migrant workers

Former Philippine National Police Chief and current Senate of the Philippines Ronald dela Rosa seen holding an Israeli-made rifle. (Courtesy of Philippine National Police)

Philippine police are executing people with Israeli weapons

Israel continues to export arms and military training to Rodrigo Duterte’s regime, even after the ICC launched a preliminary investigation to look into suspicions of crimes against humanity there. For much of the past two years, Israel has been exporting weapons and military training to the Philippine security forces. As part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war, police officers and…

By +972 Magazine August 19, 2019

+972 Writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat’s book short-listed for the Wingate Prize

Guarnieri Jaradat’s book, The Unchosen, is deeply reported look into the lives of asylum seekers and migrant workers in Israel. +972 Magazine congratulates writer Mya Guarnieri Jaradat on her book, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others, being short-listed for the 2018 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. The Unchosen was short-listed alongside The Dark Circle…

By +972 Magazine January 12, 2018

Population and Immigration Authority agents arrest a Filipina and her daughter in south Tel Aviv, taking them to a deportation detention facility at Ben-Gurion Airport prior to their deportation, August 16, 2011. It was the first documented arrest in which a child of foreign immigrant workers, born, raised and educated in Israel was arrested and deported. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

What does the future hold for non-Jews in the Jewish state?

A new book about Israel’s crusade against asylum seekers and undocumented workers strikes at an essential truth about the precarious status of non-Jews in a self-defined Jewish state. “The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others,” Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, Pluto Press, 2017. In a small apartment in south Tel Aviv, a Filipina woman hides her…

By Natasha Roth-Rowland May 4, 2017

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Israeli authorities arrest a migrant worker and her small child [file]. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Privatizing Israel’s migrant care puts profits before people

On paper Israel’s for-profit manpower agencies act as job providers for impoverished groups from third world countries. In reality, they are the drivers of a system that harms workers, employers, and the state. By Abigail F. Kolker In Israel, there are some 60,000 migrant caregivers, comprising the largest group of documented migrant workers in the…

By +972 Magazine September 13, 2015

Israeli authorities arrest a migrant worker and her small child [file]. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Family life forbidden for migrant workers in Israel

Legal advocates decry Israeli policies toward migrant workers as inhumane and claim that they violate the laborers’ human right to family. Maris Delusong, a 36-year-old caregiver from the Philippines, is alone at Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. She stops at a sale rack outside a clothing store. She looks at the baby clothes, pulls a…

By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat October 15, 2014

Rose Fostanes (X-Factor screenshot)

Israeli reality TV could not be further from reality

There’s been a string of victories for minorities on Israeli reality TV – does it mean anything? There are probably a lot of people in Israel today who are really proud of their country. Last night, a Filipina cleaning lady won the final of the Israeli X-Factor – one of the highest rating shows in…

By Ami Kaufman January 15, 2014

Migrant caretakers march for equal labor rights, Tel Aviv, January 4, 2014. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

Denied basic labor rights, migrant caregivers take to the streets

The some 60,000 migrant workers who care for Israel’s elderly don’t receive the simplest of labor rights like overtime pay, guaranteed rest hours and vacation, are often locked into a form of debt bondage. By Jacob Udell While thousands of asylum seekers filled up Levinsky Park to organize a three-day general strike Saturday night, a…

By +972 Magazine January 5, 2014

A worker in his room, Kfar Varburg, August 31, 2013. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Home Field: Visiting agricultural workers in Israel, part 1

In a series of posts based on field visits and meetings with migrant workers in Israel, Noa Shauer and Shiraz Grinbaum highlight the conditions, hardships and exploitation of foreign workers. In part 1, Thai agricultural workers in Kfar Varburg show ‘Kav Laoved – Workers’ Hotline’ their sub-standard living conditions and tell of their exploitative wages…

By Activestills September 12, 2013

Thai workers sitting and listening at their residence in Kfar Varborg. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Foreign workers take exploitative employers to court

Many in Israel view the agriculture industry as moral and ethical one – one that symbolizes the infrastructure upon which the country was built. However, the reality portrays a much less attentive and heroic attitude toward foreign workers. By Noa Shauer (translated by Allison Rudy) Kav LaOved – Worker’s Hotline has recently received various complaints…

By +972 Magazine September 4, 2013

Filipino migrant workers participate in a protest against deportations, Tel Aviv. (photo: Activestills)

Improper residence: The squalid conditions of Israel’s migrant workers

Just as migrant workers are made invisible to Israeli labor law, their homes are also made invisible. Pushed away in the backyards of agricultural cooperatives, migrant agricultural workers are distant, hidden from the public’s view. By Noa Shauer (translated by Or Glicklich) Walking into the migrant agricultural workers’ living quarters, the first thing you notice is…

By +972 Magazine June 20, 2013

A right wing protester holds up Israeli flags while thousands march in the annual human rights march in Tel Aviv. Photo by Activestills.org

Liberal Zionism at 65: Fantasy and reality

Liberal Zionism has had 65 years to prove Israel can indeed be both a Jewish state and a liberal democracy. Given its track record, is it time to put the ideology to rest? By David Sheen Imagine if you would, for a minute, that Liberal Zionists have been proven correct: that it is totally possible for…

By +972 Magazine April 11, 2013

Filipino children at protest against arrest of child of migrant worker (Activestills)

When it comes to migrant workers, Israel’s High Court is all High-Level Babble

The fact that Israel chooses to base its nursing sector on migrant workers and turn the patients into employers does not mean that migrant workers must pay the price. That is, unless one listens to the rulings of the High Court of Justice. Those who do not appear before the High Court of Justice may…

By Laissez Passer March 24, 2013

Photographer takes picture of a child choking on tear gas during the Nakba Day protest at Qalandia checkpoint in 2011 (photo: Mya Guarnieri)

Violence sells: When the media profits off the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In my third post about publishing–or, rather, not publishing–my book about migrant workers and African refugees in Israel, I examine the role of violence in the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And then there was a ray of light. In the wake of the May 2012 race riot in Tel Aviv, the mainstream media was suddenly…

By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat February 15, 2013