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Israel turns away refugees from Dafur

Refugees from Dafur have either been turned away at the border to Israel or actually expelled from the country - something one might have thought Israel would not do given its own "birth" out of the Holocaust and all those Jews displaced by the War. A true dilemma!

The Washington Post reports:

"Israel closed the door Sunday on a surge of asylum-seekers from Sudan's Darfur region and from other African countries, the largest influx of non-Jewish refugees in the modern history of the Jewish state.

Authorities announced that they had expelled 48 of more than 2,000 African refugees who have entered illegally from Egypt in recent weeks. Officials said they would allow 500 Darfurians among them to remain, but would deport everyone else back to Egypt and accept no more illegal migrants from Darfur or other places.

The announcement, raising new concerns over the refugees' safety, heightened a debate in Israel over what responsibilities a nation created by survivors of genocide in Europe bore toward people fleeing mass killing in Africa."

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