Jews From Ethiopia Find They Are Aliens in Israel

In their native Ethiopia, they were hounded as Jews and told they should “return” to their real homeland: Israel.

So they did. With the help of American Jewish groups and the Israeli government, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who believed they were one of the lost tribes of Israel emigrated to the Jewish state so that they might finally feel at home.

Instead, they found themselves to be aliens in yet another land.

Israel offered the Ethiopian Jews housing, Hebrew classes and other material assistance. But it failed to recognize what was most important to the new immigrants: their Jewishness.

That was the first straw in a bale of frustrations that broke apart at a demonstration-turned-riot Sunday over a government policy of destroying blood donations from Ethiopian Jews out of fear that the blood might be infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

In fact, the anger that exploded into a clash with police outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem was fueled by many deep issues of religion, segregation, racism and--the last straw--the discarded blood.

“When I was in the army, I donated blood three times,” said Uri Zeleke, an immigrant who works in this Ethiopian community in rural central Israel as a liaison between new immigrants and the government’s Absorption Ministry.

“I stood in line like everyone else, and I gave my blood like everyone else and felt like one with the white guy next to me. And now I hear that they threw my blood away?” said an incredulous Zeleke. “This isn’t about AIDS, it’s racism. . . . And it’s unimaginably painful.”

Israelis were shocked by the outburst from a community that they had come to regard as docile and accepting of what it was given. Most Israelis did not know of the humiliations to which the Ethiopian immigrants felt they were subjected.

“Israelis are not aware that Ethiopians treasure honor more than material things,” said Yechiel Eran, head of immigrant integration for the Joint Distribution Committee. “Israel has been generous with material things but not always with respect for their [the Ethiopians’] honor.”

The riot heightened Israelis’ awareness, prompting a wave of self-examination in the press Monday; debates in the Knesset, the country’s parliament; apologies from both sides for the violence; and an announcement from Health Minister Ephraim Sneh that Ethiopian blood donations will be kept on ice until a government committee decides on a new policy for the government blood bank.

Not all were appeased. Adisso Massala, a leader of Israel’s Ethiopian community, told the Knesset Absorption Committee on Monday that if the concerns of the 50,000 Ethiopians are not met soon, Israel can expect more violence.

“We’ve had enough,” Massala said. “You make us learn the aggressive Israeli behavior. Maybe in this way we will obtain our goals.”

Ethiopian anger broke open after the Israeli newspaper Maariv revealed that the government had a long-standing policy of destroying donations from Ethiopians because the group has a significantly higher rate of HIV infection than the general Israeli population.

All blood is routinely tested in Israel, but an HIV-positive reading may not register in the blood for up to six months after the donor is infected. To minimize the risk of using tainted blood, the government began eliminating what it considered high-risk donations.

But officials never told the Ethiopians that. They continued to take their blood and, at least since 1991 but possibly as far back as eight years ago, threw it out. So, in addition to feeling stigmatized, Ethiopians said they feel deceived.

“I came here at 13, was educated in a boarding school and was very active and involved in everything like an Israeli,” said Asher Rahamim, 28, who co-founded the Zionist Organization for Immigrants From Ethiopia.

“Personally, I never felt that I did not belong to Israel. But when this happened with the blood, I look back at all of the years I worked so hard and I feel suddenly like a new immigrant all over, facing a society I don’t know,” he said.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration once banned blood donations by immigrants from Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa, a restriction that was lifted in 1990.

Ethiopians began arriving in Israel in the late 1970s. The Israeli government brought about 8,000 in secret airlifts in 1984 and another 14,000 in Operation Solomon in 1991.

The Ethiopians’ problems began immediately, when their Judaism, isolated from mainstream Judaism for more than 2,000 years, was not accepted by the rabbinate in Israel. Their leaders, called kessim, were not recognized, and Ethiopian men, in particular, were made to go through ritual conversions that they found insulting because they felt they had kept the faith alive for millennia without anyone’s seal of approval.

Because they were not considered “real Jews,” they found it difficult to marry in Israel, where there is no civil marriage.

Coming from an agrarian, underdeveloped country and, frequently, from illiterate households, their children had trouble keeping up in school with children of a modern, Western society.

“They did not have a Western-style education, and they just did not know how to sit down and study math with their children,” said an Israeli who works resettling Ethiopians. “The problem is, I don’t believe you can close the gap between an agrarian community and a high-tech society in one generation.”

On the other hand, the government sent the Ethiopians to live in remote areas and their children to rural religious schools that did not always offer instruction at the highest academic level.

Some Israeli parents announced that they did not want their children going to camp with Ethiopian children for fear they might contract AIDS.