Ethiopian Jews kiss the
ground upon arrival at Ben
Gurion Airport; they are
part of Operation Wings
of Dove, which ended the
Ethiopian immigration to
Israel, Aug. 28, 2013.
Mission Accomplished
Last group of Ethiopian Jews immigrate to Israel;
they now face absorption and integration.
Ben Sales
JTA
Lod, Israel
T
he airplane with "Ethiopia"
emblazoned in red on its side
landed on the tarmac.
A few government officials trickled
down the airplane's steps. They were
followed by groups of Ethiopian Jews
descending to the runway, some falling to
their knees and kissing the ground. Inside
the terminal building, shouts in Amharic
greeted the new arrivals as friends and
relatives, some separated from the immi-
grants for years, welcomed them to their
new home.
"We are finishing an exile of 2,500
years:' Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel
told the crowd. "But the work is not over.
Now we have to make sure these new
immigrants integrate into Israeli society,
learning from the mistakes that were made
in the past:'
Three decades of Ethiopian immigration
to Israel culminated with the arrival of two
planes at Ben Gurion Airport on Aug. 28,
the 450 immigrants on board representing
the last of more than 125,000 Ethiopians
who have come during that period.
Ethiopian immigrants have been cele-
brated in Israel since the first waves began
arriving in the early 1980s, and govern-
ment ministers and dignitaries gathered
in force to welcome the final arrivals. But
while the crowd was mostly Ethiopians,
all but one of the speakers at the wel-
coming ceremony was either Russian or
Ashkenazi.
The split illustrates the challenge
that Israel has faced in absorbing the
Ethiopians, who have faced a range of
integration obstacles. Ethiopians lag native
Jewish Israelis in a wide range of socio-
economic metrics that have remained
largely resistant to government efforts at
budging them. Earlier this year, the gov-
ernment parried allegations that it coerced
Ethiopian women into receiving a long-
term contraceptive injection.
"In terms of how we're integrated, we're
far from satisfied:' Shimon Solomon,
one of Israel's two Ethiopian members of
Knesset, told JTA. "In education, work and
society, we're at the bottom of the bottom.
We dreamed of coming to Israel. We didn't
dream of coming here and being at the
bottom of the ladder"
Lagging In Education
According to Israel's Central Bureau of
Statistics, only 43 percent of Ethiopian stu-
dents passed their high school matricula-
tion exams in 2011; only 22 percent scored
high enough to go to college. Among all
Jewish Israeli students, those numbers are
58 and 50 percent, respectively.
Ziva Mekonen-Degu, who directs the
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, says
that many Ethiopian parents are them-
selves uneducated and have little means.
"The parents can't give the help that
other parents can:' Mekonen-Degu said.
New Ethiopian immigrants to Israel
reunite with their relatives at Ben
Gurion Airport.
"Ethiopian parents aren't involved or influ-
ential enough"
The problems continue into the army.
Although Ethiopians have an above-
average enlistment rate, they're also more
likely to end up in military prison or to
drop out early.
Ethiopians comprise 2 percent of Israel's
population but made up only 1 percent of
Israeli college students in 2011. The aver-
age annual salary for an Ethiopian in 2009
was $23,000; the average Israeli earned
$34,000.
In addition, virtually all Jews born in
Ethiopia are ineligible for vocational train-
ing programs offered by the Economics
Ministry because nearly no one has a
formal education. Instead, the absorption
centers where Ethiopians live after immi-
gration often connect them with service
jobs such as cleaning or factory work.
Those jobs, in turn, make it harder for
Ethiopians to purchase homes. As of 2010,
Ethiopian homes were worth half that of
the average Israeli home.
"Many of them were illiterate in
Ethiopia:' said Jack Habib, director of
the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, a
government-funded think tank that stud-
ies Ethiopian Israelis. "You're not going
to take people like that and get them into
higher-level jobs. You can't elevate the
quality of jobs unless you equalize educa-
tional distribution"
The Israeli government, along with
several nonprofit organizations, provides a
range of services and benefits to Ethiopian
Israelis. The Absorption Ministry offers
free college tuition, tutoring, loans and
lower mortgage rates to Ethiopians.
Solomon is pushing to enforce a law
mandating that Ethiopians comprise 1.5
percent of all government employees. And
Mekonen-Degu is lobbying the govern-
ment to provide stipends for Ethiopians
who enter vocational training programs.
"If I give [students] tools to deal with
issues, they'll succeed:' said Roni Akale,
director-general of the Ethiopian National
Project, a program that provided tutoring
and youth activities for 4,500 Ethiopian
teens last year. "What I can do is make
them feel confident academically and
socially:'
Government projects for Ethiopians,
though, have a mixed record.
Homesh, a $230 million program for
Ethiopian advancement run by five gov-
ernment ministries, was declared a "fail-
ure" by an official report earlier this year.
According to the report, the program was
disorganized, lacked accountability and
failed to formulate a workable budget.
The answer to Ethiopian woes, says
Solomon, lies not in government subsidies
but in combating racism. According to
Myers-JDC-Brookdale, about one in three
Ethiopians has experienced discrimina-
tion.
"This has to come from the top; it has
to be a clear message Solomon said. "The
government needs to pass laws and place
heavy punishments so that racism won't
happen"
Even with the obstacles, a sense of
optimism prevailed at the welcoming cere-
mony last month. Some veteran Ethiopian
immigrants said that despite hardships
they face in Israel, there's no place they'd
rather be.
"I found what I was looking for here
said Ezra Eschale, who moved to Israel
three years ago. "We were like this once.
Everything will work out:'
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September 12 • 2013
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