties between Africa and Palestine should now be strengthened due to Israel’s total disregard for the lives of not only Palestinians but also Africans.
The African Union should show leadership on this issue, discourage its nationals from serving in the Israeli military under any circumstances, and pursue the issue of recruitment of African asylum seekers at the highest legal levels.
While the moral stand taken by many African countries regarding the Israeli genocide in Gaza deserves the utmost respect, African governments have an obligation to take an equally strong stand to urge Israel to end the practices it uses to kill and leave Africans to die in Gaza.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest, co-edited with Ilan Pappe, is Our Vision for Liberation: Voices of Proactive Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals. Dr. Baroud is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
