About 150,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, where many still face police harassment, poor housing and weak schools decades after dramatic rescue airlifts, Jewish Week wrote in July 2019.
Israeli President Ezer Weizman greets Ethiopian Jews, November 1993 (Israeli GPO / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) [file photo]
The editorial recalled Operations Moses and Solomon, which brought Beta Israel communities to Israel and were celebrated worldwide as color-blind rescues. It said later generations often lacked decent wages, housing and educational chances, and that both formal and informal discrimination persisted.
Tensions flared after an off-duty police officer fatally shot 18-year-old Solomon Tekah of the Ethiopian community on June 30, 2019, in Kiryat Haim. Protests followed in Netanya and Tel Aviv. A police probe said the officer fired at the ground and the bullet ricocheted.
Many in the community had long said police singled out Ethiopian youth. Four years earlier, after a video of officers beating an Ethiopian youth circulated, the government set up a commission on racism that found problems from schools to the IDF, Jewish Week said, but the gaps remained.
The piece argued that Jewish communities abroad, which once celebrated the airlifts, should press Israel to treat Ethiopian Israelis as full citizens in daily practice, not only in rescue mythology.
Sources: Jewish Week / Times of Israel, Jewish Telegraphic Agency