{"id":282934,"date":"2019-07-31T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T14:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CBMiT2h0dHBzOi8vamV3aXNod2Vlay50aW1lc29maXNyYWVsLmNvbS9ldGhpb3BpYW4tamV3cy1vbmNlLWhhaWxlZC1ub3ctY2FzdC1hc2lkZS_SAQA?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-15T11:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:28:23","slug":"ethiopian-jews-israel-discrimination-after-airlifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/282934","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopian Jews in Israel, once hailed for daring airlifts, still face discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"size-large wp-image-837800\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/weizman-greeting-ethiopian-jews.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Israeli President Ezer Weizman greets Ethiopian Jews, November 1993\" \/><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Israeli President Ezer Weizman greets Ethiopian Jews, November 1993 (Israeli GPO \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/jewishweek.timesofisrael.com\/ethiopian-jews-once-hailed-now-cast-aside\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jewish Week \/ Times of Israel<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/2019\/07\/31\/opinion\/ethiopian-jews-once-hailed-now-cast-aside\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":837800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/weizman-greeting-ethiopian-jews.jpg?fit=1280%2C853&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1bBs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837813,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282934\/revisions\/837813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}