These ungrateful tribesmen

Did you know there is a growing community of Ethiopian Jews in New York? I didn't. But I'm not surprised. Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel mostly as a public relations stunt for Zionism. In Israel they face racism, refusal to recognize their Jewishness, and discrimination in all wakes of life. The latest shocking revelation comes by way of Jonathan Cook. Apparently, Israeli doctors feel that there are too many black babies in Israel. So they prescribe special, dangerous birth control drugs to Ethiopian women:

“This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor,” said Hedva Eyal, the author of the report by Woman to Woman, a feminist organisation based in Haifa, in northern Israel. “The unspoken policy is that only children who are white and Ashkenazi are wanted in Israel,” she said, referring to the term for European Jews who founded Israel and continue to dominate its institutions.

Women’s groups were alerted to the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community in 2008 when Rachel Mangoli, who runs a day care centre for 120 Ethiopian children in Bnei Braq, a suburb of Tel Aviv, observed that she had received only one new child in the previous three years.

“I started to think about how strange the situation was after I had to send back donated baby clothes because there was no one in the community to give them to,” she said. (Jonathan Cook, The National)

Those Ethiopian immigrants who escaped to a land that, while not free of racism, at least doesn't try to exterminate them with Pharaonic methods, face another type of racism.

Natasha Mozgovaya, writing in Ha'arez about the changing attitudes of American Jews, describes that:

American Jews have come to terms with the "desertion" of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to the United States; they are working energetically to integrate "the Russians" into existing institutions so that at least they won't assimilate. Some community activists feel betrayed by the "new yordim" - the growing community of Ethiopian Jews who have wandered from Israel to New York. "We paid to bring you to Israel, and you fled here?" they accuse them. ( Haaretz, Nov. 17, 2009)

I wish there was an attributed quote. There is the difference in attitude towards the Russians compared to that given to the Ethiopians. Typical white racism, or perhaps poor phrasing by a reporter. It is hard to know without further investigation. But these "activists" neatly articulate how Israel defines Jewish identity in America: Zion's pimps, paying to send Ethiopian Jews to Israel as cannon fodder, and angry like pimps whose "merchandise" has dared to run away from the club that bought them.

It's high time for a hard look in the Mirror.