NOVANEWS
TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger”.
Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children.
“The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN.
An estimated 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, but while they are supposed to be full citizens with equal rights, their community has continued to face widespread discrimination and socio-economic difficulties, according to its leaders.
A recent decision – as reported by local media – by 120 homeowners not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families has brought discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel back into the spotlight.
Hundreds of Ethiopian Israelis took to the streets on 18 January to protest the move by landlords in the southern city of Kiryat Malakhi – Shay Sium’s hometown.
“This is not an isolated case,” said Yasmin Keshet, an attorney for the Israeli NGO Tebeka, which provides legal support to Ethiopian Israelis. The scale of racist offences and discrimination against Ethiopian Jews, she said, is reflected in the many legal cases Tebeka has dealt with in recent years.
“Can’t you see I am not taking black people?”
Under the Law of Return, Ethiopian Jews enjoy full rights and have a right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. The reality, however, is different.
In 2009, a young Ethiopian-Israeli university student named Idano tried to board a bus in Rishon LeZion city.
“She knocked, but the driver wouldn’t let her in,” Keshet said. “When he opened the door for someone else, she followed inside, whereupon the driver said: ‘Can’t you see I am not taking black people. Did you have buses in Ethiopia, or even shoes?’”
The driver eventually appeared before a disciplinary hearing and was fined 20,000 New Israeli Shekels (NIS, US$5,330) in 2010. The next year, a magistrate’s court ordered him to pay Idano 60,000 NIS ($15,980) in compensation.
In September 2011, Tebeka represented 281 children who were prevented from registering in a school in Petah Tikva town because of their Ethiopian backgrounds – “a clear breach of law,” according to Julie Wyler, director of resource development at Tebeka.
About 30 percent of all legal cases Tebeka deals with are about discrimination in the workplace.
“Ethiopians are a resilient community [but] don’t know what is legal and illegal, also because new immigrants often don’t speak proper Hebrew,” Wyler said.
Lack of awareness and skills also makes Ethiopian Israelis easy to employ on lower-than-average pay. They are often desperate to find a job and willing to work under difficult circumstances.
“Ethiopians are an easy catch for manpower agencies,” Wyler said. “They are allowed to hire employees for up to a year without providing social security under Israeli law, so they fire them after 11 months, just to re-employ them again afterwards.”
Poverty
About 81,000 of Ethiopian Israelis were born in their home country, while 38,500 were born in Israel, according to official records. Between 1985 and 1991, more than 30,000 were airlifted in three rescue operations after years of civil war and famine had driven hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into the capital, Addis Adaba, and refugee camps in Sudan.
But more than 20 years on, many Ethiopians still face economic hardship and social problems in Israel.
About 52 percent of Ethiopian-Israeli families live below the poverty line, compared to 16 percent among the general Jewish Israeli population. According to the Brookdale Institute for Applied Social Research, only 65 percent of Ethiopian Israelis were employed compared to 74 among the general Jewish population in 2010.
“In the area of employment, the gap between Ethiopians and other Jews has narrowed significantly,” institute director Jack Habib said. But about 60 percent of all Ethiopian families are still in a welfare programme, partly due to juvenile delinquency which is four times higher than the Israeli average, and domestic violence, which is estimated to be 2.5 times higher than the average.
Growing up in Israel
Partly as a result of the difficult socio-economic situation, which also triggers prejudice against the community, many young Ethiopian Israelis become disassociated from society at large.
“Growing up was an everyday struggle,” said Sium. “For those who are different, the Jewish people can be a very closed community. Simply because I am Ethiopian, life has been harder than it is for others.
“Raising a kid is tough for everyone in Israel, but it is even tougher for us,” he continued. “Once, my five-year-old kid asked me after a demonstration why the people on the street are shouting. I couldn’t tell him that it is because the white people don’t like the black people. I didn’t want to give him the feeling that he is not good enough.”
In 2008, a report by the Israeli state comptroller and judge Micha Lindenstrauss found that about 20 percent of Ethiopian Israeli children do not go to school. Drug abuse among the youth is widespread, and crime rates are much higher than among the overall Jewish Israeli society.
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