Slippery Slope

Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas), claimed that many women were raped in Tel-Aviv “but do not complain out of fear of being stigmatized as having contracted AIDS.” (Haaretz)

(Hebrew - Haaretz)

Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas) announced that he will place a personal fine on any mayor who employs asylum seekers against a government decision.  Yishai decided to give mayors 30 days to fire all asylum seekers, or else they would risk a fine.

(Hebrew - Ynet)

Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas) emphasized that he is not retracting his statement that all asylum seekers must be detained and said that he cannot judge the residents of South Tel-Aviv-Yafo following yesterday’s violent events.

(Hebrew - Walla)

During a Knesset debate, Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) repeated his call to detain all refugees until they are expelled.  At the same debate, MK Miri Regev (Likud) called the refugees a “cancer”. (Middle East Online)

(Hebrew - Walla)

(Hebrew - Walla)

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Israel should release petty criminals to free up jail space for 50,000 illegal “infiltrators.” He added that it is impossible to deport citizens of North Sudan and Eritrea. “At the moment, there are more than 50,000 people whom I cannot deport,” he said. “The security of Israeli citizens is really undermined as a result of these infiltrators and their behavior here, so I proposed clearing out the prisons.”

Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas) said in response to several crimes in which foreign nationals were involved that “infiltrators – all infiltrators, without exceptions – must be placed in prison or a holding facility.  Most of them, I suspect, are involved in criminal activities.  But whenever I say such a thing, I am attacked”.

(Hebrew - Walla)

Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said that the intention of aid organizations is to flood the Zionist state with non-Jews.

(Hebrew)

Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) has declared the German Nobel Prize laureate author Gunter Grass a “persona non grata,” following his criticism of the Israeli government’s nuclear policies in a recent poem.

(Hebrew)

The committee advising Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) on refugee matters rejects most request for political asylum.  For example, only four applications for refugee status were approved out of a total of 761 applications submitted in the past year.  In comparison, in 2010 approximately 25% of requests were approved in Belgium, about 20% in Switzerland and Iceland, and in the Czech Republic, approximately 15% of applications were approved.  Attorney Avi Himi, the chairman of the committee, stated in an interview that “there is no agenda to determine that they are liars.  We believe the stories told by many of them, but the problem is that objectively speaking they are not persecuted.  The question of whether a person is being persecuted objectively is a key question.  If I err in my decision, there are appeal processes – the District and even High Courts.  I accept their decisions.  The refugee laws are currently being promulgated in Israel.”

(Hebrew)

Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai (Shas), asked the Knesset’s Constitution Law and Justice Committee to approve regulations whereby Social Security benefits and voting rights will be denied to a citizen who does not renew his national identity card to the new biometric card.  According to the new regulations, citizens will be required to renew their identity card every 10-15 years.

(Hebrew)