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23 January 22
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ALSO SEE: Arizona Democrats Have Censured
Kyrsten Sinema Over Her Pro-Filibuster Vote
ALSO SEE: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Has a
Headache and It Has a Name: Rep. Ruben Gallego
Sinema joined Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and all of the Republicans in opposing a change that would have imposed a so-called "talking filibuster" and allowed Democrats to end the debate with a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes.
The failure to change the rules for the voting rights legislation means the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act are effectively dead.
Even before Sinema's vote on Wednesday, there had long been talk of a primary challenge to the Arizona Democrat and political experts who spoke to Newsweek indicated that the senator is in very real danger of losing her seat.
One name that has often been mentioned is Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona's 7th district.
On Thursday, he refused to rule out mounting a primary challenge to Sinema.
"I'm not going to make that determination right now; the citizens of Arizona will make that determination," Gallego said, adding that the senator was "ignoring the will of her voters."
Gallego and other potential Democratic challengers appear to have a real opportunity to unseat Sinema.
Bookmakers Betfair, which operates the world's largest betting exchange, gives Sinema odds of 3/1 to lose her Senate primary. The senator's odds of losing re-election if she's the candidate in 2024 stand at 4/5.
Adding to Sinema's potential difficulties, Politico reported on Thursday that a group of big-dollar donors had threatened to cut off support for the senator because of her stance on the filibuster and the voting rights legislation.
All of these factors could contribute to Sinema's defeat in 2024—if she chooses to run again.
Preparing to Bale?
Mark Shanahan is an associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Reading University in the U.K. and co-editor of The Trump Presidency: From Campaign Trail to World Stage. He told Newsweek that Sinema looked like someone who was ready to bow out of politics.
"One wonders if Kyrsten Sinema has any intention of defending her Senate seat in 2024," Shanahan said. "Her actions at present seem like those of someone who, after two decades in state and national politics, may well be preparing to bale at the next election."
Shanahan said if Sinema "carries on this course she will be face a Democratic primary election with far stronger opponents than she faced in 2018."
"Sinema's seat will be a massive GOP target in 2024," Shanahan added. "Her strategy may be to win over independents and the pale red voters, but by opposing such key planks of the Biden platform as voting rights, she may well not even be able to mount a credible primary campaign in two years' time."
"Money talks, and unless she's suddenly going to gain some Republican donor friends, she may not have much to say," he said.
For the Filibuster
Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told Newsweek Sinema's stance on the Senate filibuster could cost her her political career.
"It's difficult to understand Senator Sinema's hardline defense of the filibuster in terms of a career plan," Quirk said, pointing to polls showing the senator's unpopularity in Arizona.
"If Democratic fundraising groups support a primary challenge, her chances of surviving both the primary and the general election will be very slim," Quirk said.
"You can't run for election, in a purple state, as a Democrat who is OK with Republican voter suppression. There is no such lane," he warned.
Quirk said even if Sinema were to switch to the GOP, she would have no "realistic chance of re-election as a Republican."
"By this point, one has to assume that Sinema is willing to lose her Senate seat for the sake of her position on the filibuster," Quirk went on. "One could explain this attitude as a matter of principle, but it would be commitment to a peripheral and debatable feature of democracy - the Senate filibuster - at the potential expense of the most fundamental one - free and fair elections."
Staggeringly Vulnerable
Sinema is in serious trouble both in a potential Democratic primary and in the general election, but she can't be written off just yet, according to Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London's Centre on US Politics.
"It's still too early to write Krysten Sinema's political epitaph, but it's clear she's going to face an uphill battle retaining her Senate seat," Gift told Newsweek.
"Given that many on the left view her and fellow moderate Joe Manchin as the primary impediments to their legislative agenda - on everything from Build Back Better to voting rights to filibuster reform - progressives will put a target on her back during the Democratic primaries," he said.
Even if Sinema survives a primary, Republicans will "doubtlessly view Arizona as a state where they can make headway in an election year when Democrats are already expected to struggle," Gift said.
Gift described Sinema as "a relative newcomer to the Senate" who hasn't built up the level of political backing in Arizona "that would help fend off major political challenges."
"All of that adds up to Sinema being staggeringly vulnerable in 2024," Gift said.
A Better Bet Than Manchin
David A. Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, told Newsweek that Sinema could have a better chance of re-election than Senator Joe Manchin, who's also up for re-election in 2024.
"I think it is never a good idea to count out a senator from a swing state who develops a calculated reputation for ideological ambiguity," Bateman said. "Sinema is probably a better bet for reelection than Manchin."
Bateman said Democrats "can do a lot better in Arizona than Sinema has turned out to be," citing Senator Mark Kelly.
"With Manchin and West Virginia, by contrast, they're lucky to have a warm body with a 'D' next to their name," he said.
"So Democratic ire towards Sinema makes sense, " Bateman said. "It's a purple state, for sure, but one where centrist-liberal candidates can win. So it must be a bit galling to see Sinema seeming to go out of her way to frustrate the legislative ambitions of the party and president, and to add insult to injury by seeming to rub Democrats' noses in it."
More Like McCain
However, Bateman told Newsweek that Sinema is "no fool" and could position herself as a "maverick" like the late Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
"She knows her donors, and knows them better than Politico - she knows which ones she can spare and which she can't," Bateman said.
Bateman said Sinema could "read the electoral landscape of Arizona better than we can" and her choices are "almost certainly being made with the goal of cultivating a reputation that she thinks will help her in that environment."
"It's a state that has a long history of ostensible 'mavericks,' - politicians who decide to put building a reputation for independence ahead of their party's policy commitments," he said.
"I have no doubt that she is meeting voters - and especially donors - who have been urging her to be more like McCain and who say 'keep it up' every time she gets the headlines she wants by frustrating the president's agenda.
"Is this a smart move on her part? I doubt it's a dumb move," Bateman told Newsweek, noting that it appears Sinema is more popular with Republicans than Democrats.
"If 2024 is looking like a bad year for Democrats, she could say to a primary audience 'I'm the only one who can win the Senate seat.' That's historically been a pretty solid argument," he added.
Sanders in Warren, Mich. (photo: Devin Yalkin/TIME)
Sanders also said on Sunday that he would be willing to campaign for more progressive candidates in Democratic primary races against Sinema and Joe Manchin.
Sinema, along with fellow moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), were the only two Democrats to join all 50 Republican senators in upholding the filibuster last week. With Sinema’s vote preventing an expansive law that would have protected voting rights from passing, the executive board of her home state’s Democratic Party took action against her.
“[O]n the matter of the filibuster and the urgency to protect voting rights, we have been crystal clear... and the ramifications of failing to pass federal legislation that protects their right to vote are too large and far-reaching,” Arizona party chair Raquel Terán wrote in a statement announcing Sinema’s censure.
Making the rounds of the Sunday news talk shows, Sanders lamented that Manchin and Sinema were joining the Republican “obstructionism” of the Biden administration’s agenda while touting the popularity of President Joe Biden’s spending and social proposals.
“All of those pieces of legislation are enormously popular, the bill itself in its entirety, and the president deserves credit for looking at the real problems facing this country,” the progressive independent declared on NBC’s Meet the Press. “But what we had is obstructionism from 50 Republicans, two Democrats.”
Sanders added: “What we have got to do now is take the issues to the American people. And if the Republicans want to vote against lowering the cost of prescription drugs, they want to continue to give tax breaks to the rich, let them vote that way. Let the American people see what's happening.”
Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, meanwhile, wondered if it’s healthy for the Democratic Party to “highlight the division in the party,” specifically citing the recent censure of Sinema.
“Do you think that was an appropriate action?” Todd pressed Sanders.
“Yeah, I do. I think that’s exactly right,” the self-described democratic socialist shot back. “Look, on that issue of voting rights, this is something that’s almost different than anything else.”The Vermont senator further noted that the GOP is currently “perpetuating this ‘Big Lie’ that” former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election, warning that Republicans are “moving very aggressively into voter suppression” in states across the nation.
“Some of these states are doing away with the powers of independent election officials,” he continued. “They are moving in a very, very anti-democratic way. And it was absolutely imperative that we change the rules so that we could pass strong voting rights legislation.”
Calling the failure to change the filibuster rules “a terrible, terrible vote,” Sanders reiterated his belief that “what the Arizona Democratic Party did was exactly right.”
Additionally, when asked by Todd whether Biden could count on his vote in the Senate regarding “any compromise” that was reached with Manchin on spending legislation, Sanders flatly said no.
“Absolutely not,” he exclaimed. “You’re going to have to look at what that so-called compromise is. If it’s strong, if it protects the needs of working people, if it deals with climate, I’m there. But we have to look at the details of any proposal.”
In a separate interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, meanwhile, the leftist senator also made it clear that he would be open to campaigning against Manchin and Sinema in their home states in upcoming elections.
“They’re not up until 2024,” he told anchor Dana Bash. “But if there were strong candidates in those states who were prepared to stand up for working families, who understand the Democratic Party has got to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if those candidates were there in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would be happy to support them.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, also pleads guilty in federal court to threats against Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois
The US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida said Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Fort Pierce on Friday.
Hoeffer admitted calling Pelosi’s Washington office in March 2019, threatening “to come a ‘long, long, way’ to rattle her head with bullets and cut her head off”.
He admitted a call to Foxx on the same day, saying bullets would “rattle her brain”.
In November 2020, Hoeffer called the office of Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive from New York. This time, the DoJ said, Hoeffer “threatened that he would ‘rip her head off’, and told her to sleep with one eye open”.
Citing the plea agreement, NBC News reported that Hoeffer also “warned of ‘all-out war’ and a ‘civilian army’” and made racist remarks in his call to Foxx.
Hoeffer made his calls before the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump sought to overturn his election defeat.
Some looked for lawmakers to capture or kill. One rioter, from Texas, faces charges including a threat to “assassinate” Ocasio-Cortez. His case has yet to be tried.
Capitol police have reported an increase in threats against lawmakers. NBC cited the chief of Capitol police, J Thomas Manger, as saying there were around 9,600 threats in 2021, up from more than 8,000 in 2020.
As prominent Democratic women, Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi are common targets for threats, from within the walls of Congress as well as without.
Ocasio-Cortez was elected in 2018, as Democrats took the House in opposition to Trump. She quickly became a national star. In 2019, Time magazine began a profile by describing nerves in her Washington office.
“Every 10 minutes or so,” the magazine said, “someone knocks on the big wooden door of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office on Capitol Hill. The noise makes staffers stiffen.
“It’s almost always a harmless fan, one of dozens who arrive each day, leaving neon-colored Post-it notes as devotional offerings.
“But in her first three months in Congress, aides say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez that Capitol police trained her staff to perform risk assessments of her visitors.”
This, the magazine said, was “the daily reality for America’s newest human Rorschach test. Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right”.
At sentencing in April, Hoeffer will face up to 15 years in prison.
In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, a man holds a Bible as Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection are sparking renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
When Rev. Ken Peters picks up his wireless mic, the service takes a sharp rightward turn.
"Don't let the mainstream media or the left tell you that we were not a Christian nation," he intones, prowling the altar in an anti-abortion T-shirt. "You know why there's churches everywhere and not mosques? Because we're a Christian nation!"
"Amen," responds the congregation, with gusto.
The sermon, titled "How Satan Destroys the World," zigzags between familiar grievances of conservative Christians, such as abortion and transgender people's rights. But what makes this church different, and others like it across the nation, is its embrace of the secular agenda of the far right. They believe that masks and vaccinations violate religious freedom, that the participants in the Jan. 6 capitol riot were proud patriots, and the Biden administration is evil and illegitimate.
"You know he's not the most popular president in America," Peters preaches, still obsessing on election results 14 months later. "How many Biden parades did you see? Yet he beat Trump with 70 million? Give me a break. We know something's up."
Christian nationalists believe that America is Christian and Trump is their best hope to keep it that way
If anyone thought that Christian nationalism would decline with President Donald Trump out of power, they were mistaken. Christian nationalists believe, in general, that America is Christian, that the government should keep it that way, and that Trump was —and is— their best hope to accomplish that.
This movement of ultra-conservative, politicized churches is apparently on the march, though there are no firm numbers because the congregations are mostly nondenominational. The belief system provides a godly underpinning for right-wing activism in venues like school-board elections, anti-vaccine protests, and the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol.
"This is a spiritual battle. It's good versus evil," says congregant Jim Willis, after the service. He's a 72-year-old retired army colonel and software salesman, who wears on his lapel an American flag inside of a Christian cross. "And, unfortunately, evil has taken charge."
Willis says he and his wife fled California because of heavy-handed pandemic restrictions and headed to Tennessee. He says the Holy Spirit led them to the Patriot Church, which is not afraid to jump into the fray.
"We know what (the enemy's) agenda is," he continues, with a steely gaze. "Their agenda is to close down churches, to get rid of religion permanently in this country."
When it's pointed out that Joe Biden is a lifelong Catholic who attends weekly mass, Willis responds, simply, "No he isn't."
In this partisan fissure in which America is living, imperviousness to facts is a sign of the times.
Outside on the walkway, Murray Clemetson stands with an armful of hand-made signs he brought to church, such as, "Set the DC Patriots Free" and "We Are Americans, Not Terrorists." The law-school student and father of three —all home-schooled— was at the "Stop The Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., last year.
"Donald Trump represented what we stand for as a nation"
"The only insurrection that happened on Jan. 6 was by the agent provocateurs, paid actors, and corrupt police and FBI," he says, disputing all the evidence made public in the more than 700 criminal cases that the rioters were Trump fanatics.
Clemetson would be among the 84% of white evangelical Protestants who voted for Trump in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. He is asked if the Patriot Church is a Donald Trump church.
"I think it is a Donald Trump church," he answers. "Donald Trump represented what we stand for as a nation. You go to flyover country and people have good moral values. They love the Lord and they want the best for the country. And that's what Donald Trump tapped into. That's what he represented."
The next morning, Ken Peters is waiting inside his church with a cup of coffee for a sit-down interview. He's a 49-year-old, fifth-generation minister who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the few MAGA church leaders who welcomes journalists.
The barn-like Patriot Church, with the giant American flag painted on the roof, has prospered. There are currently about 350 church members in the four campuses, in Tennessee, Virginia and Washington State, with two more locations underway.
Peters believes so fervently that his candidate won the presidency that he exhorted his flock to go to the U.S. capitol on Jan. 6. He says 15 to 20 parishioners attended the now infamous rally, though none entered the capitol building. Peters himself addressed protestors on Jan. 5.
Continuing a theme from his Sunday sermon, he says, "We consider the left in our nation today to be a giant bully ... And when there is a bully on the schoolyard and somebody rises up and punches back, 'Hallelujah!' So we are thankful for Trump."
"But you know what? If Trump passes away tomorrow, God forbid, does that stop us? Does that slow us down? Not one bit. We'll be looking for the next guy to lead the way."
The rise of Christian nationalism is both a symptom and an accelerant of the polarization that afflicts America.
And there is more and more pushback. Beginning last year, more than 24,000 national church leaders, clergy and lay people have signed a statement that condemns Christian nationalism as a distortion of the faith and idolatrous of the former president. That letter, and the proximity of the Patriot Church, motivated one congregation just up the highway to take a stand.
Church of the Savior —a liberal, inclusive congregation that's part of the United Church of Christ— is perched on a bluff overlooking Interstate 40 in Knoxville. A sign out front reads, "Immigrants & Refugees Welcome." Senior pastor John Gill stands at the pulpit on a recent Sunday and starts his sermon this way:
"I think many of us believed and hoped that the fever of misinformation about the election and the pandemic and all the related efforts to undermine democracy in our nation would somehow abate. But that's not happening."
Indeed, he says, things have gotten worse.
"It's difficult for me to understand how they can claim to be patriots," he continues, "when they reject ... the first amendment that prohibits the establishment of state religion."
Finding common ground with Christian nationalists is difficult
The youth minister at the church is 58-year-old Rev. Tonya Barnette. She says, in an interview, that Christian Trumpism has also broken out in the Pentecostal churches where she grew up in Appalachia.
"My family would go to the Patriot Church if there were one around Big Stone Gap, Va.," she says. "The churches they go to teach the same things."
Barnette is lesbian, and she says her sexuality and her progressive religion are still rejected by some of her family members in the coal town of Big Stone Gap. She says she understands why people in the Patriot Church are scared.
"I think it's some kind of fear of difference," she says, "fear of me as being different, fear of the nation changing so that it's not white, cis, straight, male Christians in charge only. And it's moving more toward people who are different."
Barnette says, in her view, Christian patriots are completely missing the true message of the gospel.
"Wanting to gain power as Christian nationalists is in direct opposition to what Jesus taught. The goal is compassion, kindness, and care for the other. That's what Jesus did."
A 55-year-old librarian and Church of the Savior parishioner named Ed Sullivan says, "I mean, there's nothing new about Christian nationalism. It's been part of this country's history for a long time. Decades."
As Sullivan observes, the Bible has been thrust into conservative politics long before the Patriot Church. In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority helped to get Christians involved in politics. In the 1950s and 60s, Billy James Hargis promoted his Christian Crusade on more than 750 radio and TV stations.
"But the Patriot Church movement is certainly the most extreme manifestation of that that we have today," Sullivan says.
Is there any way, he is asked, to narrow the chasm that separates these two churches in Eastern Tennessee that both profess to follow the same Jesus?
Sullivan answers, "If they (Patriot Church) view anyone who dissents with their point of view as evil, or the enemy, or of the devil, I really don't see how there's any kind of common ground."
When the same question is put to Rev. Peters, he says the last thing they want is a civil war. "We don't want bloodshed. We want to live in peace and stay united ... That's going to be very difficult."
The Solomon Family. (photo: Heidi Levine/CS Monitor)
The Eritrean asylum-seekers and their two Israeli-born daughters – Hermela and Heran – climb into cars headed to the airport, swallowed into the morning’s traffic of a country that for more than a decade they had hoped would be their home. But Israel, although a Western democracy created in response to the Jewish people’s own history as refugees, did not embrace them.
The government classifies non-Jewish asylum-seekers as “infiltrators,” putting their children into segregated schools for families of foreign workers and asylum-seekers. Here they are relegated to a life of limbo and chronic economic instability with little likelihood of being granted refugee status.
Israel “forgot what it feels like to be a refugee,” says Ms. Solomon, who 20 hours after leaving their fifth-floor walk-up in Tel Aviv was on the other side of the world. She is urging her daughters to open the door of their new apartment on a cold and rainy November night in Toronto.
Each wears a gold necklace that bears their names in Hebrew. Bundled in matching pink coats, their curly hair brushed back in identical ponytails, the girls slip through the doorway and into a new future in Canada.
“Mama, is this a dream?” 10-year-old Hermela, dazed from the journey, asks in Hebrew.
The two-bedroom basement unit in a handsome brick home in one of Toronto’s most desirable neighborhoods had been lovingly prepared by the family’s four sponsors, members of the Jewish community of Toronto. For years they had watched Israel’s harsh policies toward asylum-seekers with a mix of heartbreak and rage. They have filled the newcomers’ fridge with pita and hummus, fresh fruit, and salads. A teddy bear is placed at the head of each girl’s tidy single bed, covered in matching polka-dot duvets. Fresh daisies sit on a coffee table.
“Everything is ready already,” Ms. Solomon keeps repeating.
For many Jews around the world, Israel’s treatment of asylum-seekers has stirred deep emotions, says Jon Allen, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel. He is the Solomons’ sponsor, along with his wife and another couple. The four of them picked up the family from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, helping them carry their eight suitcases down the stairs into their new home.
“Jews have been a persecuted people their whole existence,” Mr. Allen says. And while Israel was never perfect, he notes, “the Israel I grew up with was going to be the land of Jewish people with Jewish people’s values, which were to recognize what we suffered through and ensure that other people didn’t go through that.”
For them, joining Canada’s private sponsorship program to resettle refugees from Israel is an act of love and faith – and a protest against what they consider Israel’s moral failure.
Israel began trying to stem the tide of asylum-seekers when thousands started crossing into the country in the mid-2000s. The first wave of refugees was from the Darfur region of Sudan, followed by Eritreans escaping brutal military dictatorship and forced conscription that has been compared to slave labor. The Eritrean asylum-seekers made their way through Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, and eventually paid Bedouins to smuggle them through the Sinai Desert. This last leg of the journey left many vulnerable to torture, extortion, and sexual assaults, according to human rights groups.
From the start, the presence of African asylum-seekers has posed a quandary for Israel, founded in the shadow of the Holocaust as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution. The policy of successive governments was driven by the concern that the country could be overwhelmed by large waves of non-Jewish migration from the region. Officials, including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said the asylum-seekers pose a danger to the Jewish character of Israel.
Israeli officials have also maintained that the majority of Africans who have crossed into Israel are economic migrants looking for work and a better life, not refugees fleeing persecution. Israel does not recognize abandoning military service, as so many of the Eritrean asylum-seekers have, as a valid reason to grant asylum. In working-class neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, where many African migrants live, some residents have protested against their presence, blaming them for an increase of crime.
Ayelet Shaked, the interior minister in the government that replaced Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition last summer, has vowed to work to “return infiltrators to their country and encourage voluntary departure to safe third countries.” She added that she would “work with all my might to implement a responsible migration policy, while providing a suitable response in proven humanitarian situations.”
At its peak, in 2013, some 60,000 African asylum-seekers lived in the country. The next year, Israel completed construction of a 150-mile fence along its southern border with Egypt.
In 2017, Mr. Netanyahu devised a plan to deport African asylum-seekers to their homeland or third countries in Africa. It drew fierce criticism inside Israel, from rabbis to filmmakers to Holocaust survivors, and from Jews abroad, especially in North America. The pushback was intense enough that the government canceled the deportations.
But policy measures persist that make the lives of the newcomers so miserable that they often leave. Today, the number of asylum-seekers in Israel has dropped by half, to 30,000, the majority Eritreans. They have minimal social or labor rights – no unemployment benefits or social security-style payments to fall back on. Their children have subsidized health care that many still can’t afford. The pandemic shutdowns have hit them particularly hard: Most work in the restaurant or hotel industries as either kitchen staff or cleaners. Even then they must renew their work visas every six months.
In Western countries, some 90% of Eritreans seeking asylum have been granted refugee status or protected status in past years. Canada has resettled some 22,650 Eritrean refugees since 2015. But in Israel, only 20 Eritreans have been recognized as refugees since they first began arriving, estimates the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an advocacy group in Israel. Only recently has there been some easing, for asylum-seekers fleeing fighting in Sudan. In December, 2,400 Sudanese in Israel were given temporary residency permits.
Over the past decade, alongside Jewish activists inside Israel, Jews abroad have been among the most outspoken against Israel’s approach to refugees. And Canadian Jews have been able to do something about it – largely through sponsorships, which allow religious or community groups and individuals to apply to resettle asylum-seekers.
As the situation worsened in Israel, Marin Lehmann-Bender, sponsorship director of the Anglican United Refugee Alliance (AURA) in Toronto, which enables private sponsorship, has seen a spike in interest among Jewish Canadians with ties to Israel.
The number of Eritreans resettled to Canada from Israel went from a handful in 2014, the year Israel constructed a wall at the border with Egypt, to about 1,000 per year until the pandemic. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Canadians have resettled about 5,230 refugees from Israel since 2011 – the vast majority privately sponsored Eritreans.
Danny Schild explains it simply. “We’re Jewish.” His family, like so many other Jewish Canadians, is a family of refugees. His father, a rabbi in Canada who is now more than 100 years old, was arrested on Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when German Nazis attacked thousands of Jews and Jewish sites.
So the Jewish Canadian community has always mobilized to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, dating back to the inception of Canada’s sponsorship program 44 years ago. It helped Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and has since rallied to sponsor families escaping strife in Syria and more recently Afghanistan. But, to many, the move to help Africans in Israel feels more personal.
Mr. Schild attended a protest in Tel Aviv a few years ago, organized by African asylum-seekers, against a so-called deposit law tax (which has since been canceled). Under the program, employers deducted 20% from the salary of asylum-seekers and deposited it in a fund they could only access once they agreed to leave the country. Mr. Schild found himself amid a crowd of Africans who spoke better Hebrew than he did, quoting passages from the Torah. He calls the Africans in Israel the only Hebrew-speaking refugees in the world.
He founded CHAI – Canadians Helping Asylum Seekers in Israel. “I asked myself, how could this possibly be happening, this kind of discrimination, this kind of poor treatment of the other in Tel Aviv, when our tradition says 36 times you shall welcome any stranger?” he says. “We have a chance as Canadian Jews to repair that problem. I think I have no choice but to get involved.”
On a recent morning, he stands with members of CHAI – peers from synagogues and the community at large, including Eritreans. They are outside the garage of Judy Cass, who organizes donations that come in, from mattresses to warm winter coats, for the new arrivals.
Mr. Schild says the Jewish response in Canada has been a grassroots effort of individuals rather than an “official” Jewish response. While individual rabbis have spoken out against Israeli policies, condemning the government for its stance on immigration sometimes gets conflated with criticism of Israel as a whole. “The question that always gets asked is, ‘Why can’t [the asylum-seekers] stay in Israel?’ When that question gets asked, there’s embarrassed silence,” he says.
Mr. Allen and his wife, Clara Hirsch, an artist, don’t hold back with their opinions. Ms. Hirsch came to Canada at age 8 from Europe after purges against Jews in her native Poland in the 1950s. She has long explored the refugee experience in her work – the centerpiece of which is a series called “Flight” that hangs on her living room wall. A multimedia work, it combines photographs that she took in Syria, old maps of the modern migration route to Europe, and images of her family as they set out on their voyage to Canada as refugees.
During the “boat people” crisis of the 1970s, the couple sponsored Laotian refugees and later a family from Syria. But what is happening today, in Israel, feels more disappointing to them. “I find it heartbreaking,” says Ms. Hirsch. “This is not Vietnam. This is not Syria. This is Israel doing it.”
Supporting a refugee requires a big commitment. Sponsors collect money – often around $35,000 for a family of four, typically raised by a wide network of friends and colleagues. But they also must take the time to help the arrivals adjust to a new culture. Along with the other two sponsors, William and Linda Hechter, Mr. Allen and Ms. Hirsch have helped the Solomon family with innumerable needs: get social security numbers, register for schools, find doctors and dentists, orient to a new city, craft résumés, and prepare for job interviews.
The relationships started deepening even before the Solomons landed in Canada. During the COVID-19 lockdowns in Israel, Ms. Hirsch spent long hours on Zoom tutoring the family in English.
Mr. Allen and Ms. Hirsch speak glowingly about the family today. They were taken by Mr. Solomon’s activism in Israel as an organizer against the deportation order, and Ms. Solomon’s savvy. She worked at a McDonald’s, starting out as a cook before asking to be moved to the cash register so she could interact with customers and improve her Hebrew. She eventually transitioned to running a day care center. Mr. Solomon says he can call his sponsors with any question he has, “just like they are family.”
Ms. Lehmann-Bender, who sponsored an individual from Israel herself, says the program not only supports those who most need it but also strengthens communities. “I think refugee sponsorship is where the best things in the world come together with the worst things in the world,” she says, “and we very much exist at that intersection.”
No one navigates the world of hope and heartbreak more than Simret Tekele.
In order to escape imminent arrest for her outspoken criticism of the government in Eritrea, the former journalist made the decision to flee the country quickly. She left her infant son Yuel behind with family ahead of setting out for the perilous journey to reach Israel. That was 12 years ago. And even though she rose to prominence in the Eritrean community in Tel Aviv, becoming the director of the Eritrean Women’s Community Center, she had no hope of seeing her baby boy unless she could find a country to resettle the entire family. He has now grown from a toddler into a spirited teenager.
On one of her last nights in Tel Aviv, Ms. Tekele sits in her apartment with three Israeli friends, all activists who have come to say goodbye, and her cousin. Her husband, Tesfldet, has gone out with their two elementary school-age sons, Sirafiel and Natan, so they can have some privacy.
“It’s so wonderful to know [the family] will have a life of stability [in Canada] with freedom and all the basic rights they deserve,” says Tamara Newman, one of the friends. “But it’s also heartbreaking that we weren’t able to get [those rights] here despite so many years of trying. I used to be heartbroken when asylum-seekers leave, but now I know it’s the best for them.”
A pot of strong Eritrean coffee is brewing. They have just eaten a traditional Eritrean meal of stews and injera bread, when Ms. Tekele takes a break from hosting to call Yuel. He is in Ethiopia waiting to be resettled with the rest of his family – the two brothers he has never met and the parents he knows only as voices on the phone and occasional flickering images on a screen. Ms. Tekele’s face brightens as his image appears on her cellphone. She laughs out loud as they banter in Tigrini. Then she introduces him to her friends. They lean into the screen as he speaks in halting English, his mother positively beaming. He tells them he’s just turned 13.
“Wow, a big boy – a man!” Ms. Tekele says. They all giggle.
Days later, on one of their first nights in Toronto, the family is invited to their sponsors’ home for the seventh night of Hanukkah. Sharon Zikman, along with her husband, Michael Levine, and daughter, Alex Levine, has hung festive cutouts of dreidels and Stars of David from the chandelier and walls. Ms. Zikman provides the boys with chocolate coins and dreidels. Hanukkah songs play in the background.
Two members of the local Anglican church, who supported this sponsorship through AURA, are also there. Ms. Zikman urges the boys to teach the interfaith group about Hanukkah before the Tekeles, who, like the Solomons, are Christian, light a menorah they have brought as a gift.
But amid the joy and relief is the uncertainty about Yuel. He was supposed to arrive less than two weeks later. Amid pandemic and war in Ethiopia, his arrival has now been delayed – a hole that Ms. Tekele has felt for 12 years.
Leaving him in the care of her mother – with plans they’d be reunited as soon as she got to Israel – was the hardest thing she’s ever done. “My heart is beating now thinking about it. ... I knew the journey would not be easy for him and I didn’t want to risk [his life],” she says. “But as soon as I crossed the border I cried. I shouted. I was so depressed. I instantly regretted it.”
“It’s not easy. I still feel that I made a mistake,” she says at another point. “It’s my own son that I brought into the world, but I didn’t take responsibility. I have to carry that wherever I go.”
Authorities tell her it may be another six to eight weeks before he arrives. “One day we will meet,” she says. “I’m in a better way of thinking. Because of many, many long years without any help, now I have big hope.”
The Solomons and the Tekeles are aware that their families are fortunate. So many other Africans are left behind in Israel, continuing to live in limbo, even if they are safer than in their troubled homelands. Often those who get help are the stronger members of a community who know how to forge connections, such as the one that came to be when Ms. Tekele met Ms. Levine when she was living in Tel Aviv. Their bond helped set in motion the Tekeles’ residence in Toronto five years later.
Ms. Lehmann-Bender of AURA says that one year when she calculated requests for her organization, more than 12,000 people applied for sponsorships, and it could only submit around 75 applications.
“You can do something about it for a very tiny number of people,” she says. “But I think that in Canada, because we have the ability to do private sponsorship, we have the responsibility to do private sponsorship.”
Ten days after they’ve arrived, the Solomons sit in their apartment. Their wedding photos hang on the wall. A big Christmas tree stands in the center of the living room because Ms. Solomon promised her daughters that’s one of the first things they’d do upon arriving in Canada. (Most of the Eritreans who came to Israel are Christian.)
Both parents were already offered jobs: She has taken a position teaching Hebrew in the Jewish community, while he has found work in a kitchen that employs refugees in Toronto. They have gotten social security numbers, set up a bank account, and registered for government health insurance. While they had to fight to have their daughters integrated into a school in Israel – a 40-minute commute by bus each way – here they just enrolled at the local school a few blocks away from their new home. Their first weekend they went to a holiday lighting ceremony in downtown Toronto and ended up meeting Mayor John Tory. They took a selfie.
But their story is not over. Mr. Solomon, who was a prominent activist in the asylum-seeker community in Tel Aviv, is already planning to work with Eritreans here. When they left Israel, the Solomons held a going-away party. It was not to say goodbye. “We want to show other Jewish people they can do this, too,” Mr. Solomon says.
The morning he flew to Canada, he showed a reporter the text message he got from a Jewish Israeli friend. It was the words of a revered Talmudic saying: “Whoever saves one life, it’s as if they have saved the entire world.” He plans on using that line as he tries to convince other Jewish Canadians to join in helping sponsor Eritreans living in Israel.
“Canada has given us a lesson in how to help people, how to help a newcomer,” says Mr. Solomon.
He looks forward to the future his daughters will forge in their new land. They are both inquisitive. He hopes one day they might choose to study politics. “Because that way they can help change the world, so what was hard for us will not be hard for others.” He smiles. “Maybe one of them will even become the prime minister of Canada.”
Ms. Solomon holds her ID card from Israel, where her status is listed as “infiltrator.” In Canada, she and her family control their destiny. “We are full human beings now,” she says.
It is not uncommon to sell daughters into a future marriage and raise them until they are older, but families are now handing young girls over because they cannot feed them. (photo: Rukhshana Media)
Crushing poverty is forcing starving displaced people to make desperate choices
Since leaving the family home in the country’s Badghis province four years ago, the Rahmatis have been living in a mud hut with a plastic roof in one of Herat city’s slums. Drought made their village unliveable and the land unworkable. Like an estimated 3.5 million Afghans who have been forced to leave their homes, the Rahmatis now live in a neighbourhood for internally displaced people (IDP).
There are no jobs. But the 50-year-old has hospital fees to pay for two of her sons, one of whom is paralysed and the other who has mental illness, as well as medicine for her husband.
“I was forced to sell two of my daughters, an eight- and six-year-old,” she says. Rahmati says she sold her daughters a few months ago for 100,000 afghani each (roughly £700), to families she doesn’t know. Her daughters will stay with her until they reach puberty and then be handed over to strangers.
It is not uncommon in Afghanistan to arrange the sale of a daughter into a future marriage but raise her at home until it is time for her to leave. However, as the country’s economic crisis deepens, families are reporting that they are handing children over at an increasingly young age because they cannot afford to feed them.
Yet, selling her daughters’ future was not the only agonising decision Rahmati was forced to make. “Because of debt and hunger I was forced to sell my kidney,” she tells Rukhshana Media from outside her home in the Herat slum.
Afghanistan is on the brink of “a humanitarian crisis and economic collapse”, according to the UN. The agency’s ambassador to Afghanistan has said it is “experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis of its contemporary history”. Drought, Covid-19 and the economic sanctions imposed after the Taliban seized power in August 2021 have had catastrophic consequences on the economy. Dramatic rises in inflation have resulted in soaring food prices.
The kidney trade has been growing in Afghanistan for some time. But since the Taliban took power, the price and conditions under which the illegal organ trade takes place has changed. The price of a kidney, which once ranged from $3,500 to $4,000 (£2,600 to £3,000), has dropped to less than $1,500 (£1,100). But the number of volunteers keeps rising.
Rahmati sold her right kidney for 150,000 afghani (£1,000). But her recovery from the operation has not been good and now, like her husband, she is also sick, with no money left to visit a doctor.
More than half of the country’s estimated 40 million population face “extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine”, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. For a growing number of Afghans, selling a kidney is their only way to get money to eat.
“It has been months since we last ate rice. We hardly find bread and tea. Three nights a week, we can’t afford to eat dinner,” says Salahuddin Taheri, who lives in the same slum as the Rahmati family.
Taheri, a 27-year-old father of four, who scrapes together enough money for five loaves of bread each day by collecting and selling recycled rubbish, is looking for a buyer for his kidney. “I have been asking private hospitals in Herat for many days if they need any kidney. I even told them if they need it urgently, I can sell it below the market price, but I haven’t heard back,” Taheri says. “I need to feed my children, I have no other choice.”
In the past five years about 250 official kidney transplants have taken place in the hospitals in Herat province, with a very limited number being a family member donating their organ, says Asif Kabir, a public health official in the province. The cost of a kidney transplant is 400,000 afghani, plus the price of the kidney, according to Kabir.
But the true number of kidney operations may be far higher. A doctor working in one of the hospitals where most of the transplants take place, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says: “Recently the number of people who want to sell their kidney has increased in Herat and most of them live in the displaced camps, in Herat’s slums. The customers also go to the displaced camps to find a cheap kidney.”
Sayed Ashraf Sadat, a civil society activist in Herat, was a member of a delegation assigned by president Ashraf Ghani to investigate the illegal kidney trade in May 2021.
“We found that the hospitals were not working according to the law. People are working inside and outside the country to encourage people to sell their kidneys. These people get them visas and send them to the other side of the border. There is more demand for kidney transplants outside Afghanistan. Countries like Iran need kidneys, and poor Afghans are forced to sell them.”
Sadat says the investigation he was part of identified two hospitals in Herat where kidney transplant operations take place; one of them said it had completed 194 operations and the other said 32, but more than 500 people were claiming to have sold their kidney, 100 from a single village in Herat. “This shows the kidneys were taken outside Afghanistan,” says Sadat.
“For example, a kidney is purchased for 300,000 afghani (£2,100) inside Afghanistan, and it is sold for more than £7,500 to £11,000 outside the country,” says Sadat.
“We found evidence that some are encouraged to sell their kidneys, taken outside the borders, and their kidneys are sold for 200,000 to 400,000 afghanis ,” says Sadat. “It seems that the doctors are involved in the illegal trade. But unfortunately, our investigation was stopped due to a worsening security situation.”
Two months have passed since Rahmati’s kidney operation, and the money has already gone to pay off medical debt. Her recovery from the operation continues to go badly.
“I am so sick. I couldn’t even walk because the wound has been infected. It is very painful,” she says, adding that the recipient of her kidney only paid for the operation fee, two nights in hospital and her first medicine bill.
On the day of the transplant, Rahmati was sick and the doctors refused to operate. “I couldn’t breathe properly, so the doctors took me down from the hospital bed, but I returned. I told them ‘I am happy with my own death, but I can’t tolerate seeing my children hungry and ill’,” she says.
Maggie Mariolis chaperones Corleone as the manatee is transported to Florida's Blue Spring State Park after being restored to health at the SeaWorld Rescue Center in Orlando. (photo: Zack Wittman/WP)
Florida is scrambling to prevent another horrific year of starvation deaths among the beloved mammals
A crane slowly hoisted him out of the water and carefully lowered him to the rear door of an empty box truck, where other staff pushed, pulled and slid their “manatee burrito” inside. Two hopped in to keep Corleone company on his latest journey.
“He’s very chill. He’s such a good traveler,” rescue specialist Maggie Mariolis said. “He should be, because he’s done a lot of it lately.”
Mariolis was part of the team that in mid-November brought Corleone some 310 miles from Hilton Head, S.C., where he’d gotten stuck in a canal near a golf course, far from his winter feeding grounds in Florida and at risk of succumbing to cold stress. Ensuring his survival was part of an increasingly urgent effort to save the manatee population, which has been dying off at alarming speeds in the past 14 months, especially along Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Last year alone, 1,110 manatees died — about 15 percent of the total population in a state where they are beloved. Most perished from starvation because the sea grass beds on which they feed have been destroyed by pollutants and toxic algae blooms worsened by climate change.
The wildlife officials and biologists trying to minimize further losses recently took the unprecedented step of setting out fresh heads of romaine and Bibb lettuce daily for hungry manatees gathering in the warmer outflow waters of a power plant near Cape Canaveral. The experiment made little progress initially, with many people fearing the animals could be in for another brutal winter. “Carcass removal” is now a state priority, one official acknowledged.
But within the past week, some three dozen sea cows were observed munching on the lettuce. Wildlife officials said the animals ate 450 pounds of produce in a day.
“It looks like that’s starting to have some success now,” said Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, who visited the site Thursday. “I’m very optimistic.”
Manatee rehabilitation centers, which are working under emergency conditions, work for animals needing rehabilitation usually spend three or four months in care — at an average cost of $40,000 — but the rescue operations are having to move recovering mammals out as quickly as possible to make room for the malnourished ones coming in.
All the centers are overwhelmed.
“We’re full right now. We’re trying to find more bed space, so we’re shuffling animals around,” said Craig Miller, curator of mammals at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. “When we have manatees that are stabilized and we’re confident they can be released, even if we’d prefer to keep them and fatten them up for another month or so, we need to release them to make room. That’s what we’re facing.”
In mid-January, SeaWorld sent four much-improved manatees to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio. Corleone’s departure on Tuesday opened up space for another creature, and his release into the wild was one of the few positive notes. It meant he was strong enough.
He’d arrived in Orlando on Nov. 17, a young adult weighing about 730 pounds. He was put in a pool at SeaWorld with two other manatees and given all the romaine he wanted. He went through daily weigh-ins and had vital signs checked by a team of veterinarians and rescue specialists. During the next two months, he ate his way through enough greens to now tip the scale at 845. His optimal adult weight is about 1,000 pounds.
In the back of the truck driving him to his new home, Corleone was content to snuffle the air a few times, blink a little at the lights and sleep, swaying with the bumps and turns as he and his escort team headed up Interstate 4 and then down country roads to Blue Spring State Park.
When they arrived, there were no cranes or pulleys to help the 14 volunteers and staff remove Corleone from the truck. They gently lowered the sling to the ground, then lifted and dragged it through the dirt and down a few wooden steps to a small beach where the St. Johns River meets Blue Spring. A park ranger had counted 538 manatees there the day before, so the new arrival would have a lot of company and food. Sea grass is plentiful in the area.
The team floated the sling into the water, and with a little nudging, Corleone swam free. “This is the best part of the job,” Mariolis said.
The only real break manatees have gotten recently is the weather. Except for a few brief cold snaps, Florida has enjoyed an unusually mild winter. When the mercury dips low, however, cooling water temperatures can prove lethal despite manatees’ blubbery protection. That’s why they traditionally gather in the state’s myriad springs, where waters may remain as warm as 72 degrees.
The feeding experiment in the Indian River Lagoon began as temperatures fell below 68 in some waterways and the animals sought out cozier feeding spots such as the area near the Florida Power & Light plant. Rose believes the pilot program there needs to be expanded.
“For those manatees that are already malnourished that are coming into the winter in a state of starvation, they’re going to need help,” he said. “The supplemental feeding will do the job it needs to do, but we still need capacity to help the manatees that need to be rescued today. We’ve just been lucky it hasn’t been as cold.”
The federal and state agencies that oversee manatee protection continue to focus on the crisis. Twenty manatees have been rescued on the Atlantic coast in the past month. Most were significantly underweight.
“It’s been pretty busy,” said Andy Garrett, the state Fish and Wildlife Commission’s manatee rescue coordinator. “Some of these animals are coming in in really bad states. These are not animals that can be turned around in a few days. They will likely need months or a year.”
That will require more rehab capacity. According to Rose, officials are looking at every strategy from supporting smaller zoos to help them afford staff and pools to care for the animals to partnering with fish hatcheries as places to send manatees that aren’t quite ready to be back in the wild.
Trying to solve the real problem — the devastating loss of sea grass in the 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon — will take much longer.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in September announced $53 million in grants to improve the lagoon’s water quality. The money will help replace more than 3,000 septic tanks and upgrade three wastewater treatment plants in central Florida. Pollution from those sources, along with pesticide runoff from farms and lawns, leads to algae blooms. And the blooms, combined with climate change, kill the sea grass that sustains the manatees. The state acknowledges that it will take many millions of dollars more to build what it calls “sustainable sewer infrastructure.”
The celebration over Corleone’s successful release didn’t last long on Tuesday, though. His handlers packed up and returned to SeaWorld, where the rescue team remains on high alert. Members are bottle-feeding young orphans — sometimes found swimming alone, other times still beside their dead mothers. Since calves nurse for up to two years, such circumstances often are deadly.
Mariolis, who has been working with manatees for nearly 20 years, said she and her colleagues are accustomed to treating the issues that usually harm the marine mammals — mostly boat strikes but also fishing line entanglements. Those accidents can cause horrible, even fatal injuries, but seeing emaciated manatees is different.
“Any time you see an injured manatee, it’s painful,” she said. “But seeing a manatee that’s starving to death is really awful.”
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