Deportations compared to Passover ritual ‘burning

JERUSALEM, April 2 (JTA) — Israel’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has compared the deportation of illegal foreign workers to the ritual of burning chametz, or leavened bread, traditionally performed before the Passover holiday. Hanna Zohar, coordinator for Kav La’Oved, an organization working to protect the rights of foreign workers, said the terminology reeked of racism. The ministry said in a statement that police and labor ministry officials in Eilat had raided workplaces employing illegal workers in “Operation Biur Chametz” — burning the chametz. They issued deportation orders to 97 illegal foreign workers in the southern resort town. The operation aimed to “clean up the city ahead of the Passover holiday, from elements that are disrupting public order,” said the ministry. It added that the workers rounded up were “homeless people and call girls” originating from India, Thailand, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Israel’s Labor Ministry is headed by Eliyahu Yishai of the fervently Orthodox Shas Party. Ministry spokesman Nahum Ido said he did not know who named the operation — the ministry or the police — and said it was probably chosen because of the proximity to Passover. “It was not meant to say the workers are not kosher,” he said, adding that he did not think anyone had “given it much thought.” Zohar, from the organization assisting the workers, said the term given the operation “expresses the deep-seated causes behind the entire phenomena of delegitimizing and exploiting foreign workers.” Foreign workers had earned a bad reputation, she said, simply because “they are not Jews.” According to Zohar, branding the Eilat deportees homeless and prostitutes was also aimed at dehumanizing them. She said many of the workers rounded up in the Eilat campaign were actually Romanian construction workers who left their employers because they have not been paid. There are about 100,000 legal workers and another 150,000 illegal foreign workers in Israel today. Most work in the construction industry, which has been short of workers due to repeated closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that prevent Palestinians from working in Israel. Yishai has said that importing foreign workers is “a severe mistake which has very negative effects on Israeli society.” The ministry plans to deport up to 1,000 of these workers a month this year. The government deported 953 workers in 1996 and 2,768 in 1997.