Russian-Ethiopian Divide
E

LARRY DERFNER

.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

Israel's two
most recent
Immigrant groups
have little in
common and
much that keeps
them apart.

thiopian immigrants
were throwing stones
at Russian immigrants
at the mobile home, or
"caravan," park on the out-
skirts of this central Israeli
town one afternoon in mid-
October.
An Ethiopian boy had
skidded his bike into a car
owned by a Russian man,
the Russian had taken the
bike and locked it in his
apartment, and by the time
the police arrived, hundreds
of black and white immi-
grants had squared off, curs-
ing and screaming at each
other.
Two weeks later, the man-
ager of the Jewish Agency-
run park, Tziki Aud, was
asked how the atmosphere
was now between the two
sides. After a long pause,
Mr. Aud, a harried-looking
man, replied: "There's a
tense quiet here, but it's
good compared to the other
places" — meaning the other
half-dozen or so giant
caravan parks where Rus-
sian and Ethiopian immi-
grants live side by side.
As Israelis have by now
come to learn, the country's
two great, contemporary
immigrant groups, Russians
(local shorthand for every-
one from the former Soviet
Union) and Ethiopians, don't
mix. In general, they don't
like each other. They fought
it out with fists and bottles
nearly a year ago at
Jerusalem's Diplomat Hotel,
when they were still living
there together, and since
then there have been fights
at another hotel and at least
three other caravan parks.
Asked if he could name one
positive example of Ethiopi-
an-Russian relations,
Rahamim Elazar, executive
director of the United
Organization of Ethiopian
Jewry, replied, "To my
regret, I can't."
Most of the time they don't
fight, they just don't have
anything to do with each
other. They carry their an-
tipathies inside.
The Israeli establishment
has tried to put a happy face
on the conflict. A public ser-
vice spot, which used to air
frequently on state-run tele-
vision, showed an Ethiopian
boy and a Russian girl
frolicking together at their
caravan park. Then
reporters went to interview
little Yossi and little Irina
and found that the two had
very unflattering things to
say about each other.

An Ethiopian immigrant kisses the ground at Ben Gurion Airport.

-

To a great many Russians,
the Ethiopians are ignorant,
dirty, primitive AIDS-
carriers. While Mr. Aud and
Mr. Elazar said the Ethiopi-
ans don't go in for stereotyp-
ing, it has been reported that
they commonly perceive the
Russians as alcoholics and
criminals who aren't even
Jews.
"What you're getting is
the meeting of two terribly,
terribly different groups of
people," said Deborah Lip-
son, spokeswoman of the
Zionist Forum, the umbrella
organization of former
Soviet immigrants.
"The Ethiopians are
perhaps the least assimi-
lated immigrant group that
Israel has ever known," she
continued. "Without mean-
ing to sound the slightest bit
racist, they come from a
place that was very far from
the 20th century, where they
led very traditional, re-
ligious lives. By contrast,
the Russians were cut off
from Judaism, they lost con-
tact with it. They are over-
whelmingly secular, very
highly educated, sophisti-
cated and intelligent."
The two immigrant groups
have no common language
— their Hebrew is halting,
grievously so among the E-
thiopians — and would have
little or nothing to talk
about even if they could con-
verse. "Add to that the fact
that most Russians may
never have seen a black per-

son in their lives," Ms. Lip-
son said.
"The Russians think any-
one black is dirty," Mr. Aud
said. The Ethiopians, for
their part, didn't know from
white people before they
came to Israel, Mr. Elazar
pointed out.
Background is not the only
barrier. Many Russians re-
sent the Ethiopians for get-
ting more aid than they get
from the government. The
Russians are seen by the au-
thorities as a more capable,

"What you're
getting is the
meeting of two
terribly, terribly
different groups of
people."

Deborah Lipson

educated bunch who can
fend for themselves, while
the Ethiopians are seen as
passive, unequipped for and
bewildered by Israeli socie-
ty, so everything must be
provided them.
"At a caravan park, the
Russians may complain that
the Ethiopians have a social
worker on the site but they
don't," Ms. Lipson said.
"The Russians may have to
take a bus for an hour to get

to the Absorption Ministry,
but it's provided right there
for the Ethiopians, and this
can cause problems."
Then there is the Rus-
sians' envy of the Ethiopi-
ans' popularity. "They felt
like the child who is ignored
when a new one comes into
the family," Ms. Lipson sug-
gested. The heroic cir-
cumstances of the Ethiopi-
ans' aliyah, their exotic ap-
pearance and their gentle
personalities endeared them
to many Israelis, even if
much of the good feeling has
been tainted by patronizing
actions.
By contrast, Ms. Lipson
added, "Israelis no longer
view the Russians as a dra-
matic example of the in-
gathering of exiles, but as a
threat and a creator of prob-
lems for the economy." The
Russians compete with
Israelis for jobs, for admis-
sion to universities, and for
rental apartments, while the
largely uneducated Ethiopi-
a ns , living mainly in
caravans, do not.
Despite all these hard at-
titudes toward each other,
and the confrontations that
have flared up, there are no
social programs to get the
Russians and Ethiopians to
try to iron out their differ-
ences.
"After the incident at the
Diplomat Hotel, one veteran
Russian immigrant came to
me and suggested we try to

