Media representatives on Channel 2's Meet the Press hammered at Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Eli Yishai (Shas) Saturday over the matter of foreign laborers, but Yishai stood his ground, insisting that the debate was being framed in a manipulative way.
Interviewing Yishai were Voice of Israel radio and Channel 1 television's Yaron Dekel, and Meet the Press host Dana Weiss. The show began with a video produced and directed by groups opposing the deportation of foreigners, and starring a group of foreign children. The video shows small foreign children singing songs in Hebrew in a classroom. Then a door opens, and immigration police lead a girl away.
Screenshot from video against repatriation / Channel 2
The camera then focused on Yishai and the two hosts began asking him about what they termed as the “expulsion” of children. Dekel went further than asking questions, telling Yishai at one point – “You know very well, Minister Eli Yishai... that whether you decide one way or another, children will not be taken by force by the Oz Unit and put on planes and expelled.”
Yishai noted that when discussing the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif, the word “evacuation” was used, whereas in the case of foreign workers who are in Israel illegally, the word “expulsion” is used. He complimented what he called “politicians and directors” for “putting on a very successful show.” The illegal workers are using their children as “human shields,” he said, and presenting him, Yishai, as if he “has horns” because he wants them repatriated. “I need to choose between popularity and hypocrisy – how I will look today in the eyes of Yaron Dekel or Dana Weiss – vis-a-vis how I will appear in the eyes of the citizens of Israel twenty years from now, when they ask me 'why did you not enforce the law...?'”
Yishai insisted that the relevant question was not the expulsion of children and their parents, but Israel's immigration policy. If Israel does not do the right thing, he said, illegal immigrants would use their children as “insurance policies” in the future against repatriation.