Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA — North Korea keeps shooting its long range missiles now and then. These missiles do not just reach all important targets; they can also deliver a nuclear message. Its leaders, or rather leader, has effectively made the world believe that he is unpredictable, that one day he could really strike American or South Korean targets.
Japan, Russia and China are all concerned, but not as badly as the other two countries. He has the gun; he seems to have the will to use it. The missing element is the excuse. (Of course, the other side of the argument is that he is already using them and reaping the benefits at least from the immediate south.) Now there are many of us who think that we are too far away or too detached to be concerned about this issue.
But suppose it was not North Korea, but Egypt. Suppose it tried a missile in its vast deserts. Suppose it stood its ground and kept trying them even at a great cost to its international relations. It would of course regain its old stature in the Arab world, Israel would not leave a stone unturned to destroy the country’s missile capabilities, and we in Ethiopia would at last live in constant fear of the consequences of a grave transboundary issue that followed the currents of the river Nile.
It all begins like a love affair. Abay (the Blue Nile) flees its home meets his lover, the White Nile in Khartoum, and the two disappear into the Egyptian Desert. For all the basin countries, except Sudan and Egypt, this trip is not a honeymoon, but an elopement. Everybody loved them, but they chose the desert.
These figures may clarify this point. A study indicated that Sudan has an irrigation potential of 4,434,000 hectares of which it has so far irrigated 3,266,000 hectares, which is 73.7% of the potential. Egypt is utilizing 53.5% of its irrigation potential by irrigating 1,946,000 hectares out of a total 3,637,000.
Ethiopia and Egypt have the same potential, but Ethiopia has achieved a mere 5.2% (190,000 hectares) compared to Egypt’s 53.5%. Tanzania has achieved only 23% (190,000 hectares) of its 828,000 hectares potential, and Uganda, slightly worse than Ethiopia, has achieved only 4.5% (9,000 hectares) of its 202,000 hectares potential.
The reality behind such numbers is that Ethiopia, for example, has never been able to feed itself, despite the fact that a very large majority of its people are kept in the shackles of poverty ever engaged in the losing struggle to grow enough food for themselves and for the market. Had it not been for the perennial drought which has always effectively wiped out years’ of growth and then put the country in recovery mode for more years, Ethiopia could have been a better country economically.
Traditionally Ethiopian agriculture has been low-input, low-output, always dependent on unreliable rainfall, and, even at the best of times, never fed the nation. According to the Famine Early Warning System Network report for June 2009, 7.5 million Ethiopians were indicated as chronically food insecure. “An additional 4.9 million people require emergency food assistance through June 2009. In addition, about 200,000 people have been displaced in the southern parts of the country due to clan conflict and are receiving humanitarian assistance. However, the official size of the food insecure population will most likely increase following poor performance of the belg/gu season this year,” it said.
Ethiopia’s agriculture had, in 1996, delivered a record harvest, following which the government proudly announced that it had finally achieved the long sought after food self-sufficiency. Three years of drought led to an emergency situation in 2000 and a sober assessment of the situation.
It was the following year the Nile Basin Initiative was launched, with its head office in Entebe, Uganda, and seven project offices in seven other places. Since then it has been negotiating. Its purpose was “equitable and reasonable use of the water system” by up and down stream countries “without causing significant harm to down stream countries.” With this initiative Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as other Nile basin countries will work to narrow the gap they have with Sudan and Egypt in exploiting the waters of the Blue and White Nile rivers for their maximum benefit. Ethiopia, for example, wants dams for electricity and irrigation. Such is the issue worldwide wherever there are transboundary rivers.
Asfaw Dingamo, Ethiopia’s water minister, returned recently from a Nile Basin Initiative meeting in Cairo apparently proud that Ethiopia’s interests had not been given away in the negotiations. In an interview with Addis Zemen, the state newspaper, he put the situation in a nutshell saying that Egypt had no rainwater at all, that Sudan was only slightly better than Egypt in that respect, and that the population of the Nile basin was growing very fast.
That was no recipe for war, he said, for studies had indicated that there was enough water for all in the basin. His argument in the negotiations is that extensive developments in the basin area in Ethiopia would avert flooding in Sudan and loss of water due to evaporation in Sudan and Egypt. The water flow would be regulated by the dams in Ethiopia for the best benefit of all three countries. Well, the two countries, who have always wanted to be the solitary users of the water, are negotiating for the next best thing, instead of taking Asfaw Dingamo’s words.
The doomsayers that predict war not just in north eastern Africa but wherever there are transboundary waters have a strong case in their favour.
In the 20th century, only seven minor skirmishes took place between nations over shared water resources, while over 300 treaties were signed during the same period of time to avert similar or worse incidents, according to statistics made available during the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, this month. Examine the following related data: · There are 263 transboundary river and lake basins and around 300 transboundary aquifers worldwide.
* Transboundary lake and river basins account for an estimated 60 per cent of global freshwater flow and is home to 40 % of the world’s population.
* Over 75 percent of all countries, 145 in total, have shared river basins within their boundaries. And 33 nations have over 95 percent of their territory within international river basins.
* 158 of the world’s 263 international river basins, plus transboundary aquifer systems, lack any type of cooperative management framework.
The following figures give a hint of the human factor involved in this situation.
* About 1.4 billion people, mostly impoverished, live in river basins where all the blue water is already committed or overcommitted.
* Water withdrawals are predicted to increase by 50 percent by 2025 in developing countries.
* In 2030, 47% of world population will be living in areas of high water stress.
* By 2075, the number of people in regions with chronic water shortage is estimated to be between 3 and 7 billion.
When we bring this closer to home, Egypt recently announced that eight years from now, 2017, the water need of its growing population would surpass what available resources could provide. In 2006 the Nile water provided Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres of water, out of the total 64 billion it consumed. The 55.5 billion was the figure that Egypt and Sudan negotiated in 1959 without considering other basin countries.
Soon that generous allotment will no longer be enough. Egypt’s consumption is already well below the water poverty line. So how easy will it be to find a negotiated usage agreement? How long will that agreement hold before increasing population demands for more water from dwindling resources?
According to a recent paper by Fasil Amdetsion, an Ethiopian lawyer in America, those parties that believe that there will not be water war either in the Nile Basin or others, give a number of reasons to support their position. They say that communities afflicted by scarcity are likely to alter lifestyles, make a more efficient use of water, and cope with a dearth of resources. There are also who say that there will not be any water war, because there has never been any. [The last one was fought 4,500 years ago.] Amdetsion repudiates these and other arguments claiming that Egypt has always had interest inn destabilizing Ethiopia. He mentions Egypt’s alleged support the Eritrea during the war with Ethiopia and its support to Somalia during the war with Ethiopia in the 1970’s. He believes that Egypt deliberately foiled the peace talks in Addis Ababa among Somali rebels. He believes that Egypt will do all it could to have the upper hand in Nile negotiations.
Meanwhile natural resources worldwide will continue falling. Population continues to boom against natural expectations. Egypt, a desert country that ought to be sparsely populated, has 76 million people living in it, and as Ethiopia, it is gripped by the concerns of providing for a very fast growing population. So doomsayers say that animal instincts will take over to survive, and those instincts will be the war mongering, blood thirsty type.
May be one day, if that war comes, with Sudan serving as a corridor and a fighter supporting Egypt (or Ethiopia???), that may be nature’s way decreasing our populations enough to fit available resources.
ADDIS ABABA (Bloomberg) — At least 34 people died in Ethiopia following a suspected cholera outbreak, with more than 4,000 sickened in the capital, Addis Ababa, in the past two weeks.
The disease has infected as many as 1,000 people a day in the past week, Dadi Jima, deputy director of the state-owned Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute, said in an interview today. He declined to say the disease is cholera.
The government has not “fully confirmed” the type of illness, Dadi said. “We usually report it as acute watery diarrhea.” The spread of the disease has been exacerbated by heavy rains in the Horn of Africa country, he said.
Cholera, mainly spread through contaminated water and food and poor sanitation, causes acute diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to death. The illness is considered to be endemic in “many countries” and the pathogen that causes the disease can’t currently be eliminated from the environment, according to the Web site of the World Health Organization.
The United Nations humanitarian agency said six cholera- treatment centers capable of treating 180 people a day have been dispatched to the country. The UN has also sent drugs for the treatment of more than 1,500 severe cases and 600 mild cases of acute water diarrhea, as well as water-purification tablets, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an e-mailed statement.
Of the 34 who have died in Ethiopia, seven fatalities were in Addis Ababa, Dadi said. He didn’t provide figures for the number of people affected nationwide, adding only that the disease had been reported in 31 districts.
If untreated, cholera can kill a healthy adult in as little as five hours, according to the WHO.
(Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at [email protected].)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (The Independent) — International aid agencies fear that the levels of death and starvation last seen 24 years ago, are set to return to the Horn of Africa. Paul Rodgers reports
The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades.
Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million.
Donor countries provided sustenance to 12 million Ethiopians last year, more than half of it through the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). Having passed that total only eight months into this year, and with the main harvest already in doubt, aid agencies fear the worst is still to come. “We’re extremely worried,” said Howard Taylor, who heads the Department for International Development’s office in Ethiopia. DfID has given £54m in aid to the country this year, and Britain has also contributed through the EU. “This is exactly the time when we shouldn’t turn away from the people in need,” he said.
“Critical water shortages” were reported in some areas by the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs last week with water-borne diseases such as acute diarrhoea spreading as communities resort to drinking from insanitary wells and ponds. Unicef said that the outbreaks are putting extra pressure on its Out-Patient Therapeutic Programme, which provides healthcare in some of the most needy areas.
In Somali, the hardest hit region with a third of the humanitarian caseload and complications caused by a low-intensity insurgency, the mortality rate for infants has risen above two per 10,000 per day according to a regional nutrition survey, which gives newborns roughly a one-third chance of dying before their fifth birthdays. While there is no clear definition, one widely used threshold for famine is four infant deaths per 10,000 per day.
Declaring a famine is a political decision. While it can galvanise public opinion and bring millions into aid programmes, it is widely seen as a political failure. President George Bush challenged his officials to avoid the word, a policy known as “No famine on my watch”. Ethiopia’s Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission is charged with preventing famines of the 1984-85 type, the sort that bring down governments, argued Tufts University academics Sue Lautze and Angela Raven-Roberts in a 2004 paper.
Dismissing the warning signals, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister genocidal dictator, Meles Zenawi, said earlier this month that there was no danger of famine this year. And Berhanu Kebede, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Britain, said at the weekend: “We are addressing the problem. Food is in the pipeline.”
The main practical difference between a food crisis and a famine is whether enough aid arrives to keep the starving alive. So while the scope of the problem can be measured in the number of hungry people, the severity depends on the generosity of those in the rich world. And this year they have been miserly. Despite the promise of G8 leaders at their summit in L’Aquila, Italy, last month to provide $20bn (£12bn) to improve food security in poor countries, contributions have slumped dramatically this year as donor states have shifted priorities to supporting banks and stimulating their own economies. “The international community is not living up to its promise to the World Food Programme,” Mr Kebede said.
The WFP had little trouble raising its $6bn budget last year, but in 2009 it has collected less than half of that. Its Ethiopian operation, which had $500m in 2008, is short $127m this year, equivalent to 167,000 tonnes of food. The Famine Early Warning Network forecast this month that the shortfall would reach 300,000 tonnes by December. Rations for the 6.2 million people receiving emergency food aid have, as a result, been slashed by a third from a meagre 15kg of cereals, beans and oil a month to just 10kg. Even if the shortfall were made up today, it would take three months for supplies to be loaded on to ships bound for Djibouti, then transferred to trucks for the arduous overland journey to land-locked Ethiopia.
Aid agencies are worried about the main harvest this autumn, arguing that the time for action is now, not when the food runs out in November – usually the driest month – let alone when starving children with distended bellies capture the attention of the West’s television viewing public. Despite its good intentions, Bob Geldof’s Live Aid came towards the end of the 1984-85 famine, which killed more than a million people. Since then, Ethiopia’s population has doubled to 80 million.
Mr Zenawi’s government has set up a strategic food reserve which has at times reached 500,000 tonnes – though it is currently thought to be just 200,000 tonnes – which it uses to speed up delivery. As soon as they get funds, aid agencies can borrow food from this reserve, replacing it with supplies from abroad when they arrive. Although the government could release this food without promises of replenishment, it would soon run out; after covering the WFP’s 167,000 tonne shortfall, the stockpile would be barely enough to feed a million people for three months.
The underlying problem for Ethiopia is the erratic behaviour of the country’s climate, or rather its regional micro-climates. [The problem is the regime’s Marxist policies, not climate or lack of rain.] Moisture-bearing clouds scudding in from the Indian Ocean can pass over the parched eastern lowlands to dump generous amounts of rain on the fertile western highlands. The famine of 1984-85, revealed by BBC reporter Michael Buerk, was actually two separate famines, one in Tigray, in the north, the other in Somali, in the south-east.
Two main rains sustain the people of Ethiopia, the belg in spring and the kiremt, which usually start in July. Both are influenced by variations in sea-surface temperature. The El Niño phenomena in the eastern Pacific usually bring droughts to Ethiopia, and America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that the current El Niño will strengthen over the next six months. The belg has failed for two years running now, while the kiremt started three weeks late this summer and the amount of rainfall when they did come was below normal. Aid agencies fear that the season could end early, or, equally bad, produce delayed downpours just when farmers need dry weather for the harvest. Even if the kiremt ends on time in October, some crops may not reach maturity because of the late planting.
Ethiopia is overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture, and some 90 per cent of its crops are watered by nature rather than by man-made irrigation systems. During droughts, farmers and nomadic herders tend to sell off their assets to buy food, leaving them with nothing when the next growing season begins. It can take three to five years for pastoral tribes to rebuild their herds.
Although Ethiopia is particularly hard hit, drought has also affected neighbouring countries. Resources in Somali are under additional strain because nomadic tribesmen from Somalia and Kenya have driven unusually large numbers of cattle across the border in search of water and pasture. Estimates of the number of cattle coming into the country range from 95,000 to 200,000.
The spike in global food prices in 2008 exacerbated a worsening situation, hitting the urban poor particularly hard. While they have fallen back this year, the price for grains in the markets of Adis Ababa are still some 50 per cent higher than their average in the four years to 2007.
The Ethiopian government is acutely aware of the danger of famine, not least to itself. Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed a year after the 1973 famine and the Derg military junta led by Lt Col Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in 1991 after a civil war driven in part by the 1984-85 famine. While most other countries with food shortages allow charities to distribute food, Ethiopia’s government insists that the bulk of food aid must pass through its hands.
The irony is that the Zenawi regime has done a reasonable job of boosting food production, achieving self-sufficiency in the late 1990s. One agency described it as the “bread basket” of Africa, harvesting more grain in a good year than South Africa. The government promotes best practices and distributes fertiliser to farmers. It also has an ambitious scheme to relocate 2.2 million people to more fertile areas. But even it can’t control the rains.
Many Africans blame climate change for the erratic weather patterns and resulting food shortages. Jean Ping, the chairman of the African Union, said last week in Addis Ababa: “Although Africa is least responsible for global warming, it suffers most from a problem it didn’t create.”
In a recent piece entitled “Mob Disrupts Political Meeting in Adama,” former Ethiopian President Dr. Negasso Gidada described how “an organized mob disturbed a public political meeting of the Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) in Adama, Oromia, and forced the discontinuation of the meeting.” Dr. Negasso explained:
Around 50 people started to disturb the meeting while Eng. Gizachew Shiferraw, Vice Chairperson of the UDJ was addressing the meeting. The disturbers were shouting, clutching and whistling from the rear of the hall. This mob came up running to the front and damaged a microphone while trying to grab it. They continued to shout: ‘This is Oromia’, ‘Oromo is our Language’, ‘You have to start the meeting by a blessing ceremony in accordance with Oromo culture’, ‘You can hold the meeting in Oromo language’, ‘If you do not speak in Oromo language, and you can not hold meetings in our country’. Several people tried to cool down the mob by promising that what is said would be translated in Oromo. But the mob would not heed the appeal. It even threatened to beat us up. Eng. Gizachew could not continue his speech. He was forced to announce that the meeting is adjourned because of the disturbance… The mob was not a spontaneous disturbing group. There were some OPDO/EPRDF cadres among the mob. I myself could recognize at least two OPDO cadres with whom I worked in the organization before I resigned from it in June 2001. It is obvious that the disturbance was an organized one.
In a separate Amharic piece on the subject, Seeye Abraha (the former defense minister and currently a member of Medrek (Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia) who attended the Adama town hall meeting pointed to a discernable emerging pattern in the use of thugs and hooligans by the “EPDRF” to disrupt opposition meetings. He identified two other similar disruptions a few weeks earlier, one at a UDJ meeting in Debre Markos and another at an Arena Tigray meeting in Mekele. Seeye suggested that a dual strategy is being used to prevent opposition elements from having public meetings: 1) Deny meeting permits on the basis of absurd excuses; or 2) Issue permits but disrupt the meetings using hired thugs and hooligans. Seeye declared that opposition elements will not be intimidated by thugs and “vigilantes” and their outreach efforts to the people will continue. He also put the dictators and the Ethiopian people on notice that should they be victims of thug violence at such meetings, the “EPDRF” should be held responsible.
Thugs and the Triumph of Kilil-istan Chavinism (Tribal-based Ethnic Federalism)
This is Oromia… Oromo is our Language… You have to start the meeting by a blessing ceremony in accordance with Oromo culture… You can hold the meeting in Oromo language… If you do not speak in Oromo language, and you can not hold meetings in our country….
The sounds of such atavistic lyrics of ethnic chauvinism must make sweet music to the ears of Ethiopia’s dictators. It must bring them everlasting joy and ecstasy to have these divisive and truculent words become part of the lexicon of Kilil-istan chauvinism, which is the highest stage of ethnic federalism. No doubt, these words represent the purest expression of the capo dictator’s dream: An Ethiopia blinded, deafened and muted by ethnic, linguistic, tribal and cultural chauvinism. BRAVO!
For nearly two decades, the dictators in Ethiopia toiled ceaselessly to shred the very fabric of that ancient civilization and society, and sculpt a landscape balkanized into tribal, ethnic, linguistic and regional enclaves to establish their own version of a Thousand Year Reich (Reign). They crafted a constitution based entirely on ethnicity and tribal affiliation as the basis for political organization. Article 46 (2) of their constitution provides: “States shall be structured on the basis of settlement patterns, language, identity and consent of the people.” In other words, “states”, (and the people who live in them) shall be organized as homogenous tribal homelands in much the same way as the 10 Bantustans (black homelands) of apartheid South Africa were organized to create ethnically homogeneous and “autonomous” nation states for South Africa’s different black ethnic groups, effectively wiping out their South African national citizenship.
The tribal homelands in Ethiopia are officially called “kilils” (enclaves or distinct enclosed and effectively isolated geographic areas within a seemingly integrated national territory). Like the Bantustans, the Killilistans represent territory set aside for the purpose of concentrating members of designated ethnic/tribal/linguistic/cultural groups in nominally autonomous geographic areas. Ethiopia’s dictators have used a completely fictitious and ridiculous theory of “ethnic (tribal) federalism)”, unknown in the annals of political science or political theory, to justify and glorify these Kililistans, impose their atrocious policy of divide and rule against 80 million people and scrub out any meaningful notion of Ethiopian citizenship.
Big Thugs, Small Thugs and the Rule of Law
Article 9 of the dictators’ constitution provides that the “Constitution is the supreme law of the land…. All citizens, state organs, political organizations, other associations and their officials, have the duty to comply with this Constitution and abide by it.” Article 29 of this “supreme law” guarantees that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression without interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers,…” Article 30 further ensures, “Everyone shall have the freedom, in association with others, to peaceably assemble without arms, engage in public demonstration and the right to petition.”
In Thugland, no one seems to be particularly concerned about constitutional rights. Dr. Negasso, Ato Seeye, UDJ members and the other community attendees were peaceably assembled at an authorized meeting to engage in important political discussions. They have an absolute right to conduct their meeting peaceably without being molested by thugs, hooligans, criminals, gangsters, hoodlums, delinquents and hustlers. It is the supreme and solemn duty of those in authority to guarantee that the constitutional rights of those peaceably assembled is protected from “interference” by anyone. To be sure, the authorities had a legal duty to arrest the disruptive thugs and “vigilantes” and prosecute them for their egregious violation of the constitutional rights of all those in attendance at the town hall meeting. But as we have seen time and time again, the “supreme law” of the land does not apply to thugs because thugs are above the law of the land; indeed, thugs are the law of the land!
Thugs Here, Thugs There, Thugs Everywhere!
Paraphrasing Mark Twain, one could wonder out loud: “Suppose you were a thug. And suppose you were a member of a dictatorship. But I repeat myself.” The use of rented thugs to disrupt public meetings is the oldest trick in the Book of Dictators and Corrupt Politicians. Not long ago, Robert Mugabe’s (ZANU – Patriotic Front) thugs in Zimbabwe disrupted the Constitutional All-Stakeholders’ Conference (organized to write a new constitution) at the Harare International Conference Centre by lambasting and unleashing a torrent of profanity and vulgarity against the Speaker of Parliament. They also attacked delegates and officials with plastic water bottles. In the early 1990s, organized thugs, galvanized by the political ideology of “Majimboism”, (a Kiswahili concept for “ethnic regionalism”, or “ethno-federalism”) instigated ethnic hatred against the Kikuyu. Recently, Prof. Maurice Iwu, Nigeria’s Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, reported to the Nigeria House of Representatives that the “sporadic outbreak of violence in several parts of the country [in the last election] was a fall-out of political thuggery.” The ultimate African thugs are represented by a militia known as the “Janjawid” – bloodthirsty packs of roving criminals armed and supported by the Sudanese government that have caused widespread atrocities including village destruction, massacres and rapes in the Darfur region.
Thugging it Out!
Seeye Abraha has noticed the Ethiopian people that should they be victims of thug violence, the “EPDRF” is to be held responsible. It may be overly optimistic to expect reason and respect for the law from thugs. The fact of the matter is that thugs will always be thugs; but law abiding citizens can fight back — thug it out, so to speak — by doing the right thing: Always tell the people the truth, and speak truth to thugs. Unite the people where thugs try to put them asunder. Promote harmony wherever thugs sow hatred, division and enmity. Fight to win the hearts and minds of the people wherever thugs seek to crush their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Never lower yourself to the gutter world of thugs, but capture, preserve, protect and defend the moral high ground. Never, never, never abandon the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights in Ethiopia. Always do the right thing, the fair thing, the just thing. As Churchill said, “Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” Never yield to thugs! Never forget the truth that if we don’t stand up for the Land of Thirteen Months of Sunshine, thugs will gladly transform it into the Land of Eternal Darkness.
Inherit the Wind
In Proverbs 11 is written, “He who brings trouble on his family will inherit only wind.” Those who have wrought trouble on the Ethiopian family for the last two decades will in the end inherit a tornadic wind. That is foreordained! Their wicked efforts to destroy, dismember, deface and disfigure Ethiopia through the politics of hate and ethnic division will fail just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow. Their diabolical plan will amount to nothing! Like East Germany, ethnic federalism will be there one day and the next day it will be gone forever. Ethiopia’s best days are yet to come because her destiny rests securely in the palms of her bright, patriotic, industrious, conscientious, humble, forward-looking and God-fearing young people.
Is it not ironic that those of us who profess to champion the cause of justice, truth and morality far outnumber those engaged in the practice of evil, yet the few evil doers seem to outdo us nearly every time. As Dr. Negasso pleaded following his confrontation with the Adama thugs: “I call on all those who stand for the respect of democratic and human rights, for peace and stability of this country and for economic development of this country do something TODAY and not TOMORROW!!” That is why we should take to heart the aphorism, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil (thugs) is that good Ethiopian men and women do nothing” TODAY.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday condemned three Jewish religious schools for what he termed their immoral refusal to admit 100 Ethiopian Jewish students.
Spokesmen for Israel’s 100,000-strong Ethiopian community described the schools’ decision as discriminatory. Black Jews have long complained of prejudice in Israel.
The private ultra-Orthodox institutions, which also receive money from the government, denied the ban was racially motivated, saying the children required special funding and classes to raise their academic standards.
But Netanyahu called the ban “intolerable”.
“Rejecting Ethiopian students is simply an attack on our morals, contradicting our ethos as a country, as a society, as Jews and as Israelis,” Netanyahu said in an interview conducted jointly by Israel Radio and Army Radio.
“A school that continues along this line will suffer the consequences,” he said. “I have told (the education minister) to act as forcefully as possible.”
Education ministry officials have been quoted by the Israeli media as saying government funding for the schools, in the central city of Petah Tikva, would be withheld unless they admitted the students.
President Shimon Peres said last week the schools’ policy was a “disgrace” no Israeli could accept. Most Ethiopian Jewish children attend state schools, many of them religious institutions.
Israel’s chief rabbis determined formally in 1973 that Ethiopian Jews were descendants of the Jewish biblical tribe of Dan and were entitled to immigrate to Israel. Tens of thousands arrived in airlifts in the 1980s and 1990s.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — Two days before the opening of the school year, a compromise reached between Petah Tikvah Mayor Itzik Ohayoun and principals of the city’s schools will enable 109 students of Ethiopian origin will to enroll in religious schools.
On Sunday, the three schools which set off a public storm with their initial refusal to enroll the students – Lamerhav, Da’at Mevinim and Darkei Noam – also agreed to accept some 30 children who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with their parents in recent years and are required to attend religious schools as part of their conversion process.
According to the deal, all of the pupils will be accepted to regular classes throughout the city without having to take preliminary tests.
To ease the move into the normal classes, the Ministry of Education will provide each child with an enrichment program tailored to his or her personal needs.
Briefly after word of the compromise was let out, however, Petah Tikva’s parent council announced that it rejected the deal, as only 30 of the pupils will be integrated in the city’s private schools, and reiterated its threat for a strike on September 1.
“The compromise offers no true equality, neither in the numbers nor in the way the pupils are to be integrated,” said chairman of the council Gadi Yaffe. The council called for an emergency meeting with Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
Before the deal was reached, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday called the schools’ refusal to accept the Ethiopian students a “moral terror attack.”
In a joint interview with Army Radio and Israel Radio, on a special day of broadcasts dedicated to battling violence, Netanyahu said that schools that refuse to enroll Ethiopians will be punished, and vowed there would be no racial discrimination against Ethiopians in Israel.
Also on Sunday, President Shimon Peres slammed the three schools that had refused to enroll Ethiopian students.
“Is this a way to accept olim? Humiliating treatment of this kind offends and hurts all of us,” Peres, who was attending the opening of the Nofey Habsor School in the Eshkol region, said during a meeting with teenagers.
The president called on the students to do whatever they can to eliminate racial discrimination.
The story has been drawing increased attention as the school year approaches.
It intensified earlier this week when the Parent-Teacher Association in Petah Tikva threatened a strike if the principals of the schools in question continued to refuse to enroll the pupils, while the Education Ministry’s director-general, Dr. Shimshon Shoshani, threatened to pull significant funding from the schools if the pupils were not enrolled by the first day of school.
On Wednesday principals of the three schools, along with representatives from the Petah Tikva Municipality and the Education Ministry, held a meeting over the matter.
At the meeting, the ministry official delivered letters containing the names of pupils the principal’s were expected to enroll.
A source speaking on behalf of the schools told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that during the meeting the principals had inquired as to their requests that the students should be on a par as regards Hebrew and basic math skills and should match the schools’ ministry-approved requirements for aptitude, behavior and religious practice.
When told that the pupils did not match the said requirements, the principals again expressed their reservations about enrolling them and, according to the source, were then asked by the Education Ministry official to attend a meeting with Shoshani on Thursday.
(THE JERUSALEM POST, Abe Selig and Ron Friedman contributed to this report.)
