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Editorial

Ethiopian Israelis Deserve Equal Status

hey came in search of a better
life, which they mostly achieved.
But that doesn't mean those
Ethiopians who made aliyah over the past
30 years have found Israel all they hoped
for.
When the prime minister acknowledges
they've been victimized by inbred racism
and discrimination to one extent or anoth-
er, you know Israel faces a social crisis.
There's no excuse for police brutality
against any Ethiopian Israeli, let alone
against an Ethiopian Israeli soldier in uni-
form whose alleged crime didn't seem to fit
a severe beating.
That incident, caught on video in early
May, led to a violent clash in Rabin Square
in Tel Aviv on May 3. There, police resorted
to stun grenades and a water cannon in
response to protestors hurtling glass bottles
and stones and chants of "police state
Police and civilians were among the
injured in the blood-stained square.
Police brutality, however, doesn't give
flag-waving Israelis of Ethiopian descent
license to essentially call an Ethiopian
Israeli police officer an "Uncle Tom" —
which happened during a May 18 protest
rally in Tel Aviv.

Panel Of Hope

While it's good that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu belatedly appointed
a special ministerial committee to address
the acculturation of Ethiopian Israelis, who
feel marginalized and segregated because

fell way short in their assimilation.

Not lost in the message is that Israel
never developed a viable plan to deal with
the rush of Ethiopians making aliyah.

they're a disadvantaged black minority, it's
a shame it took so long to invoke such a
panel.
In 1984, Operation Moses airlifted
Ethiopian Jews from the famine-ravaged
Sudan. Since then, upwards of 130,000
Ethiopians have become Israeli although
clearly not always welcomed.
Ethiopian Israelis are the beneficiaries of
free college tuition and a lower mortgage
rate. But as JTA reported, they're overrep-
resented in military prisons and underrep-
resented at the nation's universities. Their
average family income is just over half the
larger Israeli average.
What's more, youth of Ethiopian heritage
make up 40 percent of the population at
Ofek Juvenile Prison, east of Netanya.

Youthful Support
Driving the continuing protest against
perceived "second-class citizen" status is
a generation of young Ethiopian Israelis
either born in Israel or who arrived as
small children — "a generation of fighters,
a generation of courageous people as one
protest leader put it.
Another protestor told JTA he "gave to the

state" through serving in the Israel Defense
Forces "because I'm part of the country"
yet he has felt the wrath of "some hidden
discrimination"
Embedded in this assessment is the
notion that parents of the protestors were
just glad to be gone from Ethiopian oppres-
sion and didn't know they could fight for
Israeli equal rights (to them still a foreign
concept) while undergoing absorption.
In naming the ministerial committee,
Netanyahu declared, "We will fight with
all our strength against these unacceptable
practices. We will simply uproot them from
our lives. We will turn them into something
looked down upon, something contempt-
ible"
That's a potent message against a dis-
heartening social rift on behalf of a wound-
ed community of Israelis; follow-through is
pivotal.
Not lost in the message is that Israel,
despite extending special treatment with
the best of intentions, never developed
a viable plan to deal with the rush of
Ethiopians making aliyah.
Israel did stand tall in rescuing
Ethiopians who were in desperate need, but

A Step Forward
By invoking the ministerial committee, the
state seems to have learned from that trou-
bling misstep. The Netanyahu-chaired panel
is charged with tackling concerns related
to Ethiopian Israeli opportunities in educa-
tion, housing, culture, religion, work and
other areas. Ethiopian Israelis live in largely
segregated, poor neighborhoods, giving
them little chance to mingle with others.
The burden falls to the new panel to
assure wholesale complaints about racism,
prejudice and excess force against Ethiopian
Israelis desist — and stay away.
As one of the world's great democracies,
Israel is a bastion of freedom and liberty in
a dangerous region. Let's hope the matter of
Ethiopian Israelis experiencing bias fades
quickly.
A young Jerusalem mother, who arrived
in the ancestral Jewish homeland from
Ethiopia as a child, imagines better things
for her kids — and captured the essence
of the protest movement. As she told the
Times of Israel following the May 3 rally,
"We don't want to be separate. We are Jews,
and we are Israelis"
Solving the crisis surrounding Israelis
of Ethiopian descent certainly is urgent
and not just for the sake of the victimized.
Smoothed relations would allow the Jewish
state to focus even more on the grave threat
posed, collectively and individually, by ISIS,
Iran, Al Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah. ❑

Guest Column

Will Jews Support Hillary At The Polls?

here has been an extraordi-
that he may build on that percent-
nary and noteworthy shift in
age when he faces his liberal oppo-
the political partisanship of
nent, Justin Trudeau, in the federal
the Jewish electorate in Canada,
election in October.
which makes it worth asking: Could
The reasons for this shift are
it happen here?
many, but all agree one of the major
The Jewish vote in
factors is Harper's uncom-
Canada has gone conser-
promising support of Israel
vative, giving more of its
and Prime Minister Benjamin
support to the incumbent,
Netanyahu. The Forward
Prime Minister Stephen
described Harper as one of
Harper, the leader of the
Netanyahu's "fiercest" sup-
Conservative Party. In 2011,
porters among world leaders.
his party received 52 per-
/ ► /
Harper defended Israel
'+4
cent of the Jewish vote
against human rights critics
Berl Fal baum
– that's not a typo – and
who condemned Israel during
conventional wisdom has it
last summer's war against

28

June 4 • 2015

Hamas in Gaza, and reports are
that he is prepared to recommend
legislation that would categorize
boycott, divesture and sanction
(BDS) efforts as a hate crime under
Canada's criminal code.
The political shift is particu-
larly noteworthy given that Justin
Trudeau's father, the late Pierre
Trudeau, was a liberal darling of the
Canadian voters, including Jews.
So might the U.S. Jewish elector-
ate move to the right in the 2016
election given that President Barack
Obama has been, arguably, the most
anti-Israel president since President
Jimmy Carter in 1976-80?

History does not support that a
shift is in the offing.
Let's take a look at some key
election results, given the penchant
of Jews to vote liberal, even when it
may not serve their self-interest.
Despite ample warning signs in
the 2008 campaign that Obama
might not be particularly support-
ive of Israel, he garnered between
78-80 percent of the Jewish vote,
the second-highest ethnic voting
bloc, the first being, understand-
ably, the black vote.
Four years later, in the face of
what some labeled antagonism
toward Israel and Jewish concerns,