African protest in Tel Aviv Sudnay
African protest in Tel Aviv SudnayYoni Kempinski

For a community that portrays itself as being made up of penniless refugees, African migrant workers have organized some very impressive demonstrations over the past week in their demand to be allowed to stay in Israel. But the reason they were able to do so, said Yisrael Hayom Thursday, was because they has some “inside help,” from an Israeli organization funded by the UN, EU, and the leftist New Israel Fund.

According to the report, the demonstrations this week in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were organized by the “Refugee Assistance Fund,” an organization led by several well-known Israeli leftists. Among those funding the group is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, various European Union groups, and the New Israel Fund, infamous for funding leftist projects and organizations like Peace Now, Yesh Gvul, etc.

The demonstrators have been demanding that they be granted refugee status and be allowed to remain in Israel. In recent weeks, Israel has begun rounding up illegals whose work visas have expired and detaining them at a new facility in southern Israel built to hold them as the government worked on ways to deport them.

A new security fence on Israel's southern border has successfully halted the mass illegal invasion of several years ago, but estimates say that some 60,000 illegal infiltrators who managed to get into the country in previous years remain. The infiltrators demand that Israel grant them the status of political refugees, who according to UN regulations, cannot be deported to their countries of origin. Israel has said that it considers nearly all the illegals to be economic migrants who are searching for work, and as such can be deported.

According to the organization, it is the migrants who are organizing themselves, and that it is only helping out “logistically.” However, Yisrael Hayom reporters on Wednesday spotted a top member of the organization and a well-known leftist, Orit Marom, giving very specific instructions to groups of illegal immigrants outside the Knesset. She reviewed speeches, instructed them where to stand and how to speak, and specified roles for each one in the demonstration that took place later on. None of the Africans were observed speaking to each other, as one would expect in a meeting to organize a demonstration.

In response, Marom said “we just help the refugees. They make their own decision. We have worked with many refugees. Our funding sources are transparent, we have no secrets.”