Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that he wants to kick up to 60,000 African migrants out of Israel by April 1 of this year.

Israel is about the size of New Jersey and only 1/10 the size of the United Kingdom. The country is only 8,630 square miles in total area — 270 miles long and 85 miles wide at the longest and widest points.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his recent visit to the United States confided to President Trump that African migrants will be given up to $3,500 if they left voluntarily — if they did not they would face arrest and forced deportation to countries they had abandoned in many instances because of inhumane treatment.

Most of the migrants appear to go to Israel from the Sudan and Eritrea, traveling through Egypt and ultimately finding their way into Israel.

The president gave his support to Netanyahu related to purging the country of the African migrants. President Trump was probably reciprocating the support that Netanyahu tweeted him regarding his building a wall between Mexico and United States to prevent illegal entry into the country.

Netanyahu’s actions have created a firestorm around the world with some countries condemning his actions. Mass demonstrations have taken place in Israel by Africans seeking to remain in the country — some of whom trace their roots back to Judaism.

This debate goes back centuries to Moses’ marriage to a Kushite (Ethiopian), in Numbers 12.

In the early 1970s, in fact, thousands of Liberians from West Africa, who called themselves Jews, migrated to the country.

Netanyahu is not impressed and has stated emphatically “the infiltrators (Africans) have a clear choice  —  cooperate with us and leave voluntarily, respectably, humanely and legally, or we will have to use other tools at our disposal, which are also according to law.”

A growing number of pilots, however, have indicated that they will refuse to be a part of this “barbarity,” returning migrants and refugees to countries where many are sure to face certain death.

Are Netanyahu’s actions against God?

Some in Israel and around the world believe that the country’s behavior toward the Africans is unconscionable.

This is because for centuries, Jews were immigrants themselves.

Netanyahu, they feel is not empathetic to people who find themselves in the historical position of the Jews in Israel and are behaving like those they fled from.

God in his infinite wisdom must’ve known this day would come and prophetically reminds the Jews in Leviticus 19:33–34 and 24:22  that “When the alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Glenn Dowell is an author, columnist who lives in Jonesboro