Israel and Egypt murder black refugees together

An Egyptian security official says border police fatally shot an African migrant trying to cross into Israel on Tuesday. The official says police first fired a warning shot into the air as the man tried to get across the barbed wire border fence at dawn. When the migrant failed to stop, he was shot dead. The dead man did not have identification papers but was believed to be African. He was shot in the head, the sources said. The sources said a second man, a 20-year-old Eritrean, was shot in the back and was in a critical condition in a hospital in el-Arish in the north of Sinai peninsula.

An Egyptian security official says border police fatally shot an African migrant trying to cross into Israel on Tuesday. A routine Egyptian border patrol spotted the two men at dawn near the border with Israel and ordered them to stop, opening fire when they did not heed the warning, the sources added. Six African women were also arrested before they were able to reach the border fence.

Dozens of Africans have been killed by Egyptian guards in the past two years trying to get to Israel in search of jobs, drawing criticism from rights groups. However, the number of migrants killed at the border has dipped since last year, when at least 28 were killed. The latest incident is the second such case this year.

The killings on the border have been a concern in the past to the United States, which has expressed worries about rights issues in Egypt. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Egypt to deliver a speech to the Muslim world on Thursday. (Haaretz, June 2, 2009)

Let's recap.

• Egyptian police have rules of opening fire that includes shooting to kill at unarmed civilians trying to cross into Israel.
• In the last year and a half, 34 people lost their life this way.
• Israel has no complaints against these rules and the loss of life that results, despite the fact that the Egyptian police is effectively acting in these shootings as subcontractor for Israel.
• From unfathomable reasons, the dead people can be easily indentified as "African." Perhaps their skin color betrayed them but we wouldn't want to mention it.
• This open season on black African migrants and refugees, "causes concern." Not condemnation, not outrage, just "concern" in Washington. E.U. officials must be deeply envious.