Operation Moses, Solomon & Dove’s Wings
In 1973, Ovadia Yosef, Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi proclaimed Ethiopian Jews to be descendants of the Tribe of Dan. To the amazement of many, the Rabbi said they must be granted rights of immigration to Israel.
By 1984, Ethiopian Jews not only faced famine, they had to deal with raging antisemitism, constant persecution and potential kidnapping of their 12 year old sons by the Ethiopian army.
The Israeli government, prodded by powerful Diaspora Jewish organizations, decided something had to be done. Operation Moses (World Jewish Congress)
OPERATION MOSES was born.
Government officials, in cooperation with the IDF, Israeli Air Force pilots, Mossad, America’s CIA, Sudanese officials, emissaries of the Jewish Agency, Joint Distribution Committee and foreign mercenaries launched a covert evacuation scheme.
When the international press learned of the plan, William Safire, a well-respected syndicated political columnist for the New York Times wrote, “For the first time in history, thousands of black people are being brought into a country not in chains but in dignity, not as slaves but as citizens.”
The highly dangerous mission began in November 1984. For seven weeks these teams successfully flew 8000 Ethiopian Jews out of the Sudan. They first landed in Belgium and then flew on to Israel.
Politicians, Military Personnel, Jewish Philanthropists greeted the immigrants at Israel’s Ben Grunion Airport with flags, gifts and cameras clicking away.
The Amharic speaking Ethiopian Jews came from rural, agrarian Africa without money, political power, without knowledge of Hebrew or English.
Elated and grateful to have arrived in the Holy Land, the Ethiopian immigrants were obviously exhausted, traumatized and hungry.
They were soon bussed from the airport to their isolated lodgings where many needed to learn how to live in the modern 20th Century World.
They were taught how to use indoor plumbing, indoor water faucets, refrigerators, telephones, electricity and electric appliances.
Over the next two decades tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews would arrive in Israel. With each landing, there were the traditional ceremonies and speeches, little flags and photo ops for smiling, arrogant politicians, military officers and absorption agency leaders.
Unfortunately, these leaders and decision makers did not learn from, nor pay attention to the difficulties, mistakes, the prejudices and racism North African and Middle Eastern Jews faced when they arrived in the 1950s.
Discrimination, harassment and forced birth control
By its historic racist and arrogant nature, integrating into multi-ethnic Israeli society is difficult.
And for dark skinned African Jews without connections, financial means, higher education and degrees, Ethiopian Israelis faced constant discrimination in many arenas including, housing, education, army and national service, religion, politics and in the workplace. Below are just two examples:
- In 2014, Ethiopians were finally permitted to approach any governmental ministry just like all Israeli citizens. Until then, they were forced to use only the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption.
- The practice of segregated programing in the Israel Defense Forces was finally eliminated in 2017.
On top of every day problems of assimilation, Ethiopians faced humiliation, discrimination and intolerance by the outrageously bigoted, all-powerful orthodox and ultra-orthodox rabbinical authorities who demanded and imposed ‘conversion’ ceremonies to make sure the Ethiopians were Jewish enough for their taste.
There were even many incidents of Ethiopian couples not permitted to marry because rabbinical authorities questioned their level of Jewishness. (There are no civil marriages in Israel).
It did not stop there.
Orthodox and observant Jews, both male and female, participate in a traditional emersion. Fully naked, they ritually cleanse themselves in a baptismal ‘Mikva‘ or bath.
Report after report tell of Ethiopian women, while completely naked and vulnerable, were harassed, verbally abused, intimated and humiliated.
And as if it could not get worse, Ethiopian women faced yet another hurdle.
For many years there were rumors of Ethiopian women being coerced into taking birth control drugs.
Israeli health officials lied to and threatened the women. They were told they could not immigrate without being injected with what they believed was a mandatory vaccination.
However, Ethiopian Jewish women allegedly were injected with Depro-Provera, a long term birth control drug.
No one bothered or cared enough to explain to the women that Depro-Provera is often associated with severe physical side effects.
In 2012, this scandalous behavior by Israeli health officials was reported in the media and on Israeli Television. And as one would expect, Israeli officials denied all allegations.
However, investigative reporters and journalists discovered that over the decade the drug was allegedly administered, the Ethiopian birthrate in Israel dropped by 50%.
While Ethiopian women were faced with intense pressure to keep their families small, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Israeli orthodox and ultra-orthodox couples were encouraged to have large families (that comes with hefty government subsidies for each additional child).
For more information, here’s a link to the 8 December 2012 article from the Times of Israel. ETHIOPIAN WOMEN FORCED BIRTH CONTROL
The year 2015 is a turning point
As Ethiopians moved out of their initial isolated lodgings, they began to move into affordable (?) housing in cities and villages across the country.
Although less than 2% of the entire Israeli population, the 150,000 dark skinned, African Ethiopians are obviously more visible.
Unfortunately with more visibility comes more targeted police harassment.
In 2015, it was reported that the police commissioner told a group of lawyers it was “only natural for his officers to be more suspicious of black citizens.”
Police Brutality Goes Viral
Damas Pakada was born in Ethiopia.
In April 2015, while serving in the Israeli army Damas was given a one day leave to celebrate his brother’s birthday.
In the evening, still in uniform and walking with his bicycle, Damas was confronted by a policeman who attacked him.
The incident was caught on video. (Caution – the video maybe disturbing to children) Damas Attacked By Israeli Police
Below are quotes from the Times of Israel online reportage.
A police officer stopped him (Damas) on the sidewalk as he was cordoning off the area because a suspicious object had been spotted.
The officer then pushed Pakada, tossed his bicycle aside and proceeded to push and kick the soldier, including stepping on him while he lay prostrate on the ground attempting to deflect the blows.
At one point, the officer was seen drawing his pistol.
The cop told me, “I’m doing my job and if I need to put a bullet in your head, I would do it. I am proud of my job,” Pakada told the Ynet news site at the time.
Within hours of the camera footage airing on national television, Pakada was out of jail and the police officer was dismissed from the force.
Damas said that if the incident had not been caught on camera, which was a miracle, he would have been jailed.
On May 3rd when the video of the attack went viral, Damas became the face of police brutality, racism, discrimination, frustration, anger and neglect that thousands of Ethiopians feel and experience every day.
Young and old, male and female Israeli Ethiopians poured into the streets.
Thousands blocked traffic on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway (the main route leading into or out of the city).
What started as a peaceful gathering, eventually sparked violence.
Rocks were thrown, blood was spilt, policemen on horseback charged the protestors, other police used stun grenades and water canons to disperse and subdue the crowd .
By the end of the evening, 26 protesters were arrested. 50 were injured and according to Police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, 23 out of the 50 were policemen.
Times of Israel article with additional photographs can be accessed at this link: May 3, 2015 Israeli Ethiopian Demonstration
Adding insult to injury, in June 2015, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein reported that the incident was not racially motivated.
Weinstein also declared an end to the investigation against the unnamed policeman on the grounds the soldier, Damas Pakada provoked the confrontation.
to be continued….Racism in Israel, Part 3
In 2019 two young Ethiopian Israeli men were shot and killed by the police. Their stories and more in next week’s blog.
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