Israel sees migrant tragedy as validating policy of keeping them away

[bemildred]

(Reuters) - Israel said on Monday the drowning of hundreds of Africans off Libya's coast was tragic but validated its own policy of having buffered its land barriers with Africa to keep migrants away.

Yisrael Katz, transport minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outgoing cabinet, called the deaths in the Mediterranean a "tragedy that shocks all humanity" which also showcases Europe's difficulties in handling the migrant flow.

"Look at how correct the (Israeli) government's policy was to build a fence along the border with Egypt to block the way to labour migrants from Africa from reaching Israel," Katz, added in a post written on his Facebook page.

Israel reinforced a border fence with Egypt, its land bridge with Africa, in 2012, largely curtailing a flow of migrants that had been stealing into its midst for much of the past decade.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/20/uk-israel-migrants-idUKKBN0NB1YW20150420?rpc=401

[geek tragedy]

1. doesnt' get more crass than exploiting a tragedy to self-promote nt

[bemildred]

3. Look, this is not about Rudi Guiliani. nt

[Jefferson23]

5. lol

[Jefferson23]

2. Did someone press them for a response? When your reply/comment looks like this

one, you would think they'd say..no comment. Look at how correct the Israeli government policy was???

Yea..it was peachy.

[bemildred]

4. Tone deaf as always. nt

[Scootaloo]

6. What, no offer to let five migrants in in exchange for the rest abandoning all human rights?

[MisterP]

7. yeah, who'd want a voyage of the damned, eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

8. From 972...

http://972mag.com/likud-minister-drowning-of-migrants-justifies-israeli-policy/105738/

Katz demonstrates vulgarity and an almost pathological lack of compassion with his gleeful-sounding status, in which he makes political capital of a catastrophe involving the massacre of hundreds of human beings — including small children. He refers to the asylum seekers as migrants searching for work, which perhaps is not quite as bad as calling them “infiltrators,” “cancer” or “vermin,” as other members of his party have done. But it is bad enough, as it dehumanizes these people by implying that they are casually seeking to better their financial circumstances (subtext: at our expense), rather than undertaking unbelievably arduous journeys to escape extreme danger or a physically unbearable existence. Only a desperate person with nothing to lose would trek across the Sinai Peninsula, risking kidnapping and torture, or crowd onto a boat that is not seaworthy when hundreds have already drowned.

[MisterP]

9. what, not "virus"? that's the usual banana-republic name for undesirables