For Israel’s Sudanese refugees, grief is compounded by a ban on protest 

The massive surge of war crimes and death in Sudan has triggered international concern. 

But in Israel the Sudanese refugee community is facing not only grief and despair but also disappointment with Israel after Israeli police banned protests against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is supporting the Sudanese perpetrators. The ban was upheld by Israel's Supreme Court. 

“It’s a very difficult feeling. You are here, so far away and you can’t do anything or provide help,” Anwar Suliman, a leading Sudanese refugee activist who has been in Israel since 2008, told The Jewish Independent.  

Many in the community are trying desperately to find out the fates of family and friends who were in the city of El-Fasher when it was captured in a gruesome attack by the Rapid Support Forces militia in late October. The RSF is the UAE-backed group formerly known as the Janjaweed. 

Their continuing violence has been recognised as a genocide by Genocide Watch and the US State Department, with more than 150,000 people estimated killed in the past two years and an estimated 25 million affected by famine. In the most recent incident on Saturday, the RSF launched a drone strike on a kindergarten in south Kordofan, killing at least 50 people, including 33 children. 
 
 “The number of relatives and friends killed [in recent months] is unknown,” Suliman said, “Some are missing, some were taken hostage, some were taken south to [the RSF-controlled area of Niyala]. People are still making lists, trying to find out who is dead and who is alive.” 
 
Members of the community work the phones to find traces of their loved ones. “They call the north where there is reception and try to reach as many people who reached the north from El-Fasher,” Suliman says. “We ask people there to go check for the missing. There are so many in the community who don’t know what happened to their relatives.”