Number of Iranians Seeking to Migrate to Israel Has Increased with Coronavirus Outbreak
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has reported a “significant increase in the number of immigration requests from Iranians following the outbreak of coronavirus” to the country. According to this report, Iranians who have requested assistance from Israel are not only Jews.
As the coronavirus spread in Iran, the number of Iranians seeking to migrate to Israel has increased.
The “Swiss Jews” website (Tachles) on Thursday, June 1st, May 21st, citing Israel’s Foreign Ministry, wrote that so far “thousands of Iranians have requested from Israel to become refugees or to migrate to Israel”.
According to this report, Iranians seeking to migrate to Israel are “not only Iranian Jews”, but migration and refugee requests have also come from Iranians who have requested assistance from Israel for medical reasons or due to unemployment and personal security concerns.
The Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” also reported on Wednesday, May 20th, that particularly with the outbreak of coronavirus, the number of Iranians seeking to migrate to Israel has increased “significantly”.
In this report, it is cited from the statement of Israel’s Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem that “the number of Iranians requesting assistance from within Iran or from around the world has increased extensively in recent months”.
Yiftach Curiel, head of the digital diplomacy section of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told “Jerusalem Post”: “Thousands of people want to come to Israel, whether for medical reasons or to migrate to the Jewish state.” He further explains that “many of the messages are serious asylum requests”.
Curiel also noted: “Some of the applicants are people who have been forced to flee and are currently refugees in other countries, or people who have expressed solidarity with Israel and are now forced to flee.”
According to this Israeli politician, Iranians who have requested assistance from this country are “not only Iranian Jews who, under the law of return, can apply for Israeli citizenship”, but also include many Iranians who “support Israel in Iran or abroad, are opposed to the regime (Iran), and seek a different future in relations between the two countries.”
Large Number of Iranian Users
Curiel refers to one of the received messages from a 31-year-old man who says he “was forced to flee Iran due to regime corruption”. He wrote: “I applied for asylum in Turkey, and I also made this request for my wife and four-year-old daughter. We are not in a good situation, no one helps us. We are alone and our lives are at risk.”
According to this Israeli diplomat, even before the coronavirus outbreak and COVID-19 disease, thousands of Iranians had requested assistance from Israel through social media accounts, but the number of requests has greatly increased following the coronavirus outbreak. He said: “I try to respond as much as I can… but truthfully we don’t have the ability to help them. I try to respond to them and wish them success.”
According to Curiel, the Persian-language accounts of Israel’s Foreign Ministry have the highest level of engagement compared to some of the ministry’s English-language channels among the most successful online accounts, with 200,000 followers on Twitter and 500,000 on Instagram.
Source: DW
