By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz.com
“The absorption was hard and painful,” said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and mistakes were made. The Ethiopian Jews wanted to be a drop returning to the sea and were accepted with open arms, but there was also estrangement and isolation, and there were also clear manifestations of racism.”
Olmert was talking on Wednesday night at a three-hour long gala event honoring the Ethiopian community in Israel and marking a hundred years since the birth of Yona Bogale, the legendary Ethiopian Zionist leader. It was an utterance that should have deserved more attention, for what he said but also for what he didn’t.
Olmert wasn’t clear about where this racism came from and what form it took. Was it casual racist slurs from Israelis in the street, religious schools who refused to accept Ethiopian children, was it bad treatment by the low-ranking officialdom who made little effort to help in their absorption, or discrimination on a much higher level within government ministries depriving an underprivileged group of much-needed resources. Or perhaps the racism was actually within the Ethiopian community itself, which is fragmented in many places along lines of family prestige and geographic origin, Tigreans and Amharics not marrying with each other, while many within the community shun the Falashmura. All these, of course, occur, but are any of them “clear manifestations of racism?”
I have no idea to which of these racisms Olmert – or perhaps his speechwriters – were referring, but if the prime minister is going to come out with a very rare admission about racism in Israeli society, it would pay to be a little more specific.
In 1997, then-opposition leader Ehud Barak caused a major fuss within the old Labor Party establishment when he apologized, in the party’s name, to the Israelis who emigrated from Arab countries for the injustices inflicted on them during their absorption process in the 1950s and 1960s. Historians and sociologists can argue over whether the Mapai leaders had anything to apologize for, and Barak’s move had more than a whiff of political opportunism to it, but at least he was making a clear point about who had been wronged and the establishment that had been at fault.
So in the absence of any other hints in his speech, since Olmert is the head of government, I am going to assume that he was referring to the government’s policy at large toward the Ethiopians as having been tainted at one stage or another by racism.
Various charges of racism can be leveled at Israel with varying degrees of justification, which are mainly based on how you define racism to begin with. Is having a Jewish state in itself racist? From there on, the slope gets even slipperier so let’s get back to the Ethiopian issue. Over the last 35 years, Israeli governments have constantly changed their policies on the desirability of bringing over large numbers of Ethiopians claiming to be Jews. Is this a racist debate?
At times when the government was reluctant to do so – as it has been recently over the question of whether to end the absorption of the Falashmura group – their lobbyists, particularly Jewish activists from North America, have repeated the accusation that “it’s strange that the only Jews who Israel is not so eager to welcome just happen not to be white.” This is a spurious accusation.
Never was there an aliya in which Israel invested so much money, manpower and diplomatic capital than the Ethiopians. It’s true that at times, the government was reluctant to go to such efforts and had to be pressured in different ways to do so – but that wasn’t due to their skin color, but simply to the fact that due to their isolation and lack of full historical evidence, a significant proportion of historians, anthropologists and yes, even rabbis, are certain that they are not really descendants of the historical people of Israel.
And despite this the government was still motivated to do what it did. Israeli society as a whole has serious racism problems, mainly concerning Palestinians and foreign workers. There were also serious mistakes concerning the Ethiopian immigrants, some of them still ongoing, but they had nothing to do with racism, which toward Ethiopian Jews is only on the margins, if at all.
If Olmert wants to confront racism in Israel, he should quit pandering and address it where it really exists. There are enough “clear manifestations.”
3 thoughts on “Do Ethiopian immigrants in Israel suffer from racism?”
Open and hidden racism exists in the land of modern Israel, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has failed to correct it.
Racism whether it is casual or well planned is still racism; whether it is done on the street, at the school, in the synagogue, at work, and at any meeting place or play ground or stadium, it is still considered racism.
Starting from the home-keeper up to the Prime Minister, Mr. Ehud Olmert, there are two kinds of racism working in Israel, and these are open racism and hidden racism.
Open racism is a racism mostly practiced by the Israeli white Jewish innocent and rude children at the play ground and on the street against the poor Ethiopian black Jewish children, also open racism is well practiced, like the small white Jewish children, by the Jewish religious leaders, the rabbis who consider their Judaism is superior to the Ethiopian black Jews’ Judaism.
The Israeli white Jewish children can manifest racism mostly by spitting upon or by throwing stones at the Ethiopian black Jewish children, and also by calling loudly the Ethiopian black Jewish children “tikur” until they get tired of saying it and until the Ethiopian Jewish children get tired of hearing it and leave the play ground or the street and go home, feeling dejected and getting sick psychologically.
The Ethiopian black Jewish father and mother know what has happened to their children, but they have no power in a strange country, strange people, and hostile neighbors to report all the psychological injuries their children have suffered. If they want to, to whom do they report? The police are white; the judge is white; the Prime Minister is white, and the rabbi of the Synagogue is white. They just have to swallow it (hodie yichalew) and live with it, so open racism is widely practiced by all the Israeli white Jewish children and by the so called rabbis – the religious leaders and scholars.
Hidden racism exists in Israel at the highest echelons with such people as the Prime Minister himself, the army general, and the CEOs; these high officials never say a word openly about racism; they pretend they never discriminate any one based on color, gender, and religion. The fact is, however, if an Ethiopian black Jewish college graduate student asks for a job at the CEO’s department as a clerk or as a manager, he will never get the job; he will be told that they do not have an opening, or they simply say they have had one vacancy as a security guard, but unfortunately that vacancy is now filled. Sometimes, they may ask the Ethiopian black Jewish job-applicant to take a test so that they could tell him that he has failed the test because they have, in the first place, purposely arranged the test that no Ethiopian black Jewish student will pass it.
Finally, after many trials and failures, an Ethiopian black Jewish college graduate student joins the army unwillingly and serves his country (if indeed it is his country) faithfully and very well for a number of years, but never gets promoted to a brigadier general or to a chief of a staff. Finally he is sent to fight an enemy, and, like Uriah, the husband of Bethsheba, the Israeli white general, like the Biblical army general Joab, puts him on the front line of the battle and dies there, living his Ethiopian black Jewish father and mother behind.
Thus, the Israeli white CEO people, the army general, and the people at the Prime Minister’s office never say to the Ethiopian black Jewish college graduate job-applicant that he is an Ethiopian black Jews; no, they simply hold that word in their hearts of heart, and they know the consequences if they, like their children at the school openly say: “You are black; so we will not hire you.” In this case, their children are more open than their parents when it comes to calling the Ethiopian black Jews “tikur.”
Therefore, one may ask which kind of racism is better, open racism or hidden racism. To some people, hidden racism is the worst of all racism by far; however, both open and hidden racism are ugly and intolerable to the freedom-loving and proud Ethiopian black Jews.
One should not forget there is always some kind of disagreement in a family, but, for Mr. Pfeffer, to say that racism exists within the Ethiopian community shows that Mr. Pfeffer knows very little about the Ethiopian Christian, the Ethiopian Muslim, and the Ethiopian Jewish cultures; it seems he is confusing racism with a misunderstanding that sometimes exists between groups of people for various reasons; one reason can be language barrier, and another reason can be place of origin. Generally, some people want to give their daughter/son to a person who speaks the same language and who has come to Israel from the same village. One wants to give his daughter to an educated person rather than to a lay person, and this is considered natural, not racism as Mr. Pfeffer thinks it is.
According to Mr. Pfeffer, family prestige, geographic origin, and shunning a person are ‘clear manifestations of racism.’ In reality, fragmentation of places, family prestige, geographic origin, shunning a person, and refusing one’s daughter or son to marry someone from different group of people are not the clear manifestations of racism.
When the Ethiopian black Jewish children go to an Israeli white Jewish school, and all the administrators, the teachers, and the students of that school refuse to accept them because they are blacks, that is the clear manifestations of racism.
When an Ethiopian black Jewish child passes by and someone from the White community calls him “tikur,” that is the clear manifestation of racism.
For example, let us say that it is raining hard in Israel, and there an Ethiopian black Jewish woman with her three children, one on her back, runs to the bus stop to ride a bus home. When the white Israeli bus driver sees her she is black, he refuses to take her even if she agrees to pay him more money. He leaves her and her three young children in the rain, and he takes off. Once again, this is the clear manifestation of racism.
A quarrel or a difference between families or group of people who have the same origin of place – Ethiopia – and the same religion – Judaism – is not the clear manifestation of racism.
If the kind of racism the Ethiopian black Jews are experiencing every day in Israel does not look like real racism to Mr. Pfeffer, then Mr. Pfeffer has to travel to America and ask reverend Jesse Jackson, and he will gladly explain to him that racism is when a Blackman is not allowed to ride in the same bus with a white person, when a black person is not allowed to use the same water fountain with a white man, when a black man is not allowed to eat in the same restaurant where the white man is eating, and when the black person is not allowed to worship in the same Christian church with white people, and when a black person is considered a white man’s property, so racism in Israel is not different from the old racism in the old South in America.
Racism dehumanizes a person, breaks the human spirit , and makes the person hate his color, his origin of place, his culture, and his humanness, and that is the message the Israeli rabbis, the army generals, the CEOs, and the Prime Minister are sending to the Ethiopian black Jewish children to completely forget their native languages and their origins of place.
The Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s refusal to mention the names of those racist Israeli white Jews and make them responsible for the crimes they have committed against the real Ethiopian black Jews shows the Prime Minister is not serious about racism when he is addressing to the Ethiopian black Jewish community. The Prime Minister has refused to expose the crimes of those White Israeli Jews to freedom and justice loving countries. He is just using hidden racism, and that is why he does not want to be specific in his speech.
On the other hand, Mr. Pfeffer is trying to confuse the Ethiopian black Jews when he asks someone to give him the real definition of racism, and to that effect he says: “Is having a Jewish state in itself racist?” His question is illogical because no one has ever asked that the Jewish state exists because the Jewish people are racists, and according to his false logic, South Africa exists, because the South African people are racists.
Mr. Pfeffer is also exhibiting his true white Israeli Jewish character when he racially says: “…but that wasn’t due to their skin color, but simply to the fact that due to their isolation and lack of full historical evidence, a significant proportion of historians, anthropologists and yes, even rabbis, are certain that they [the Ethiopian black Jews] are not really descendants of the historical people of Israel.”
First of all, who are these historians, anthropologists, and rabbis who have witnessed that the Ethiopian black Jews are not the true historical people of Israel? Have they read the Ethiopian Kebre-Negest, and do they have any idea about the Queen of Sheba, who traveled many miles to visit Solomon and got a son from him? Do they know Menelik I went to Jerusalem to visit his father, Solomon, and when he came back, he was accompanied by thousands of Jews and brought with them the Ark of the Covenant? And today’s Ethiopian Jews are the descendants of those historical ancient Jews who have never been contaminated with paganism, racism, and usury. In fact that King Solomon loved an Ethiopian black Queen shows that there was no racism with these original Jews – the Ethiopian black Jews.
We have plenty of evidence that the Ethiopian black Jews are the true original Jews, but how do we know that the modern Israeli white Jews are really the true Jews? The Ethiopian Jews have kept Judaism in its originality: the circumspection, the reading of the Torah, the eating of clean animals, and so many other Judaism customs have been kept intact by this true Ethiopian black Jews.
What kind of evidence do the so called Jewish historians, anthropologists, and rabbis need to know more than they already have? How can one prove that the Israeli white Jews are the true Jews, and the Ethiopian black Jews are not real Jews unless such judgment is based on color, which means only Israeli white Jews are the real Jews because they are white, and the Ethiopian black Jews are not the true historical Jews because they are blacks. What about the Arab Jews, and what about Moses’ wife that beautiful Ethiopian black Jewish woman?
To be honest, we Ethiopians have serious integrity problem, in most cases we isolate ourself from other communities. I want make myself clear,that does not mean that there is no racism in Israel.
wodesh ketedefash biregetushim ayikefash. egna neta selewota temelesachihu temetalachihu eskeziya derse hagerachinen bedelanalech eyalachihu atewukesuat. jew against jew. shame on you