From escaping Isis to growing food: The Eritreans helping Israeli communities rebuild after the Hamas attack

Berhane Negassi knows about terrorism only too well. Travelling from Eritrea to Israel to seek asylum. he and a group of others were sold on by people smugglers to other criminal gangs and eventually ended up in the hands of Isis.

“We were passed on by these gangs from one to the other, in Libya to Egypt. We had become slaves. Terrible things happened to women, to children. Many did not survive. Some of us ended up being held as a prisoner by Isis in Sinai. We were in a really bad situation, but I managed to escape,” he said.

“As soon as I heard about the Hamas attack, I went down to help in the places they had been. They committed murder, torture, burning. What they did was even worse than Isis, in my view. I spoke to others, we knew we had to do whatever we could for this country.”

Mr Negassi and his fellow Eritreans have come forward as volunteers to help in Israel’s war effort, working on farms to produce food after foreign workers who did the job had fled when the conflict erupted, while Israelis were called up for military service.

Mr Negassi, 33, who heads the organisation Eritrean New Hope, is one of a tiny handful from Eritrea to have received Israeli citizenship. Thousands of his compatriots have had their applications rejected, or they are yet to be decided. Some have unhappy experiences of punitive action by the Israeli authorities.

Nazriet Adikeyh has the scars from a police beating he said he received during a protest march about asylum. After arrests and threats of deportation, Nazriet had decided to lie low out of official gaze, scratching out a living for himself and his family in the underground economy because of restrictions on getting jobs due to their residential status.

The decision to break cover may lead to further police scrutiny of their presence in the country. But, Mr Adikeyh and his companions hope, it may also help them to at last gain the right to live in Israel they have been seeking so long.

“I have been here 13 years; my wife joined me soon after I came. I have a boy of nine who was born here. There have been problems with officials, but Israeli people have been good to us. This country is now under attack, and we must help,” he said.

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“If I get sent back to Eritrea, I’ll get sent to prison by the regime there, and I won’t come out. They will finish me off. But we are really hoping that the Israeli government here see what we’re doing here, see we can contribute to this country, and allow us to stay on.”

Around 21,000 Eritrean asylum seekers are now in Israel having made a fraught and hazardous journey through countries in north Africa and across the desert. They say they are escaping great danger – persecution and compulsory conscription in a military which has taken part in a number of wars.

Eritreans, and around 6,100 Sudanese, started arriving in Israel 17 years ago. Many were initially put in a desert holding centre while their asylum applications went through a lengthy process. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said recently: “Despite the government’s recognition that asylum seekers would be in danger should they be deported to their countries of origin, Israel still denies them recognition as refugees; therefore, their applications for asylum, which have already been submitted, have often failed to be reviewed.”

The Supreme Court, examining the treatment of asylum seekers, has stated that “in the absence of a ruling concerning their applications, asylum seekers are left for many years in a ‘normative fog’, which forces them to a harsh life of uncertainty”.

Around 80 Eritreans came in buses to a farm in Kannot, near Gedera, in the south of the country last Thursday, in one of their first ventures to help with the crop. Farm workers from Thailand who had been working there had left the country after a number of fellow Thai nationals who had jobs in border areas were killed in the Hamas raid and others kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages.

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There was a near-constant reminder of the war in Kannot, with F-16 warplanes flying overhead towards Gaza to launch their missiles. There were muffled sounds of explosions in the distance. One of the Eritreans, Adonay, said: “We came here to get away from war in our country; some of our people who lived near the border had their homes destroyed. We will all feel safer when Israel defeats these people.”

The farm has belonged to Barak Elgahi’s family for three decades, He was, he said, looking at crops withering unpicked before the Eritreans turned up. “These guys saved us, without them all this would have been wasted,” he said, while gesturing towards a field of cauliflowers where the Eritreans were working.

“I cannot thank them enough. Should they get their asylum wishes? Yes. Not just for what they are doing now, but because this country was built by people fleeing oppression. How can we turn our back on others who are facing the same thing?”

Calling the Eritreans together to express his appreciation, Mr Elgahi said: “You have come to our aid when we needed it desperately, and we are very grateful, you guys stood by us. I hope the state of Israel recognises what you have done. We here certainly do.”

Gadi Yevarkan was, until recently, one of three members of the Knesset from a sub-Saharan Africa background. He told the Eritreans and the farm manager he was visiting the farm to offer his support.

He had come to Israel at the age of seven with his Jewish family from Ethiopia, the state from which Eritrea had seceded after a bloody conflict. “We have a shared history, these men and I, some of it violent”, he said. “But that was a long time in the past and lots of people from countries which had fought against each other are now Israelis.”

Mr Yevarkan had served in the Israeli parliament for the Blue and White party and also Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud before stepping down. He continued: “Israel is a not just a place for Jews. It’s for Muslims, Christians, atheists, everyone. What happened with Hamas showed the evil enemies we face.

“We need to remain united, all of us who live here, and this includes the Eritreans. These people are here now giving help where it’s most needed. And I certainly believe they have a good claim to be Israeli citizens.”

Holon Tesfoy, another Eritrean, did not want to be overoptimistic about the future. “We would like to think that applications would succeed, but also [realise] that they may fail”, he said. “But I will never go back to Eritrea. There are people from Israel being held hostage in Gaza. But in Eritrea the whole population is being held hostage by the regime, that is the reality there.”