Though Cowards Flinch

“I am black, but comely, O ye

daughters of Jerusalem, as

the tents of Kedar, as the

curtains of Solomon.”

– from “The Song of Songs”

Rechavia “Rick” Berman recently posted about a little known story concerning the educational segregation of Black Ethiopian Jews. He noted:

what chilled me was that there was at least one case where a school administrator went from the plain racism of not making an effort to help Ethiopian students meet the requirements, to the malicious go-out-of-your-way racism of actively failing dark-skinned students who were somehow ruining her pristine color scheme by passing their classes. “We were asked to lower [Ethiopians'] scores in English and literature,” one teacher admitted.

Other than his paragraph, nothing else in English has been published (so far as I can find). The news item he links to is written in Hebrew, but on using (the dodgy, but none the less helpful) Google Translate I learnt that in more than a hundred schools in Israel, Ethiopian immigrants make up at least half the student population, but a disconcerting amount were unable to pass the entry examinations to study in the next year – in fact only 42%.

Nana10 – an Israeli media organisation, owned by Israeli web and communication company 013 Netvision, and Israeli news Channel 10, where the news article is – learned from a former teacher that Ethiopian students were regularly marked down in English and literature, while another teacher admitted they were given harder exams so that their score averaged lower.

While only 20% of Ethiopian students will reach the requirements, many will either join a boarding school or be “tossed out into the street” (יתר יעברו לפנימיות או ייזרקו לרחוב).

This is not the first time the segregation of student Ethiopian immigrants has been flagged up in Israel. Back in August 2009, then President Shimon Peres warned that the government would cut all funding to private Orthodox schools who refuse to enroll Ethiopian students.

Then Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar said: ”We will not allow racist provocations, even if they are couched in all kinds of pretexts”.

Writing on the case, Roman Kalik – in the comments thread of a blog post by The Sudanese Thinker – straightened out some facts about the classroom segregation of four young Jewish Ethiopian girls:

They know Hebrew (though their parents don’t know it well), were supposed to receive the exact same curriculum as the rest of the students, and were kept in a separate class (according to an interview with a school management member on Hebrew Ynet) because the school board wasn’t satisfied with their religious background(this is an elitist private school), and with their level of education (again, elitist private school). The prevalent reasoning was to keep the four girls isolated from the rest to make sure that they don’t cause any harm to the religious upbringing and high study standards of the other students. The fact that the students were also ‘forced’ on the school by City Hall was also mentioned, and that these students wouldn’t have been normally accepted into the school. They should have been grateful for even entering the school, as the man put it.

In short, it was total elitist racist BS.

The point about their religious background is very interesting, and reminiscent of the plight of the Beta Israel, otherwise known as the Ethiopian Jews.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the community enjoyed relative independence through the Middle Ages, save for various bouts of tribal fighting, while in 1624 they fought their last battle for independent autonomy against Portuguese-backed Ethiopians.

In 1769, Scottish explorer James Bruce stumbled upon them while searching for the source of the Nile River, reporting a population of around 100,000, already dramatically reduced in size from an estimated 500,000.

Little contact was made with the community until the 1900s where their stability was threatened by the Italian army, which soon subsided. In 1956 Ethiopia and Israel had established consular relations, which grew better over time. In the late 1970s, during the dictatorship of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the coup of who saw the deaths of very many Jews in Ethiopia – Israel was keen to operate rescue missions for Jews, which included arms deals to curry favour with the despot, in order that he comply to what some see as the “precursor to the mass exodus of [the 1984] Operation Moses” – which saw as many as 8,000 Jews travel to Israel at a time when Judaism had been outlawed in Ethiopia.

By the end of Operation Moses in 1985, two-thirds of Beta Israel remained in Ethiopia, disproportionately represented by women, children and the sick (unable to make the harrowing journey through Sudan). But by 1990, amid difficulties, Ethiopia and Israel reached an agreement allowing Ethiopian Jews to move to Israel “under the context of family reunification” – which saw increased numbers returning to the Jewish home.

Though the issue of Ethiopian immigration has often proved problematic. Some in this community, for many reasons (including for the improvement of their conditions at heightened times of prejudice), withdrew their faith, though their ancestry were Jewish – these are referred to as the Falash Mura. A chapter devoted to them on the Jewish virtual library reads:

The Israelis find themselves in a no-win situation. They do not want to simply accept unlimited immigration from Ethiopia. They are convinced that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians will claim Jewish heritage if they do not follow strict procedures for determining eligibility to immigrate. In the meantime, the large numbers of Falash Mura who settled in camps in Gondar and Addis have created a severe humanitarian problem. They need jobs, shelter, food. These needs cannot be ignored, but, at the same time, if better services are provided, it will only attract more Falash Mura to the camps.

Of course problems with Ethiopian immigration could be to do with many things: A problem with numbers (the same problem that Sidney Webb had with the numbers of inhabitants going to British Palestine versus the weight of the economy to support them); straight forward xenophobia; or, concern about the authenticity of Beta Israel as Jews.

The latter is related to the record of the history of the Beta Israel – much of which is oral and therefore uncertain. Though any doubt about authenticity should have been nipped in the bud over 400 years ago (from a declaration by Egypt’s Chief Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Avi Zimra (Radbaz)) dissatisfaction today on the part of private schools regarding the religious backgrounds of Ethiopian Jewish students bears an uncanny resemblance.

The history of Ethiopian Jews has been turbulent, to say the least. It is pitiful that some school leaders in Israel feel it wise to exclude students of this race today, and in the case of the Nana10 report, actively downgrade scores to stop full educational integration. It is a familiar reminder for the victim, and a stain upon the perpetrator.

Henrique Capriles Radonski’s popularity in Venezuela is a cause of concern for Hugo Chavez, now trying to hang on to his credentials while the Latin American country restricts electricity use for the second year running, suffers double digit inflation and increasing crime.

Radonski has put his name down as the candidate running for the Table of Democratic Unity (MUD), an alliance of conservative parties, and since doing so has seen his approval ratings shoot up in opinion polls, while Chavez’ approval drops.

The MUD candidate has vowed to adopt similar rhetoric to Chavez, particularly concerning programmes and welfare for the poor, but Chavez’ leading party, and the state owned media, will run a hot campaign against the Governor of Miranda, citing his alleged involvement and complicity in a siege of the Cuban embassy during the 2002 failed coup, an accusation the opposition candidate denies.

Another thing that Radonski himself has picked upon is references to his ancestry. While he identifies strongly as Catholic, his Mother was Jewish, and his great-grandparents were killed in a concentration camp. According to the candidate in an interview with the Jewish Telegraph Agency, when the campaign for the 2012 presidency begins properly it is likely his Jewish background will appear as a focal point to undermine him.

He says this with some certainty because during the 2008 mayoral elections he was described by state media as a member of the “Jewish Zionist Bourgeoisie” and “genetically fascist”.

As an aside note, there is contention surrounding whether the term Jewish Zionist Bourgeoisie is one of antisemitism (the latter term clearly steps way beyond that mark). Lenni Brenner, American Marxist and supporter of the group “Jews Against Zionism”, in his book “Zionism in the Age of Dictators” (1983) once said:

What separates the Jewish Zionist bourgeoisie from the non-Zionist members of the same class is really only the fact that the Zionists are clearly aware that they can attain their interest as a class only in the domain of a unified people and no longer as mere individuals

Separating this paragraph from anything else he might have said before, what we see referred to here is a comment on capitalism, and though race is obviously referred to, the subject still rests upon national class relations.

How this aside is relevant to Chavez is the way he has dealt with Judaism and Zionism before. Whenever Chavez has been accused of being antisemitic in the past he has always quipped back that he is simply anti-Zionist, and that, like with the words of Brenner, even when he refers to Jewish Zionism, this isn’t a crack at Jews per se, but Zionists, and to a greater extent, US and Israeli imperialism.

But at the very least Chavez has failed, quite significantly, to address Venezuelan antisemitism (under his watch Venezuelan antisemitism and attacks on Jews have risen significantly) and curb unpalatable rhetoric from state television. Only recently did state-run radio broadcast a reading of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, during which the journalist reading Cristina Gonzalez expressed:

her admiration for the Jewish community and “non-Zionist” Israelis before plucking what she called “little pearls” from the book to explain to listeners why Zionists have been able to amass a concentration of power and wealth.

This is not the first time either. In 2008 on the same station, it was broadcast that:

Hitler’s partners were Jews…like the Rockefellers, who were Jews [Editors' note: The Rockefellers are not Jews]. These were not the Jews murdered in the concentration camps. [Those killed] were working-class Jews, Communist Jews, poor Jews, because the rich Jews were the ones behind the plan to occupy Palestine.

While in 2010 the pro-Chavez website Aporrea noted that the true essence of Judaism cannot be found in the Torah, “but in the realities of capitalism”.

There are other examples of concern, such as Chavez’ former adviser and confidante Norberto Ceresole who was a known holocaust denier, and his uncritical relationship with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but they are too numerous to list.

The battle for the 2012 elections will prove to be fierce, but it’s anyone’s guess how Chavez will organise against a conservative candidate with Jewish ancestry, given the unsavory territory state television will explore, leaving a very fine line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism proper.