'I am a refugee. I have nowhere to go back to' (illustration)
Photo: Motti Kimchi
Hear our outcry
Op-ed: Asylum seeker from Eritrea asks Israel to show some sympathy, let him live in dignity
Last week, after seeing the State define our friends as numbers
rather than names – we could no longer keep quiet. Earlier we still deliberated whether to go out to protest
or not, but now it's already clear: The Israelis must hear our outcry.
We are very thankful to you for letting us in, for giving us work, for handing out blankets when it's cold and cold water when it's hot. There are many good Israelis, good Jews, and there are not enough words for me to thank them for this hospitality.
I understand that it may not have been convenient for some of you that we blocked roads for an hour. But you must understand that for us, on the one hand, the gates to the country we left have been blocked, and on the other hand, Israel is in the process of closing its entrance gates. And you're not leaving us with any choice – what shall we do? I have nowhere to go back to. Prison awaits me there in the best-case scenario, or death in the worst-case scenario.
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But Israel has another face too. There are people who spit on me when they see me on the street, there are those who want to throw me and my friends out of here just because we're "contaminating their street." I have learned history, I have read about the Holocaust, I identity with your pain and loss. But that is precisely why you should understand us too more than anything.
I am a refugee. I have nowhere to go back to right now. I am fed solely from your big, warm heart. I am not asking you for citizenship nor for equal rights. I am asking for some generosity and sympathy. I have no problem working and paying taxes, I have no problem crowding in a small apartment in the southern part of the city, but I want to go out on the street and breathe. Not to fear the immigration police all day long, not to hear on the news that a deal is being finalized with Uganda to throw me there.
Let me live in dignity, that's all I'm asking.
The writer, who has asked to remain anonymous, is a refugee from Eritrea who has been living in Tel Aviv for three years
