The first major test of Israel’s immigration policy came in 1969, when a group of African Americans came to the country, abiding by the laws of the Old Testament and craving to live in the Holy Land. The government allowed them in, but demanded that they adopt all the religious rules of the European and Middle Eastern Jews. When they insisted on maintaining their own spiritual traditions, officials had the bodies of their dead dug up from the Jewish cemetery and re-interned next to a trash heap at the edge of town.
”They were met by a powerful propaganda machine that inflamed anti-African sentiment, well oiled from decades of instilling in the hearts of Israelis a fear of Palestinians, other Arabs and non-Jews in general.”
For decades, the members of that group, the African Hebrew Israelites, were refused medical coverage and the right to work legally, forcing them to take odd jobs where they could be easily exploited – and they often were. Without stable sources of income, they lived in abject poverty, with a child’s meal often consisting of half of a single piece of fruit. Government officials claimed without basis that they had a high crime rate and that they were a front group for foreign terrorists.
Eventually, the group grudgingly utilized their political privileges as former Americans, and their allies in Congress convinced the Israeli government to soften its stance towards them. Officials agreed to grant the group temporary residency and make it possible for them to receive permanent residency. In practice, however, the state has made this exceedingly difficult. Even today, 44 years after they first arrived, few African Hebrews have Israeli passports.