Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Palestinian Exodus — To Sweden

This is an impressive story of migration: from “Palestine” to Iraq to India, and now finally to Sweden.

Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Palestinians living in Iraq were protected, but they were not well-liked by the people of Iraq. When the tyrant fell, all constraints on the local populace were removed, putting the Palestinians at risk.

A group of them fled to India, but they have not been happy there, and are now moving to Sweden. According to Alertnet:

Palestinians Bid Goodbye to India, Hello Sweden

NEW DELHI, India, November 11 (UNHCR) — More than 100 Palestinian refugees from Iraq are leaving India in the first large-scale resettlement of Palestinian refugees from outside the Middle East.

A total of 137 Palestinian refugees who fled Baghdad for India have been accepted for resettlement by Sweden. So far, 91 have left for Sweden; the rest are due to leave in the next six months. Another 10 left for Norway earlier this year.

Within the community, the mood today is noticeably different from before. Back in Iraq, like other Palestinians after the regime change of 2003, they had been targeted and persecuted. Kidnappings were routine, as were midnight knocks on the door in Palestinian homes. Their shops were torched, their homes looted and bombed. They fled terror and the first groups reached India in March 2006.

Their initial desperation was palpable. Thaier, then aged 38, made an emotional plea to UNHCR staff in New Delhi: “Give us a desert, we will make it fertile. If resettlement countries do not want to take Palestinian men, take women and children. At least I know my family will be safe and will have a future.”

Two years later, he and his family have reason to smile again. “We got the news of our acceptance by Sweden on my son Salah’s birthday,” he said. “I want to forget the miseries and sufferings in Iraq. In Sweden, I will have a home. This will protect me and will ensure the future of my family.”

His wife Nihad, 37, looked forward to a new citizenship and dreams of opening a beauty parlour. “I will call it ‘Jamila’,” she said. “It means a beautiful woman in Arabic.” Eighteen-year-old Salah, guitar in hand, said he wanted to be a famous musician someday. His younger brother Mohammad, 11, added, “I want to be like other children in the world and be able to do my hobbies. One day, I will play football for Sweden.”

Palestinians Muhanid, 25, and Bassim Ali, 42, were among the first to leave in September. “This is the end of my suffering. I feel like a human being again. I will be a citizen, I will have a country to protect me,” said Muhanid before he left. “I am so, so happy. I came from death, I am going to life,” added Bassim.

And how was life in India?
- - - - - - - - -
In New Delhi, all refugees have access to primary health care, free of charge at government hospitals, some of which are very good. Safana, 28, said, “My daughter was born prematurely at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The doctors were excellent. Had she been born in Iraq, she would not be alive.”

Refugee children are welcome in government schools and most refugees have access to work in India’s vast informal labour sector.

So the Palestinians were not mistreated in their new home. Why are they leaving India?

What the Palestinians lacked in India was a sense of belonging. Perhaps more than any other community, they long for a homeland, a country to call their own. Resettlement gives them that opportunity. “We dream of Sweden. How will people receive us? We will be good citizens and will do our best there,” said Ashraf, echoing the sentiments of all those who are being resettled now.

So now they will belong! But what will they belong to?

According to the administrators of the territory formerly known as Sweden, there isn’t really anything worth belonging to in Sweden. If I remember correctly, Mona Sahlin herself has said as much. Sweden is just a piece of real estate like any other, a place for residents of many ethnicities to live together in multicultural harmony and collect welfare benefits.

Sweden as such is of no consequence.

And the original inhabitants — now formally known as “persons of Swedish background” — are less than negligible, not worthy of consideration.

Except, of course, when it comes to paying taxes to support “the new Swedes”. Then they’re indispensable.


Hat tip: Refugee Resettlement Watch.

20 comments:

Zenster said...

Brilliant, simply brilliant! Import scads of Islam's most brutal and willing killers. Some genius in Sweden needs to pay dearly for this sort of malfeasance.

laine said...

Sweden has been hollowed out into a multicultural hotel, with the previous owners, native Swedes, now demoted to staff who service cultures "superior" to their own.

If staff are not sufficiently deferential to the non-paying clientele, they are hauled in front of management Swedes who give them a tongue lashing on their racism and lack of appreciation for the privilege of supporting with their wages the foreign idle poor (who often turn to crime in their boredom as the cherry on the socialism sundae).

It's the management Swedes who are cultural sado-masochists (sadistic toward their fellow Swedes), but the average Swede keeps electing them, even in the remaining privacy of the voting booth, so it appears to be unstoppable national suicide.

The "Swedish model" of socialism is playing out its end stages. The advanced disease on view there is not functioning as a warning to other Western countries who are following its self-destructive socialist policies to the bitter end, it seems. More fool us.

Now, with the leap of the USA into the far left arms of Obama, there is not even a counter model on view.

Apparently, the high standard of living enabled by democratic capitalism inevitably makes populations parasites and Lotus Eaters, fodder for the Muslim scimitar.

The only resistance left is slightly under half of the US population, and they are in disarray at the moment, but at least they have guns for the moment...

Zenster said...

Laine: Now, with the leap of the USA into the far left arms of Obama, there is not even a counter model on view.

Please consider writing an essay about this for submission (the only acceptable kind!), here at Gates of Vienna.

You have deftly identified what may well be one of the single most damaging, disheartening and demoralizing (per Yuri Bezmenov), aspects of a potential Obama administration.

Bereft of a significant moral and ethical counterweight, the remaining world may well find it just that much easier to ignore the clarion call of free market, capitalistic democracy and opt for whatever brand of superior governmental mismanagement and malfeasance that presents itself.

As Winston Churchill so famously said:

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time ...

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Of course they feel more at home here, since they all know Sweden soon enough will be their own country, a full fledged islam theocracy of their liking and us the ethnic dhimmis serving them as slaves whether we like it or not. They already act as they own our country and has done so for centuries. We the natives are just annoying obstacles to overcome or eterminate, preferably the latter I think.

babs said...

Why did Sweeden even grant this asylum? It seems to me that if you are getting gov't funded education and gov't funded health care, as described by your own account, then you are not in need of Sweeden as an asylum.
It is the idiocy of Sweeden that they would allow this kind of immigration.

ENGLISHMAN said...

What is wrong with palestinians living in palestine?

Anonymous said...

@englishman: What is wrong with palestinians living in palestine?

Short answer: because they refuse to make peace with the people who won the war.

Félicie said...

This is so sad. I don't want them to come here. I hate the Swedish government for doing this! Why, oh why?

Afonso Henriques said...

Great work Baron!

"So the Palestinians were not mistreated in their new home. Why are they leaving India?
What the Palestinians lacked in India was a sense of belonging. Perhaps more than any other community, they long for a homeland, a country to call their own. Resettlement gives them that opportunity. “We dream of Sweden. How will people receive us? We will be good citizens and will do our best there,” said Ashraf"

The sad thing is that I believe Ashraf will be a good citizen. His chilren, however...
People want to keep ignoring that the worst immigrants are those who did not immigrate and feel they are entitled to a Home that is not theirs (and yes, I am talking about Europe, not America. And the "youths" feel this no matter what).

"there isn’t really anything worth belonging to in Sweden."

I don't believe he said that, Baron! He may have said that about Swedish culture, people, History, Nation but... of course, the Swedish State is worth belonging to, is it not?
Especially when your loyalties fall in the "mechanic" of the State machine and not in what the State should "stand for" (The Swedish Nation).

It kind of reminds me of the differece between Russia/USSR. There is also a difference between Sweden/The State.

And Bela is right. The "Revolution" was not democratically elected in Eastern Europe...

Afonso Henriques said...

Latté,

How dare you to say such terrible things and being so mistaken!!!

It's not like the muslims "refuse to make peace with the people who won the war."

They DO "refuse to make peace with the people who" WON THE WARS!!!

:) Put an S on it! :)

Félicie said...

The Swedish elites are deliberately undermining their nation by inviting people, as refugees, from countries where they are not at all ill-treated. This case only proves that their policy is cynical and deliberate. It's not at all about being a bleeding-heart, because these people are not in danger. It's about the hatred of one's own nation and a plan to destroy it. These politicians are the fifth column. They are traitors. Really!

X said...

By its acceptance of EU immigration law, Sweden can't actually prevent any of these people coming in.

Some of its leaders are complicit, wanting this to happen for ideological reasons. Some are in denial, pretending they're the source in order to hide how little power they have. Some just can't understand the reality of the situation. Some have just given up.

Czechmade said...

Please explain the EU immigration law. Not only you never get asylum in the Czech Rep., if you have got asylum somewhere else and you spent safely months or years there. We consider safe places within the country of origin. For ex. if you can in theory move to the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan, you cannot claim asylum here.

Most refugees disappear from the Czech Rep. in the West during the asylum procedure. They are no more eligible for a new asylum application in any EU state. Their finger prints/photos being recorded according to the Dublin treaty EUwide. Captured they are automatically transferred back here. The asylum procedure result is then a clear no.

X said...

The problem is two-fold. First there's the fact that the EU has removed internal borders, and brought in its human rights legislation, which gives all sorts of "rights" to immigrants and has been interpreted as a carte blanche excuse for immigrants to demand residence in EU countries. Once there they can claim a passport and then move to another EU country without challenge, as EU "citizens".

The second problem is that of subsidiarity and competences. The EU has legislated in the realms of immigration law, specifically with the Schengen agreement and the treaty of amsterdam, as well as some other directives on the issue. This means that the EU now has sole competence over immigration legislation - which means that the member states have no right, under the obliugations of EU memnbership, to legislate in this area. They are effectively frozen in the state their legislation was at in 1999 or 1996, or whenever they joined subsequent to that, and until the EU comes along and says "do this or that" they can't change anything. In addition the EU has "harmonised" immigration laws in the member states toward the lowest level of enforcement, removing many of the laws that previously prevented or restricted immigration. At best, member states can change minor details under the "subsidiarity" clauses, where the EU grants back a small portion of the power it stole as a sop to say "see we're not all bad!". So you have a situation where they can alter, for example, the way that an immigrant as housed and the details of how their application is processed, but they can't actually legislate to prevent those immigrants from coming in, nor can they require them to have any particular skills or pre-requisites. Once they're in, the country can start to make requirements of them but at that point they're citizens, meaning those requirements have to be effectively applied to everybody.

And once they're in, they're EU citizens too, and have all the rights of EU citizens, including freedom to move anywhere within the EU.

Czechmade said...

In the Czech rep. very few manage to get through. Less than 5%. There is no mass immigration. Asking for asylum you close your legal way of staying here (except fictitious marriage). Ask some foreigner in your country to talk by coincidence about the tricks with the immigrants.

They will tell another foreigner not you.

We are in EU, still I do not grasp how the thing might be easy.

MacD said...

So we still don't know why India was not good enough for them.

Maybe it lacks a universal welfare program?

Sense of community my ass.

Afonso Henriques said...

"We are in EU, still I do not grasp how the thing might be easy."

Czechmade, wait. Just wait...
Especially the Czech Republic that is a bridge between the East and the West (tending to the West) and will become moderately rich (as they use to). Just wait...

Czechmade said...

Afonso you are an uncurable journalist. Bridge? What bridge? We do not manage to bridge Slovakia to anything. What else? Tending to the West? Read some books from Comenius.
His job was interrupted by some moronic violent catholic easterners called habsburgs. Welcome in the Eastern house of Habsburg in Holland or Spain.

Joanne said...

You still have to feel sympathy for the Palestinian family in the article, however. What are they supposed to do? Where are they supposed to go? In this sense, they really are like the Jews of yore.

Afonso Henriques said...

"In this sense, they really are like the Jews of yore."

Oh Joanne come on. So many Arab countries in the world and they cannot chose one? Palestinians are just Arabs who happened to were living in Palestine.