On July 29, a severe accident occurred in a factory producing animal food in southern Israel. Two Nepali workers were cleaning a container. When the workers got into the bottom of the container, following the foreman's directions, the walls of the container, 8 meters high, had a lot of wheat stuck onto them. The workers were ordered to sweep the wheat from the walls to the drainage at the bottom. After few hours of work, the heap of wheat collapsed on the workers. One worker was buried under the wheat and was strangled to death. The second worker was injured. 

A report written by an inspector from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor about half a year later stated unequivocally that the management of the factory is responsible to the tragic event: "Since the establishment of the factory, all container cleaning tasks were performed in a dangerous way, ignoring the dangers and safety rules and regulations. There was no planning of the cleaning process within the containers in terms of safety, there was no awareness to dangers, and the factory had no one in charge of safety or anyone with the relevant knowledge in the safety field". It was also written that "the workers did not receive any safety instructions. This is clear from the fact that the victims don't speak Hebrew, and the employer does not speak Nepali and does not use a translator to give information on work hazards". A year passed since this severe report, but the prosecution takes its time in filing an indictment. 

Unfortunately, this work accident described above is only one out of many that occur in Israel on a daily basis. The National Insurance Institute of Israel published that 57,771 employees received compensation fees due to work accidents in 2005, and the number of "days of ineligibility to work" was approximately 2 million. This figure does not include many accidents of migrant workers, whose employers do not insure them at the National Insurance Institute (although it is against the law). 

The high rate of migrants among work accidents victims is salient from the data published by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor on work accidents with casualties. Thus out of 54 workers were killed on work accidents in 2005, 11 (about 20%) were migrants. This ratio of migrant to Israeli work accidents casualties is kept also in a perspective of a decade (1996-2005), in which 683 workers were killed in work accidents, 133 of which (19%) were migrants. In 2005 the ratio of migrants in the labor market was around 5%, namely there is a huge gap between the rate of migrant workers in the market and the rate of migrant workers killed on work accidents. 

The reason for this, among other things, is not providing proper means of protection to migrant workers, as well as a lack of safety training to those workers due to communication difficulties, but also due to disregard of the safety of migrants. About a month ago the welfare and labor committee of the Israeli parliament discussed regulations of working at heights (falling from heights accounts for about 40% of work accidents ending in death). Any attempt to raise the special safety problem of migrant workers during the discussions was rejected by the chairman, MK Sharoni. 

Israel has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers into Israel for over a decade, but keeps treating them as a "temporary phenomenon". This treatment causes authorities to disregard the difficult circumstances to these workers, starting from illegally charging thousands of dollars by job brokers, on to jailing and deporting workers who lost their legal status through no fault of their own, ending with ignoring employer abuse and violence. Can we go on and remain quiet even in front of the death of those hard working people in building sites, factories and agricultural fields?