Enough to Racism

7 May 2015

A uniformed Ethiopian Israeli soldier walked alone in Tel Aviv. Without apparent cause, a police officer approached him – soon joined by another – and began to beat the soldier. The brutal attack was captured on video and soon released on social media. Demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with violence instigated by a few protesters, erupted not just due to this single incident of police brutality, but as a reaction to decades of institutionalized racism and discrimination.

An appalling 65% of Ethiopian Israeli children live in poverty and 56% of the community receives help from the Ministry of Social Services.  Ethiopian representation in higher learning is abysmally low.  And unemployment in the Ethiopian sector is more than double the national average.

Despite much higher rates of military enlistment than the national average, Ethiopian Israelis are often held back by socioeconomic factors and racism. Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers make up 3% of the IDF but 13% of the IDF prison population.  Their rates of dishonorable discharge are higher too – 22.8% for men and 10.6% for women, compared to the national averages of 16.5% and 7.5%.  The prison sentences and discharges are generally related to charges of desertion, which has more to do with poverty than their willingness to fight (the army’s meager $100 a month isn’t enough to support their families so many Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers try to work on the side during their service and can’t make it back to the base on time).

Tebeka, the first Ethiopian legal advocacy group, was seed-funded by the New Israel Fund many years ago.  The organization, whose name means “advocate for justice” in Amharic, has been involved in these issues for years.  During the recent protests, Tebeka opened a hotline for Ethiopian Israelis to report incidents of police violence and to help jailed protesters secure legal representation.

Representatives of Tebeka said, “We are witnesses to another case of police violence against Ethiopian Israelis and this time we are talking about a soldier.  Until the Israeli police deal harshly with the guilty policemen and send a clear message that the task of the police is to protect citizens and not to attack them for no fault of their own, no branding campaign will succeed in removing the stains of injustice from their uniforms.”