Tag: Middle East

In the summer of 2016, Penn Law JD 2019 student Gabriela Siegel addressed a community of young Jewish leaders at the Schusterman ROI Summit in Jerusalem. She spoke about her experiences working with Syrian refugees and in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, and how she got involved in this area – both geographically and thematically – as a young Jewish woman.

In discussions of the global migration crisis, women have been portrayed as under threat from “dangerous” Muslim men—first in Europe, and now in the United States. President Donald Trump’s difficult relationship with women and Muslims has set the tone for his presidency. His so-called “Muslim Ban,”  released in the first weeks of his presidency, triggered a flood of international xenophobic messages on the internet. Messages on social media stated specifically that “rapefugees” should not be welcomed,  and included that “[t]he Somalis are the most dangerous to women and children. #Rapefugees.” 

Last month, Senators Cruz, Hatch, Inhofe, and Roberts introduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act in Congress. Proponents of the bill cite similar decisions in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Bahrain to support a designation under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). At first blush, these determinations seem like damning evidence, but a closer look reveals that they are largely politically motivated attempts to chill political speech and dissent.

With June 20 marking World Refugee Day, Tala al-Jabri, a Syrian-Palestinian strategist in development economics, calls upon the GCC states that have not ratified the 65-year-old U.N. refugee convention to modernize their immigration policies. This piece was originally published in Refugees Deeply.