Welcoming Refugees Quotes

If a person cannot solve a conflict with a friend, how can they possibly contribute to larger efforts for peace? If we refuse to speak to a friend because we project our anxieties onto an email they wrote, how are we going to welcome refugees, immigrants, and the homeless into our communities? The values required for social repair are the same values required for personal repair.

Home is where you feel more welcome, more secure, have more rights, where you are loved. This place can be any place even away from what you would normally call home.

Elsewhere there are no mobile phones. Elsewhere sleep is deep and the mornings are wonderful. Elsewhere art is endless, exhibitions are free and galleries are open twenty-four hours a day. Elsewhere alcohol is a joke that everybody finds funny. Elsewhere everybody is as welcoming as they’d be if you’d come home after a very long time away and they’d really missed you. Elsewhere nobody stops you in the street and says, are you a Catholic or a Protestant, and when you say neither, I’m a Muslim, then says yeah but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim? Elsewhere there are no religions. Elsewhere there are no borders. Elsewhere nobody is a refugee or an asylum seeker whose worth can be decided about by a government. Elsewhere nobody is something to be decided about by anybody. Elsewhere there are no preconceptions. Elsewhere all wrongs are righted. Elsewhere the supermarkets don’t own us. Elsewhere we use our hands for cups and the rivers are clean and drinkable. Elsewhere the words of the politicians are nourishing to the heart. Elsewhere charlatans are known for their wisdom. Elsewhere history has been kind. Elsewhere nobody would ever say the words bring back the death penalty. Elsewhere the graves of the dead are empty and their spirits fly above the cities in instinctual, shapeshifting formations that astound the eye. Elsewhere poems cancel imprisonment. Elsewhere we do time differently. Every time I travel, I head for it. Every time I come home, I look for it.

The matter is settled. Let Unterboihingen open its doors and welcome the refugees in.

Would Jesus build a wall? Would Mother Teresa? No, of course not. They would welcome the refugees and give them free universal healthcare.

When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky....They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same....Look at them leaving in droves, despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong

As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in - which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here.

However they arrive, asylum seekers, immigrants, and refugees reach with outstretched hands toward safer, more promising shores. Welcoming these wayfarers rekindles our humanity and heals our broken parts. Only within the cords that bind us together do we find answers to age-old questions about despair and enmity, fear and alienation, justice and hope.

REFUGEES They have no need of our help So do not tell me These haggard faces could belong to you or me Should life have dealt a different hand We need to see them for who they really are Chancers and scroungers Layabouts and loungers With bombs up their sleeves Cut-throats and thieves They are not Welcome here We should make them Go back to where they came from They cannot Share our food Share our homes Share our countries Instead let us Build a wall to keep them out It is not okay to say These are people just like us A place should only belong to those who are born there Do not be so stupid to think that The world can be looked at another way (now read from bottom to top)

Your dignity will never know cages and days without showering. Will never know the shame of running from a place because you weren't born disposable. If you feel threatened about living in a country full of sleek, dark, and beautiful creatures arriving on boats smiling and glowing though nobody has welcomed them, stop watching the news. Stay safe, with truths that bloom from kindness.

Here is what needs to be understood in our bones: the spell of neoliberalism has been broken, crushed under the weight of lived experience and a mountain of evidence. What for decades was unsayable is now being said out loud by candidates who win millions of votes: free college tuition, double the minimum wage, 100 percent renewable energy as quickly as technology allows, demilitarize the police, prisons are no place for young people, refugees are welcome here, war makes us all less safe. The left-wing almost-wins of the past two years are not defeats. They are the first tremors of a profound idealogical realignment from which a progressive majority could well emerge

That concentration camps were ultimately provided for the same groups in all countries, even though there were considerable differences in the treatment of their inmates, was all the more characteristic as the selection of the groups was left exclusively to the initiative of the totalitarian regimes: if the Nazis put a person in a concentration camp and if he made a successful escape, say, to Holland, the Dutch would put him in an internment camp. Thus, long before the outbreak of the war the police in a number of Western countries, under the pretext of "national security," had on their own initiative established close connections with the Gestapo and the GPU [Russian State security agency], so that one might say there existed an independent foreign policy of the police. This police-directed foreign policy functioned quite independently of the official governments; the relations between the Gestapo and the French police were never more cordial than at the time of Leon Blum's popular-front government, which was guided by a decidedly anti-German policy. Contrary to the governments, the various police organizations were never overburdened with "prejudices" against any totalitarian regime; the information and denunciations received from GPU agents were just as welcome to them as those from Fascist or Gestapo agents. They knew about the eminent role of the police apparatus in all totalitarian regimes, they knew about its elevated social status and political importance, and they never bothered to conceal their sympathies. That the Nazis eventually met with so disgracefully little resistance from the police in the countries they occupied, and that they were able to organize terror as much as they did with the assistance of these local police forces, was due at least in part to the powerful position which the police had achieved over the years in their unrestricted and arbitrary domination of stateless and refugees.

We have to pull out all the stops in welcoming the refugee and the immigrant, in getting to know those who live around us, in showing love to our neighbors. We can't afford to isolate people anymore. We can't afford to push folks to the fringes of our society.

They ask questions about the wall the current U.S. president wants to build, and is it true that Muslims are barred from entering the country, and what about the caravan of refugees fleeing gang violence at the border? We discuss all the ways the Land of the Free, under the present administration, currently “welcomes” its newcomers.

Thus, long before the outbreak of the war the police in a number of Western countries, under the pretext of “national security,” had on their own initiative established close connections with the Gestapo and the GPU, so that one might say there existed an independent foreign policy of the police. This police-directed foreign policy functioned quite independently of the official governments; the relations between the Gestapo and the French police were never more cordial than at the time of Leon Blum’s popular-front government, which was guided by a decidedly anti-German policy. Contrary to the governments, the various police organizations were never overburdened with “prejudices” against any totalitarian regime; the information and denunciations received from GPU agents were just as welcome to them as those from Fascist or Gestapo agents. They knew about the eminent role of the police apparatus in all totalitarian regimes, they knew about its elevated social status and political importance, and they never bothered to conceal their sympathies. That the Nazis eventually met with so disgracefully little resistance from the police in the countries they occupied, and that they were able to organize terror as much as they did with the assistance of these local police forces, was due at least in part to the powerful position which the police had achieved over the years in their unrestricted and arbitrary domination of stateless and refugees.

They look so tired, so hot!” everyone kept saying, but not one of them thought to open their doors, to invite one of these wretches inside, to welcome them into the shady bits of heaven that the refugees could glimpse behind the houses, where wooden benches nestled in arbours amid redcurrant bushes and roses. There were just too many of them. Too many weary, pale faces, dripping with sweat, too many wailing children, too many trembling lips asking, “Do you know where we could get a room? A bed?” … “Would you tell us where we could find a restaurant, please, Madame?” It prevented the townspeople from being charitable. There was nothing human left in this miserable mob; they were like a herd of frightened animals. Their crumpled clothes, crazed faces, hoarse voices, everything about them made them look peculiarly alike, so you couldn't tell them apart.

I stick to the road out of habit, but it’s a bad choice, because it’s full of the remains of those who tried to flee. Some were incinerated entirely. But others, probably overcome with smoke, escaped the worst of the flames and now lie reeking in various states of decomposition, carrion for scavengers, blanketed by flies. I killed you, I think as I pass a pile. And you. And you. Because I did. It was my arrow, aimed at the chink in the force field surrounding the arena, that brought on this firestorm of retribution. That sent the whole country of Panem into chaos. In my head I hear President Snow’s words, spoken the morning I was to begin the Victory Tour. “Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem.” It turns out he wasn’t exaggerating or simply trying to scare me. He was, perhaps, genuinely attempting to enlist my help. But I had already set something in motion that I had no ability to control. Burning. Still burning, I think numbly. The fires at the coal mines belch black smoke in the distance. There’s no one left to care, though. More than ninety percent of the district’s population is dead. The remaining eight hundred or so are refugees in District 13 — which, as far as I’m concerned, is the same thing as being homeless forever. I know I shouldn’t think that; I know I should be grateful for the way we have been welcomed. Sick, wounded, starving, and empty-handed. Still, I can never get around the fact that District 13 was instrumental in 12’s destruction. This doesn’t absolve me of blame — there’s plenty of blame to go around. But without them, I would not have been part of a larger plot to overthrow the Capitol or had the wherewithal to do it. The citizens of District 12 had no organized resistance movement of their own. No say in any of this. They only had the misfortune to have me. Some survivors think it’s good luck, though, to be free of District 12 at last. To have escaped the endless hunger and oppression, the perilous mines, the lash of our final Head Peacekeeper, Romulus Thread. To have a new home at all is seen as a wonder since, up until a short time ago, we hadn’t even known that District 13 still existed.

His action of joining them, which would have been rude in a restaurant that was not moving at three hundred kilometers an hour, was perfectly acceptable on a train, which mimicked the entirely random joinings of life but revealed their true nature by making them last only hours or days, rather than years and decades. People on a train form an alliance, as if the world that surrounded the parallel rails were hostile and and they refugees from it. The dining car, humming and rocking gently in the night, annihilated past and future and made all associations outside of itself seem vaguely unreal. So they welcomed him at their table, for he was one of them, a traveler, not one of those wraiths through whose night-lit cities they passed.

Contrary to the governments, the various police organizations were never overburdened with “prejudices” against any totalitarian regime; the information and denunciations received from GPU agents were just as welcome to them as those from Fascist or Gestapo agents. They knew about the eminent role of the police apparatus in all totalitarian regimes, they knew about its elevated social status and political importance, and they never bothered to conceal their sympathies. That the Nazis eventually met with so disgracefully little resistance from the police in the countries they occupied, and that they were able to organize terror as much as they did with the assistance of these local police forces, was due at least in part to the powerful position which the police had achieved over the years in their unrestricted and arbitrary domination of stateless and refugees.

The Prime Minister, who was in close contact with the Queen and Prince Charles, captured the feelings of loss and despair when he spoke to the nation earlier in the day from his Sedgefield constituency. Speaking without notes, his voice breaking with emotion, he described Diana as a ‘wonderful and warm human being.’ ‘She touched the lives of so many others in Britain and throughout the world with joy and with comfort. How difficult things were for her from time to time, I’m sure we can only guess at. But people everywhere, not just here in Britain, kept faith with Princess Diana. They liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the People’s Princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in all our hearts and memories for ever.’ While his was the first of many tributes which poured in from world figures, it perfectly captured the mood of the nation in a historic week which saw the British people, with sober intensity and angry dignity, place on trial the ancient regime, notably an elitist, exploitative and male-dominated mass media and an unresponsive monarchy. For a week Britain succumbed to flower power, the scent and sight of millions of bouquets a mute and telling testimony to the love people felt towards a woman who was scorned by the Establishment during her lifetime. So it was entirely appropriate when Buckingham Palace announced that her funeral would be ‘a unique service for a unique person’. The posies, the poems, the candles and the cards that were placed at Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and elsewhere spoke volumes about the mood of the nation and the state of modern Britain. ‘The royal family never respected you, but the people did,’ said one message, as thousands of people, most of whom had never met her, made their way in quiet homage to Kensington Palace to express their grief, their sorrow, their guilt and their regret. Total strangers hugged and comforted each other, others waited patiently to lay their tributes, some prayed silently. When darkness fell, the gardens were bathed in an ethereal glow from the thousands of candles, becoming a place of dignified pilgrimage that Chaucer would have recognized. All were welcome and all came, a rainbow of coalition of young and old of every colour and nationality, East Enders and West Enders, refugees, the disabled, the lonely, the curious, and inevitably, droves of tourists. She was the one person in the land who could connect with those Britons who had been pushed to the edges of society as well as with those who governed it.

Derrida says adieu to Ishmael and to democracy. He hears the salvation in the “Latinity” of ‘salut’. Perhaps we should learn enough Arabic for simple greetings, enough to say Ahlan wa sahlan and Marhaba. Marhaba, which is used as English speakers use ‘Hello,’ carries within it the idea that the one greeted is welcome, that there is plenty of room. Arabic words, like words in Hebrew, are formed from roots. Each root leads to a tree of words. The root of the word r-h-b gives us rahb, which means spacious or roomy but also ‘unconfined’ and ‘open-minded, broad-minded, frank, liberal.’ It is also the root of rahaba, the word for the public square. Marhaba is a good greeting for liberals, who at their open-minded, broad-minded best, can find that there is plenty of room in the public square. The Egyptian poet Farouk Mustafa translated Ahlan wa Sahlan as “you are among your people, and your keep is easy.” Like Marhaba, the greeting marks a welcome, a curious one. Ahlan wa sahlan is not saud simply to one’s own, to family and friends and fellow citizens. It is said to foreigners, to travelers, to people who are not, in the ordinary sense, one’s own. Like the American “Come in, make yourself at home”, it is said to people who are not at home, who might be turned away. The greeting recognizes a difference only to set it aside. Ahlan wa sahlan recognizes that there are different nations, and that they might find themselves in a foreign country, among an alien people. This greeting marks the possibility that the other, the alien, the wanderer, and the refugee might be met with welcome rather than with fear.

What’s at Oranienplatz?’ Now they moved together from single to communal stories. As they continued moving towards Oranienplatz, Gino explained that it was an occupied space. Refugees from Africa seeking asylum, seeking a warm, safe haven, had built there a shantytown of tents and shelters. There were ramshackle huts, stretched canvas beneath bare trees, there were signs that read: ‘Kein Mensch ist illegal’; ‘Refugees are welcome here; Deportation is murder’. It was a community, said Gino, an ephemeral community.

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love.

There is no magic number of immigrants, just as there is no perfect mix of high-skilled, low-skilled, relatives, and refugees. What is essential is that America welcome those who are here and remain receptive to the gifts others can bring, whether they come with distinguished degrees or calloused hands.

Justinian and Theodora’s time in power was also marked by the number of refugees they welcomed in to Constantinople. Struggling, homeless, stateless travellers came from East and West fleeing from the Persian and ‘barbarian’ troubles. Many arrived displaced from the Danubian and Gothic provinces by Huns and Goths; victims of Vandal atrocities had had their tongues cut out. The imperial pair built a hospice for refugees. The city was starting to build her reputation, which she still holds today, as a place of refuge.

It would be logical for any group whose only sense of identity is the negative one of wickedness and oppression to dilute its wickedness by mixing with more virtuous groups. This is, upon reflection, exactly what celebrating diversity implies. James Carignan, a city councilor in Lewiston, Maine, encouraged the city to welcome refugees from the West African country of Togo, writing, “We are too homogeneous at present. We desperately need diversity.” He said the Togolese—of whom it was not known whether they were literate, spoke English, or were employable—“will bring us the diversity that is essential to our quest for excellence.” Likewise in Maine, long-serving state’s attorney James Tierney wrote of racial diversity in the state: “This is not a burden. This is essential.” An overly white population is a handicap. Gwynne Dyer, a London-based Canadian journalist, also believes whites must be leavened with non-whites in a process he calls “ethnic diversification.” He noted, however, that when Canada and Australia opened their borders to non-white immigration, they had to “do good by stealth” and not explain openly that the process would reduce whites to a minority: “Let the magic do its work, but don’t talk about it in front of the children. They’ll just get cross and spoil it all.” Mr. Dyer looked forward to the day when politicians could be more open about their intentions of thinning out whites. President Bill Clinton was open about it. In his 2000 State of the Union speech, he welcomed predictions that whites would become a minority by mid-century, saying, “this diversity can be our greatest strength.” In 2009, before a gathering of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he again brought up forecasts that whites will become a minority, adding that “this is a very positive thing.” [...] Harvard University professor Robert Putnam says immigrants should not assimilate. “What we shouldn’t do is to say that they should be more like us,” he says. “We should construct a new us.” When Marty Markowitz became the new Brooklyn borough president in 2002, he took down the portrait of George Washington that had hung in the president’s office for many years. He said he would hang a picture of a black or a woman because Washington was an “old white man.” [...] In 2000, John Sharp, a former Texas comptroller and senator told the state Democratic Hispanic Caucus that whites must step aside and let Hispanics govern, “and if that means that some of us gringos are going to have to give up some life-long dreams, then we’ve got to do that.” When Robert Dornan of California was still in Congress, he welcomed the changing demographics of his Orange County district. “I want to see America stay a nation of immigrants,” he said. “And if we lose our Northern European stock—your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair—tough!” Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, appears happy to become a minority. He wrote this about Sonya Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings: “[T]his particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better [judicial] conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past.” It is impossible to imagine people of any other race speaking of themselves this way.

More than any other religious demographic, white evangelicals see immigrants in a negative light. Two years into Trump’s presidency, more than two-thirds of white evangelicals did not think the United States had a responsibility to accept refugees. In 2019, nearly the same percentage supported Trump’s border wall. Given that the Bible is filled with commands to welcome the stranger and care for the foreigner, these attitudes might seem puzzling. Yet evangelicals who claim to uphold the authority of the Scriptures are quite clear that they do not necessarily look to the Bible to inform their views on immigration; a 2015 poll revealed that only 12 percent of evangelicals cited the Bible as their primary influence when it came to thinking about immigration. But this does not mean that religion does not matter. Evangelicals may self-identify as “Bible-believing Christians,” but evangelicalism itself entails a broader set of deeply held values communicated through symbol, ritual, and political allegiances.

Because of the wars and devastation of the last few decades, the only way an Iraqi could be treated with dignity, whether in Iraq or elsewhere, was to hold a foreign—meaning Western—passport. A 'good' or a 'fortunate' Iraqi is almost by definition one who holds a Western passport. An Iraqi passport is paralyzing. It’s ‘suspect’ at every airport, checkpoint, or point of entry. As an Iraqi, one is unwelcome almost everywhere. One is questioned almost to death before being allowed entry to any country, and one is always welcome to exit with no questions asked. Every authority and official think they have the right to interrogate an Iraqi without a second thought. Iraqis know well that holding that useless document called an ‘Iraqi passport’ is a curse at this point in history…Most passport holders who come from nations whose people count as, using Frantz Fanon’s words, ‘the wretched of the earth’, experience different forms of discrimination and exclusion. Some experiences are harsher than others. It is all about power, or lack thereof. Your passport has power. It is not just a document that helps you pass; it can become a symbol of humiliation that prevents you from passing.

They come giving, not taking. They create community. They believe in justice. They seek peace. How much more simple can that get for our muddle-brained minions who create insane immigration policies? Refugees enrich, not deplete, they imagine and create places, not impose inglorious eyesores on our landscapes, they welcome not spurn, they feed not starve, they work not cheat, they earn not take. They come to repair our democracy, to lay the patient on the table and carefully apply the sutures, cut out the cancer of cynicism and sew up the wound, disinfect and pray over the wound, attend to the patient, feed it, lift its head and give it water and sing to it and keep it warm and safe, even as the patient screams and swings wildly at them with knives and guns, drags them away in maddened fits of rage, and locks them in dark dungeons or in cages and starves and beats them and even rapes them, they wait patiently, hoping for a time when the patient tires and returns to its sanity.

I know it's hard for American students to reach out to us refugees, and maybe you worry about being rejected or put on the spot. But here is one thing I want to say in this book: it's harder for us to reach out to you - we, with our clumsy English. I want to say, Don't be afraid of us - you have to understand: We're afraid of you. We want to make friends, but you have to take the first step.

What a privilege! I don’t feel like we are in a crisis. God is giving us the chance to welcome people and it is blessing our church with a new spirit!

He was rather statedly conservative in his religious beliefs-entirely comfortable with established dogma and no friend of theological or philosophical innovation-but he showed marked tolerance in dealing with those whose views were not as orthodox as his own, on one occasion making the lame joke that “the Lord requires not the death of the sinner, but rather that he pay and live.” Late in his career, when the Jews were being expelled from Spain, Rodrigo would annoy Ferdinand and Isabella by making the refugees welcome in Rome.

Single-issue voting on abortion makes white evangelicals complicit on a whole range of policies that would be anathema to nineteenth-century evangelical reformers, not to mention the Bible itself. How is a ruthless exclusionary policy toward immigrants and refugees in any way consistent with scriptural mandates to welcome the stranger and treat the foreigner as one of your own? How does environmental destruction and indifference to climate change honor God’s creation? One of evangelicals’ signature issues in the nineteenth century was support for “common schools” because they provided a boost for the children of those less fortunate; Trump’s secretary of education (who professes to be an evangelical) spent her adult life seeking systematically to undermine, if not destroy, public education.

Find a quiet, comfortable place where you can be alone and undistracted for at least fifteen minutes. Now consider these questions. 1.  When did your ancestors settle in America?24 Did they come here voluntarily, or were they refugees, servants, or enslaved people? Were they fleeing brutality, oppression, plague, war, or poverty? Did they come here in search of a better life? How old were they? How healthy were they? Was there a community or a group of relatives here to welcome and assist them? Did your ancestors speak English when they got here? What other language or languages did they speak? What possessions and skills did they bring with them? To the best of your

Just outside the walls of the City, trouble was brewing. They came in boats from a land far across the sea. Many boats crammed with many hopefuls washed up on the shores in the shadow of the great cliffs. Like driftwood. These flotsam people were dazed, broken – perhaps at an extreme – optimistic. Surely there would be salvation within the thick city walls? They appeared in a whisper – like the hissing of the surf. No citizen came to welcome them. No delegates. No photo-ops for ambitious politicians. Instead, only the City’s military – soldiers and officers with faces as hard and blank as the cliff the City teetered upon – were waiting. They were herded in silence. Those without papers were left on the stony beach. There would be tents, bunks, and prefab houses in time. The lucky ones were escorted up the great lifts and transported along the subway system – out of sight. A Downtown station would process them. See this crowd of Driftwood people, Eva. See them huddle together in the dark, the glint of hope in their eyes. The color of their skin, how the women covered their hair, and how the men wore their beards – these were the superficial differences that would mark them so starkly here. The label of ‘other’ already hung around their necks without them even knowing.

In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together. I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I have seen. On America's day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor's hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know. This is not mere nostalgia; it is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been -- and what we can be again.

There never was a real thanksgiving where the pilgrims welcomed the native americans to join them for a meal. And no amount of fairytale can change history. But what we can do is, start a tradition of real thanksgiving, by welcoming the persecuted and the discriminated into our hearts and accepting them as our family.

As Israel marks the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, Canadian Zionists have much to celebrate. Throughout the nation-building process Canadian Jews and non-Jews have been instrumental in helping to fulfill Zionism's six main achievements: • re-establishing Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland; • offering a welcoming home to Holocaust survivors, refugees from Arab lands, and other oppressed Jews; • returning the Jews to history, transforming Jews' image rom the world's victims to actors on history's stage, with rights and responsibilities; • building a Western-style capitalist democracy with a strong Jewish flavour and a dynamic Jewish culture; • reviving and modernizing Hebrew; • making Israel a central force in revitalizing Jewish secular and religious life in the Jewish homeland and abroad.

Always, before, whenever one culture went into decline, there were others ready to take up the slack. If Rome toppled, there was light shining in Constantinople, then the Baghdad Caliphate and in China. If Philippine Spain turned repressive, Holland welcomed both refugees and science. When most of Europe went mad, in the mid–twentieth century, the brightest minds moved to America. When America grew self-indulgent and riven by new civil war, that migration sloshed and shifted East.

Many of my friends around the world express surprise at the Palestinian attachment to place of origin and concerns for family ties. Some even scoff at it and contrast it with their own open-armed acceptance of adventure, discovery, a nomadic lifestyle and residence in places that they choose and change according to their fancy, without the slightest regret at leaving family or even homeland behind. They remind me that the world is wider and more beautiful than 'our villages' and 'our families'. I understand this beautiful sense of the vastness of the world. Like them, I love movement, journeys, and living in new places. What these friends forget is that it is they who choose to distance themselves. They are the ones who take the decision and make the plans and then present their passports (recognized everywhere) and get on planes and trains and cars and motorcycles and go to places where three conditions that the Palestinian cannot meet are fulfilled: first, that it is their preference and choice to go to specifically these places; second, that these places always welcome them; and third and most important, that it is in their power to return to their home country whenever they desire and decide. The Palestinian forced to become a refugee, to migrate, and to go into exile from his homeland in the sixty years since the Nakba of 1948, or the forty since the June 1967 War, suffers miseries trying to obtain a document by which he will be recognized at borders. He suffers miseries trying to obtain a passport from another state because he is stateless and has to go through Kafkaesque interrogations before being granted entry visa to any place in the world, even the Arab states. The Palestinian is forbidden to enter his own country by land, sea, or air, even in a coffin. It is not a matter of romantic attachment to a place but of eternal exclusion from it. The Palestinian stripped of an original identity is a palm tree broken in the middle. My foreign friends have control over the details of their lives but a single Israeli solder can control the details of the life of any Palestinian. This is the difference. This is the story.

A tray of dirty tea things sat forgotten about on the floor. There were more chairs than normal, all evidence of yesterday’s meeting. One teacup, I noticed, had lipstick on its rim, the same glossy red colour that Miss Carter wore. Ephraim had mentioned ‘the others’: it didn’t take much guessing to work out who they were. When it came to welcoming strangers to Budmouth Point, Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson had experience. First evacuees, now refugees. That was it, wasn’t it? There were people in Europe, fleeing for their lives, who were escaping here, to Budmouth Point. These were the visitors Ephraim was expecting. The realisation made me dizzy. It connected to Sukie didn’t it, because she’d cried trying to tell me how ‘heartbreaking’ it was not being able to help – yet in writing to Ephraim, maybe she’d found a way to. Perhaps their letters were actually full of plans of how they might get people away from the Nazis. It would certainly explain why Sukie wrote so much and so often. Bit by bit I could feel it coming together in my head. That map with the foreign place names I’d found in her drawer at home – was this where the boat was coming from? ‘Are you all right?’ Queenie asked suddenly. Looking concerned, she offered me a chair. ‘I’m fine.’ I stayed standing. ‘No you’re not.’ Queenie pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a headache. ‘You’re a smart girl, Olive. I’d a feeling you’d guess what was going on. I didn’t think Ephraim could keep it from you for long.’ ‘He told me about writing to Sukie, that’s all.’ I said, though it wasn’t strictly true. But I was unsure how much to say. ‘You’re learning that some things need to be secret.’ Queenie gave me a wry smile. ‘I trust you can keep this one?’ I hesitated. She hadn’t actually told me what the secret was, but I’d already petty much guessed. You’re expecting some people, from place that’s occupied by the Germans?’ ‘Yes… from France.’ She sat back in her chair, raking her fingers through her hair. ‘We’re bringing them here for a few days, giving them false papers, then helping them on their way again.’ ‘Where will they go?’ ‘To countries that aren’t as strict as ours about Jewish refugees: America, Canada, Australia maybe.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Is what you’re doing against the law?’ ‘Probably. If we keep a low profile, we might just get away with it.’ She sighed heavily. ‘They’ve got to get here first, though. It’s such a risky mission. They were smuggled out of Austria all the way to the French coast, and quite frankly they’ve been lucky to make it that far. We were expecting the boat ten days ago…’ I nodded, my mind whizzing. Day 9. The only part of Sukie’s notes I understood. ‘Do you know why Ephraim and my sister wrote to each other?’ I asked suddenly. ‘What? Oh, Gloria mentioned Sukie was looking for a penpal – it was a new “thing” apparently.’ She rolled her eyes rather dismissively. ‘Ephraim was so lonely, we both thought it might cheer him up. It certainly worked – he’s quite taken with your Sukie.’ ‘There’s more to it than that,’ I ventured. ‘My sister’s involved in this mission, isn’t she?’ Queenie frowned. ‘Your sister? Why would she be?’ ‘You don’t know what she’s like,’ I replied, for it was very clear now that Queenie’d never written to Sukie, nor probably ever met her. If she had she’d realise how much my sister hated the Nazis, how upset the news coming out of Europe made her, how headstrong and brave she was. Doing something to try and help people threatened by Hitler was exactly the sort of thing my sister would want to be part of. I couldn’t understand why Queenie was so certain she wasn’t.

The concept shares elements with the Seasteading movement, a libertarian group of mega-rich preppers intent on building independent floating cities on the high seas. The Seasteading Institute was founded in San Francisco in 2008 by anarcho-capitalist (and Google software engineer) Patri Friedman, with funding from PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel, to ‘establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems’. Some of the ideas they plan to use include harvesting calcium carbonate from seawater to create 3D-printed ‘artificial coral’ cities of upside-down skyscrapers – ‘seascrapers’ – powered by oceanic geothermal energy. Some of this energy will be used to draw nutrients from deeper waters to the surface to grow seaweeds in farms worked on by ‘the poorest billion people on earth’, welcomed because ‘floating societies will require refugees to survive economically’. These floating utopias will ‘liberate humanity from politicians’ while solving the planet’s big problems, it is claimed. For the more sceptical among us, this smells dystopian, rather.

No one wants to admit that the temporary camp of Dadaab has become permanent: not the Kenyan government who must host it, not the UN who must pay for it, and not the refugees who must live there. This paradox makes the ground unsteady. Caught between the ongoing war in Somalia and a world unwilling to welcome them, the refugees can only survive in the camp by imagining a life elsewhere. It is unsettling: neither the past, nor the present, nor the future is a safe place for a mind to linger for long. To live in this city of thorns is to be trapped mentally, as well as physically, your thoughts constantly flickering between impossible dreams and a nightmarish reality. In short, to come here you must be completely desperate.

My brother went to Harvard seven years after arriving in the States with no English. I won the Pulitzer Prize. We could be put on a poster touting how refugees make America great. And we do. But it shouldn’t take this kind of success to be welcomed. Even if refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal immigrants are not all potential billionaires, that is no reason to exclude them.

Trumpers say the left is full of hate Because the left loves people of all colors and races Accepts refugees, the poor, the sick Welcomes people of all sexual orientations and religions But doesn't have a good feeling about those who reject them That makes us the haters

And Merkel is certainly courageous, promising to welcome any Syrian, regardless of whether they’ve already been fingerprinted in Greece, Hungary or any other EU country.

my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees

It is my grandchildren who are going to visit your continent and travel on your high-speed trains and visit that exotic ice hotel I’ve heard you have up in northern Sweden. It is going to take a long time, we know that. It is going to take lots of wise decisions and large investments. But my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees.