GERMANY: For refugees in 'promised land,' life in Germany harder than expected

For refugees in 'promised land,' life in Germany harder than expected

Germany has registered nearly a million refugees this year, but language, housing, and employment present significant barriers to the newcomers' assimilation.

By Lucy Kafanov, Correspondent DECEMBER 2, 2015

BERLIN — When Ahmed Saadi Mahayni meets with newly arrived refugees in Germany, he often gives out three pieces of advice: Learn the language, try to have patience, and get ready for a lot of hard work.

“Many people think of Germany as the place where all of their dreams and hopes will happen if they just come, but I try to prepare them for the difficult reality that they will face,” says Mr. Mahayni, a counselor at the Workers Welfare (AWO) aid organization.

“Getting to Germany is just part of the battle,” he says. “The real challenges start once you arrive and try to make a life for yourself.”

Mahayni knows these challenges firsthand, having fled his native Syria in 2011 at the outbreak of a revolution that would devolve into a protracted and bloody civil war. He made his way to Germany, where he stayed at one of the refugee centers that AWO runs across Berlin until his application for asylum was approved. 

Because he spoke English and Arabic fluently, Mahayni began volunteering at the center, translating for refugees and the staff during the day while devoting his evenings to studying German. Eventually, the 39-year-old received permission to work in Germany and was hired by AWO full-time.

“I’m happy to have this job and to be able to give back to the people who come from my home country,” Mahayni says. “It is a way for me to integrate with this new life while helping others to do the same.”

Having registered almost one million refugees this year, Germany has emerged as something of a promised land: a place where desperate masses can find safety, stability, jobs, and a chance to start their lives anew. But as the number of asylum-seekers grows, so does the challenge of integrating them.

Those who have been in the country for a year or longer say the reality of life in Germany is far more difficult than they had expected, indicating that cases like Mahayni’s are the exception rather than the norm.

The language barrier

  

Laila Musa, a 21-year-old Syrian Palestinian refugee from Damascus, arrived in Germany with her father and two sisters at the start of 2014. Although Germany had just over 200,000 asylum applications that year, the influx strained the system and the family spent eight months waiting for their applications to be processed. It took nearly as long before they were able to enroll in government-funded language courses.

Ms. Musa says the delay increased their feeling of isolation, and while she’s making progress in learning German, her 56-year-old father is struggling.

“It is difficult for him to study at his age, and without the language there is no chance to work,” Laila says. “I try to stay positive, but it sometimes feels like we are separated by a big glass wall, where you can see this beautiful potential life but you’re not able to reach it.”

For Laila’s younger siblings – aged eight and 15 – assimilation is likely to be easier. German law requires that children of asylum seekers be enrolled in school, where they are often placed in special “welcome” classes aimed at helping them integrate more quickly. But with more than 300,000 new students expected this year, German schools are struggling to cope.

Irina Wissmann, director of Berlin’s An der Bake Elementary School, had to hire a new teacher before classes began in September to accommodate 19 new refugee students. She says that integrating them into regular classrooms can take six months to a year.

“Most speak different languages, and some students have been out of school for quite some time because of their situations,” Ms. Wissmann says. “Some of them also have trauma, so it is very difficult for them to adjust.”

Housing hard to find

Finding a place to live is another challenge, especially for those who have been in Germany too long to qualify for a bed at one of the refugee reception centers. Berlin was experiencing an affordable housing shortage even before the arrival of thousands of migrants. Rents are rising while construction has been slow to catch up, making it difficult for refugees to find places of their own.

In cities like Berlin, refugees say the growing demand has created a black market for rent-controlled apartments, with unscrupulous brokers peddling leases for exorbitant fees.

Muhammad Al Zeen, a 25-year-old Syrian from Damascus, says he nearly signed such a contract. When he and his brother arrived in Berlin last year, they spent five months living with 200 other refugees in a cramped gymnasium. Although they qualified for government-subsidized housing, they struggled to find someone willing to rent to them.

“There are not a lot of places, and people don’t always want to rent to refugees because they think it’s a risk or they won’t get their money,” says Mr. Al Zeen. “We were lucky because some German friends helped us get a place, otherwise we would have had to pay a lot of money to one of the middlemen.”

Signs of a backlash

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to throw the country’s doors open this summer initially triggered an outpouring of public sympathy for the refugees. Many say the generosity of ordinary Germans has helped them face the challenges of adjusting to their new lives.

But there are signs of an anti-refugee backlash: Far-right attacks on asylum seekers and shelters has more than tripled from last year, while calls for immigration restrictions are growing louder in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

Although Ms. Merkel has so far refused to cap the number of refugees Germany accepts, her government has taken steps to curb the flow by tightening asylum rules, speeding up deportations of rejected applicants, and limiting family reunions. Under intense pressure to deal with the crisis, she helped seal a deal with Turkey this week that seeks to reduce the number of refugees arriving on European shores. 

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He, who saw good deeds, will not  reap in sorrow 

RUSSIA/USA: The American Hero says "Let's use Syrian refugees as human shields for our terrorists"

The American Hero says "Let's use Syrian refugees as human shields for our terrorists". Nah, he's not a psychopath or anything, is he?

Warmonger Keane Suggests We Use Refugees as Human Shields to Protect CIA’s Terrorists for Global PR Purposes

Posted on October 12, 2015 by willyloman

by Scott Creighton

 

The American Hero says “Let’s use Syrian refugees as human shields for our terrorists”. Nah, he’s not a psychopath or anything, is he?

He’s got all those pretty little bars on his chest. He can’t be a psychopath, can he? Oh wait…

psychopath

Keane, USA	Mubarak (right), Egypt
Shah, Iran	Pinochet, Chile
Suharto,  Indonesia	Papa Doc
al Sisi, Egypt	Francisco Franco, Spain
Prayut Chan-o-cha, Thailand	Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina
Fulgencio Batista, Cuba	Fulgencio Batista, Cuba
Carlos Castillo Armas, Guatemala	General Castelo Branco, Brazil
All Criminals	All Criminals
All Criminals	All Criminals

Will the maniacal warmongering never cease in the senate?

A couple days ago (Friday?) a former general and overall policy wonk think-tanker named John M. Keane went before the Senate Armed Services committee (headed by another drooling warmonger named McCain) to lay out a bunch of standardized lies about “Russian aggression” in Syria and Ukraine. His description of what he says happened in Ukraine is exactly what did happen, only, he claims Russia did it and not US Special Operations forces. Cute, huh?

The jist of his message to the senate (which continues today) was that we have to do more to stop Russia from aiding the legitimate government of Syria.

During his prepared warmongering rant, he tossed out ideas like imposing a no-fly zone (shooting down Russian SU-27s I guess) , sending in ground troops to protect our regime change mercenaries from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and doing something else that I thought might be of interest to folks out there with half a moral left in their bodies: using refugees as human shields to protect our CIA backed “moderate” terrorists.

“Putin has begun a proxy war with the U.S . when Russian combat aircraft struck, continuously, moderate rebel forces trained by the CIA. This was no accident, targets were provided by the Syrian regime and they were accurate. How can the U.S. stand by and do nothing? U.S. military should have been given the mission to retaliate.” John M. Keane

Retaliate? Against whom? Russia? Does this guy really think shooting Russian planes out of the sky on behalf of our CIA terrorists in Syria is a good idea? Is he really that crazy?

During the Q&A segment of his testimony, Mr. Keane floated a rather spine-chilling idea:“If we establish free zones – you know, for moderate opposition forces – but also sanctuaries for refugees, that gets world opinion support rather dramatically. If Putin is going to attack that, then world opinion is definitely against him.  You take this issue right off the table in terms of why he’s in Syria and if you’re doing that [attacking free zones] and contributing to the migration that’s taking place by your aggressive military actions, then world opinion will have some rather – I think – significant impact on him” John M. Keane

Forget for a second that he’s suggesting hiding terrorists inside groups of refugees (that’s been done to death already)… what he’s saying is that it would be good for global “PR purposes” if Russia accidentally kills a couple hundred refugees.

He’s saying we should use Syrian refugees as human shields to protect the CIA’s regime change terrorists and hope that Putin ends up killing a couple hundred of them because then we would be seen as the good guys.

And the idiot actually said that, on the permanent congressional record.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. after all, Keane helped neocon Fred Kagan write “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” which involved a plan for using terrorists and death-squads in Iraq to regain control of the occupied country. Hence the “surge” was born.

What he’s basically saying is this: “Let’s take those families we have displaced from across Syria and let’s ship them over to a camp right next to some of the whacked out Wahhabist terrorists we sent over to terrorize them and when Russia accidentally hits one of the camps, we can use their deaths and suffering to get the world back on our side. And even if they don’ attack them, their presence will protect the very terrorists who chased them out of their homes and destroyed their towns” John M. Keane kinda

Could you imagine going before congress and saying such a twisted and deplorable thing to those people? Actually asking their permission to do it? In public?

Why don’t they just strap a refugee kid to the hood of all those Special Ops Helix trucks ISIS drives around in? I mean, why the fuck not? Our special friends over in Israel do it.

ISRAEL: Jewish Hypocrisy...

Israel’s cynical campaign to pit Arab Jews against Palestinian refugees

Richard Irvine

The Electronic Intifada

Belfast

1 July 2012

Israel’s new diplomatic campaign to draw attention to the forgotten plight of Jews from Arab countries is an attempt to use historical injustices to justify current injustices. It is also a lost opportunity.

After years of denial and neglect, the Israeli government has rediscovered the issue of the Mizrahi — Jews from Arab countries. Following up on a successful 2008 US Congress resolution, Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, has instructed diplomats to request that foreign parliaments recognize the refugee status of Jews forced from Arab countries.

That many Jews were forced out and that the Mizrahi community was almost entirely destroyed is not in doubt. More than 850,000 Jews left or fled the Arab world between 1948 and 1990. Many because of persecution or fear of persecution, others in response to the “call” of Zionism (see Philip Mendes, “The Forgotten Refugees: The causes of the post-1948 Jewish exodus from Arab Countries”). However, that the Arab states bear a legal and moral responsibility to those who left as refugees is indisputable, yet this is scarcely what lies behind Israel’s new diplomatic initiative.

Behind the facade of what Ayalon claims is a quest for the truth, the real intent is simply to nullify the right of return for Palestinians displaced and dispossessed by Israel. By highlighting the plight of Arab Jews while simultaneously placing the blame on the Arab states for the creation of both exiled communities, Israel hopes to escape its own legal and moral responsibilities.

As an Israeli foreign ministry document distributed to journalists states: “A true solution to the issues of refugees will only be possible when the Arab League will take responsibility for its role in creating the Jewish and Palestinian refugee problem” (“Changing tack, foreign ministry to bring ‘Jewish refugees’ to fore,” Times of Israel, 3 April 2012).

Hypocrisy

 

That this is nonsense one scarcely needs to point out. Yet it illustrates the hypocrisy of a government that legislates to suppress the memory of the Nakba — the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the time of Israel’s foundation in 1948 — while disingenuously appealing on behalf of Mizrahi Jews. The faux concern provides good cover for its denial of its own obligations.

Sadly, much of the same partisan and faux concern is evident amongst supposedly independent organizations that campaign for Jewish refugee rights. Foremost amongst these is Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. In a 2007 report, the organization claimed that in raising the issue of Jewish refugees, it is not waging “a campaign against Palestinian refugees.” Yet it goes on to press the unhistorical lie that the Palestinian leadership was responsible for the Palestinians’ expulsion.

Likewise, while it calls for the voices of all refugees to be heard and for human rights standards to be implemented, the organization ignores Palestinian refugees’ wishes and makes no reference to their internationally-guaranteed right of return. Instead, it suggests Palestinians would be better served if UNRWA — the UN agency for Palestine refugees — was wound up (“Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress,” 5 November 2007 [PDF]).

The same tack is evident in recent articles by Lyn Julius, a founder of Harif, a UK-based association for Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, she recently described the expulsion of the Mizrahi as an unresolved human rights issue that requires recognition and compensation (“Jewish refugee rights is an unsolved human rights issue,” 27 April 2012).

On this I can agree with her, but then she goes on to deny the Palestinian right of return by characterizing the two very different expulsions as “a permanent exchange of roughly equal numbers of refugees” — in other words, a population exchange, which from Israel’s perspective, bar monetary compensation, is pretty much finalized as an issue.

Nevertheless, lest we doubt her humanity, Julius goes on to decry the non-settlement of Palestinian refugees in their host countries as an abuse of their human rights before commenting that Jordan’s treatment of Palestinian refugees is “cynical and cruel.” For those stateless Palestinians facing dispossession and expulsion by Israeli forces from East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, one can only stand in awe at the chutzpah.

Obscene caricature

 

Perhaps most worrying of all though is not Julius’ insensitivity and abuse of the human rights discourse to deny rights, but rather the racist terms in which she characterizes the Palestinian right of return: something she refers to as “their ‘right’ to Arabize Israel by flooding it.” The obscenity of this caricature need hardly be pointed out. Either refugees have the right to return to their homeland or they do not; that they be Arab, European, Jewish, Muslim or Christian should not matter. That is the whole point of human rights.

But, of course, with the help of US politicians, this new campaign to delegitimize Palestinian refugee rights is likely to expand. And indeed it is not the only recent tactic being brought into play to nullify and marginalize the Palestinian refugees: Einat Wilf, a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and a prominent figure in the new political party Independence, has argued “that the international community should raise its voice every time that a baby born in Gaza is given the status of a refugee.”

Wilf has called for the refugee agency UNRWA to be restructured so new registrations can be halted (“Wilf to ambassadors: UNRWA an obstacle to peace,” The Jerusalem Post, 1 February 2012).

Similarly, US Senator Mark Kirk has successfully proposed an amendment to the State Department and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (2013) requiring UNRWA to draw a distinction between refugees physically displaced in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants (“Is the UN making the Palestinian ‘refugee’ problem worse?” The Washington Post, 23 May 2012).

The obvious intention here is to decouple Palestinians from refugee status. Something that, not incidentally, Einat Wilf is urging foreign parliaments to do. “By all means, keep funding hospitals, schools and welfare programs,” she has said. “But delink it from refugee status.”

In the end there is a deeply saddening aspect of the attempt to delegitimize Palestinian refugees, especially when it is promoted in tandem with calls for recognition and justice for another refugee community. What is being lost is not just historical truth and lived reality, but the possibility of human connection and shared understanding.

Instead of displacing the blame for the plight of Mizrahi Jews onto the Palestinians, or attempting to use their story to nullify Palestinian rights, those who claim to be genuinely concerned for peace, reconciliation and rights should be reaching out to both Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian refugees and inviting them to come and discuss how, as two communities of dispossessed peoples, they can make a new future together.

Depressingly, however, while advocates for Israel call for “truth and recognition,” the reality is they prefer continued separation and dispossession; they prefer, in fact, to pit one group of exiles against the other.

Richard Irvine teaches a course at Queen’s University Belfast entitled “The Battle for Palestine” which explores the entire history of the conflict. Irvine has also worked voluntarily in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and is coordinator of the Ireland-based Palestine Education Initiative.

Jewish Hypocrisy

ISRAEL: Jewish Racism; Incitement Against Refugees leads to Racist Attacks in Israel

Incitement Against Refugees  leads to Racist Attacks in Israel

JEWS/PALESTINIANS: New study finds that 51.6% of Israelis acknowledge that world is not flat

Study Finds Wide Acknowledgment among Israeli Jews of Responsibility for 1948 Expulsion of Palestinians  

Research is first to examine how seven Israeli Jewish institutions portrayed

Palestinian refugee problem from 1949 to 2004  

NEW YORK, NY May 17, 2012 –The contrasting explanations offered by Palestinians and Israeli Jews for the Palestinian exodus during the 1948 War are often cited as a central stumbling block to peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians have claimed they were expelled in 1948, while it has been widely assumed that most Israeli Jews subscribed to a Zionist narrative claiming that Palestinians left willingly due to fear and in response to calls by Arab and Palestinians leaders.

Now a Ph.D. dissertation written by Rafi Nets, a former pre-doctoral fellow at the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at Teachers College, Columbia University, finds that most main Israeli-Jewish institutions acknowledge a balanced narrative: that the exodus was not entirely volitional, but was also caused by Jewish/Israeli expulsion. Nets, an Israeli Jew who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote his dissertation for the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, and received the 2012 award for best dissertation from the Association for Israel Studies. His findings have been published or accepted for publication in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Peace Research, The Middle East Journal, Peace Review, and Peace and Change.

In 2009, Nets and Daniel Bar-Tal, a faculty member at the School of Education at Tel Aviv University, published a representative public opinion survey they had conducted which found that 47 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed believed expulsion by Israel was among the factors leading to the exodus. Only 41 percent accepted the Zionist narrative. The survey was supported by a grant to Nets from the IPRA Foundation. Now, through the analysis of all the memoirs of 1948 war veterans, newspaper articles, publications of non-governmental organizations, and scholarly studies, Nets finds that the balanced narrative has in fact been widely endorsed by Israeli-Jewish societal institutions since the late 1970s (and especially since the late 1980s). In addition, since 2000, all history textbooks approved by Israel’s Ministry of Education have also included the balanced narrative.

Palestinians have long called for Israelis to acknowledge the expulsions of 1948.  The recent findings indicate that such acknowledgement has taken place widely for several decades.

“Typically, societies involved in an intractable conflict like the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict adopt a significantly biased, unrealistic and self-serving view of the history of the conflict,” says Nets. “The Zionist narrative of the 1948 exodus is such an example. That Israeli-Jewish society has largely adopted a less biased narrative suggests it has transformed to become more critical, open and self-reflective – a change all the more noteworthy because it has occurred in the midst of an ongoing conflict.”

Peter Coleman, ICCCR Director at Teachers College and an internationally recognized authority on conflict resolution, calls Nets’ findings “important research that could have a powerful impact on future Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and on the research on the collective memory of conflicts.”

“When one party in a conflict sees that the other side has developed a more nuanced understanding of events, that in itself can be a predisposing factor toward conflict resolution,” Coleman says.

Nets specializes in the socio-psychological aspects of conflicts, such as reconciliation and healing, with a focus on the collective memory of conflicts and published extensively on these topics.  His dissertation addresses the way in which official memory of a conflict (that is, how state institutions present a conflict’s past) either stays fixed or transforms, as well as the way in which this memory is influenced by societal institutions.  To that end, he examined all the publications produced by seven main Israeli-Jewish institutions – 1948 war veterans’ memoirs, scholarly studies, newspapers articles of the five main dailies, and NGOs’ publications – during the period of 1949-2004. In addition, he examined throughout that period history and civic textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, and publications of the Army (IDF) and the National Information Center. (The two latter institutions continued to present the Zionist narrative until at least 2004.)  Nets also conducted some 100 interviews with key people in each of these institutions. The dissertation also explored many new phenomena regarding the dynamics of the memory realm.

For details regarding Dr. Nets and his dissertation see: http://www.collective-memory.info/home.

———————————————————————-

Teachers College is the largest graduate school of education in the nation. Teachers College is affiliated with Columbia University, but it is legally and financially independent. The editors of U.S. News and World Report have perennially ranked Teachers College among the nation’s leading graduate schools of education. The College’s ICCCR (International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution) is committed to developing knowledge and practice to promote constructive conflict resolution, effective cooperation, and social justice.

For more information, please visit the college’s Web site at www.tc.columbia.edu. Learn about ICCCR at www.tc.columbia.edu/icccr.

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