They wrote in the petition that Israel is “our homeland, where we have lived all our lives and from which we have never left.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israel is facing a new legal challenge over its military recruitment rules as 42 young adults raised in the country by migrant worker parents ask the High Court of Justice to let them join the Israel Defense Forces, Ynet reports.

Their petition contends that nothing in Israeli law justifies excluding them from the draft, even though they completed their education in Israeli schools and reached adulthood alongside peers who entered compulsory service.

The case comes from a cohort that matured without any avenue to formal status. Government decisions in 2005 and 2010 granted residency to thousands of children who had already been in the school system for several years, but those moves were explicitly defined as one-time authorizations.

Children who began school after 2010 were not included and have since grown into adulthood without the ability to regularize their standing.

Concerns over deportation and enforcement intensified as these teenagers approached 18.

In late 2024, more than one hundred high school students appealed to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel to resolve their situation, writing that Israel is “our homeland, where we have lived all our lives and from which we have never left.”

The official reply stated that participation in Israeli society does not grant legal status and warned against turning exceptional decisions into broader immigration policy.

The current petition avoids the citizenship question entirely. Instead, it focuses on the IDF’s discretion, noting that the army can draft non-citizens and permanent residents and arguing that, without legislation explicitly exempting them, the state cannot waive compulsory service for an entire group.

The High Court has instructed the government to submit its response by February.

Military officials say they are prepared to examine their recruitment rules, citing both manpower needs and the applicants’ desire to serve, but emphasize that any policy shift would require political authorization.

The petitioners say their demand is straightforward: they want the chance to enlist “like every other Israeli.”

The post Children of migrant workers in Israel petition to join IDF appeared first on World Israel News.

Jimmy Pacheco was often given only half a pita a day and salty water, and didn’t think he’d survive his six-and-a-half week ordeal.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A recently released Philippine man who had been abducted by Hamas terrorists October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz told CBN Asia of needing to eat toilet paper to stay alive in captivity.

In the interview, Jimmy Pacheco, a caretaker who was freed in the first tranche of the hostages-for Palestinian prisoners’ exchange Friday night, said that he didn’t think he’d survive the whole ordeal.

He was often given only half a pita a day for food.

“I didn’t eat it all at once. Every time my stomach growled, I ate a little – but it wasn’t enough,” he said.

In desperation, he decided to “supplement” the tiny diet with toilet paper he was given when he was permitted to go to the bathroom.

“I didn’t use it – I put it in my pocket,” Pacheco said. “It looked like we were 40 meters underground, and that’s why the walls were damp. I attached the paper I had saved to the walls, until it got wet. Then I put it in my mouth and ate it – and that way my stomach wasn’t empty.”

Before-and-after pictures of the caretaker showed how noticeably thinner he was after his six and a half weeks of confinement.

He was also given salty water to drink, he said, and “I told myself there was no way I would survive because I have a history of kidney problems.”

For the first two weeks the 32-year-old married father of three said he was kept in “a prison cell,” where he “couldn’t do anything inside. I felt like I was going crazy. I kept wondering, ‘Why did they bring me here? I didn’t do anything wrong.’”

He was then taken to a tunnel where there were many hostages. They slept on mattresses on the floor, and were given a toothbrush, and one change of clothes – a shirt and shorts.

The first time he saw sunlight and felt fresh air was the day he was released, he said, but the terrorists only told him that he was being transferred to another tunnel, so he did not know until the last minute that he was going to be free.

“I started crying when we left the tunnel,” Pacheco related. “I got down on my knees and thanked God.”

The caretaker also described what happened on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded over 20 Gaza envelope communities, and dozens came to Nir Oz. He ran to the safe room with his 80-year-old employer, Amitai Ben Zvi, ignoring his shouts to “Go, run away, save yourself!”

The terrorists broke in and shot Ben Zvi to death in his bed.

That was perhaps Pacheco’s worst moment. He had been hiding behind the bed and “I saw how they murdered my employer – without him having the ability to defend himself,” he recounted. “They said I was a soldier, while they pointed weapons at my head. One of the terrorists fired an automatic weapon near my ear, until the bullets ran out.”

He held onto the thoughts of his wife and children to get him through it all, he said, adding that he felt “fine,” and even that “I’ve grown up, I’ve become stronger,” as a result of his horrific experience.

The Ben Zvi family was overjoyed by his return, with Amitai’s sons coming to the hospital where the released hostages were taken for medical checkups.

Ido and Gilad told Israeli media that “It was moving to the point of tears to hug Jimmy. He had a special relationship with dad, he took care of him for four years and trusted him. We felt that a family member had come home and not a caregiver or a foreign worker.”

Pacheco was the single Philippine citizen among 23 Thais whom Hamas released among the six groups of Israelis over the last six days, in a deal that was orchestrated separately through the Iranian government and did not involve Israel giving up Palestinian prisoners accused and convicted of security offenses.

A total of 77 Israeli hostages have been released so far, in exchange for over 200 jailed Palestinians. Four of them were freed before the agreement was finalized, as Hamas “humanitarian gestures.” One hostage, IDF soldier Ori Megidish, was rescued late last month by IDF forces from a home in which she was being held captive in the Gaza Strip.

The post Gaza hostage recalls eating toilet paper to survive appeared first on World Israel News.

“Not only do they hide them, but they present it as an act of heroism,” activist Sheffi Paz told Arutz 7.

By World Israel News Staff

Ahead of a demonstration in support of the rights of illegal migrants to be held in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, at least one south Tel Aviv resident says that she will also be right there as a counter-demonstrator.

Israel has been faced with a controversy surrounding individuals who sneak across Israel’s southern border from Sinai to enter a free, democratic country. It is disputed as to whether they are economic migrants or asylum seekers.

The Israeli government has made a number of attempts to stifle the flow but has been repeatedly challenged by the High Court of Justice.

Another issue in the headlines involves the question of foreign workers who receive work permits, have children once they are in Israel, and then their permits expire.

An administrative appeals judge last week upheld the deportation order issued against a Filipino woman, Geraldine Esta, and her two children, Kiyan, 10, and Katherine, 5.

Caregivers from the Philippines are a common sight in Israel. Many leave their families behind and see their higher salaries in Israel as a means of supporting their kids back home. Some, however,  give birth to children in Israel, putting the state in a bind.

According to activist Sheffi Paz, “There are about 36 mothers with 50 children, most of them from the Philippines, who were caught during the year as illegal residents of Israel. These are people who came to Israel with a permit but at some point left their workplaces and moved to more lucrative jobs and had children. They were supposed to leave the country and then began living under the radar,” she told the Arutz 7 news website.

She accuses a number of kibbutzim of providing migrant workers “illegally residing in Israel with refuge from the law,” claiming that some of these collective communities “have even boasted that they host illegal immigrant mothers and children during the summer months,” says the news outlet.

“Not only do they hide them, but they present it as an act of heroism,” says Paz, saying that one member of the kibbutz movement went as far as placing the efforts to hide these families “in the same category as the Righteous Among the Nations during the Holocaust and the Inquisition in Spain.”

“Manila is not Auschwitz and there is no genocide or civil war in the Philippines,” counters Paz in the Arutz 7 interview.

She made similar comments at a conference on July 28 of Im Tirtzu, a Zionist non-governmental organization.

“If the state recognizes Filipinos due to the massive public pressure and because they were born in Israel and speak only Hebrew, we’re finished. The first thing every migrant will do upon arrival is have a child,” she warns.

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