According to the report, black children are channeled into “underachieving” at high rates and even pushed into special-education classrooms. Relatively larger numbers of black children are removed from families due to domestic conflict. Phenomena noted in the report include white parents avoiding sending their children to extracurricular activities with black kids and high rates of criminal involvement among Ethiopian Israeli youth.
If all this sounds familiar to American readers, it is because it’s identical to accusations heard in the U.S. from their black population.
The government suggested 53 recommendations to integrate Ethiopian Jews: ensuring there are dark-skinned dolls into kindergartens, teaching teachers about Ethiopian Jewish history, publishing books about children of different cultures and skin colors, and integrating Ethiopian Israeli educators as teachers and principals. The committee’s key recommendations center on uprooting prejudice at an early age, especially in kindergartens and elementary schools.
Chaired by Justice Ministry Director General Emi Palmor, the interministerial Commission was set up after street demonstrations by Ethiopian Israeli activists against rampant prejudice which they said that they faced in Israeli society, which was triggered by a seemingly unprovoked police assault on an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier in April 2015. At the time, Ethiopian activists expressed their frustration with what they said was the state’s shortcomings in addressing the social and economic needs of their community.
The government ministers are expected to approve all 53 recommendations.
Shlomit Brahno, a member of the Palmor Committee, believes that “the report’s implementation will help heal the crisis of confidence” between the Ethiopian Israeli community and the government, “and will heal the fractures in our society.”
Here’s why we disagree with her:
All government measures in the world will not accomplish a thing unless a community gets it act together. And that means establishing stable, healthy families with strong morals, emphasizing education and decent behavior. A dark-skinned doll with not do it for them, nor can any government do that for them, only the Ethiopian community can do it for itself. If the Ethiopians (and the Sephardim, and Arabs and every other grievance group in Israel) show that they are every bit as capable and decent as every other group in Israel, there will be no discrimination. And if they can’t get their act together, then there is good reason why other parents don’t want their kids to associate with a population of underachievers and high criminal involvement.
We fully expect the government to pour out millions on the Ethiopians in benefits and programs without affecting the higher crime rate, the unstable families and poor scholastic achievements just as occurs in the U.S.
Despite huge sums poured into the American black community for decades, the blacks community is still dissolute, suffers from far greater crime and broken families than other groups, while demanding special privileges for their victimization, discrimination and suffering from slavery which ended in 1865 (!).
