Malaysian here.
1975. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees landed on our shores. We housed them, waiting for transfer to a 3rd country e.g. USA, Australia, NZ. We were poor but we tried. By the time last refugee left in 2002 we had hosted 250,000 of them.
Also, Free Palestine.π²πΎ π΅πΈ
In June 1977, a boat carrying 66 Vietnamese refugees drifted for days in the South China Sea. They were rescued by an Israeli freighter, the Yuvali, but no country agreed to take them in.
Israel, then only 29 years old and still absorbing waves of Jewish immigrants, made a decision.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had lost his parents in the Holocaust, said:
βLet them come. We, the Jewish people, know what it is to be refugees.β
Israel granted them asylum and citizenship, and the Vietnamese families settled in Jaffa, Bat Yam, and other cities, working, raising children, and building new lives.
They were the first non-Jewish refugees Israel formally took in after the Holocaust, a quiet act of compassion by a nation still finding its place in the world.