In 1976, the Israeli government gave Ethiopian Jews the right to immigrate to Israel. Several hundred Ethiopian Jews already living in Israel at the time were granted full citizenship.
The subsequent dramatic airlifts of Ethiopian Jews from the heart of Africa to the Promised Land in 1984 (Operation Moses) and 1991 (Operation Solomon) captured the world’s imagination. For centuries Ethiopian Jews had cherished the dream that one day they would return to Jerusalem. The dream finally came true, but for most newcomers the reality has fallen short of their expectations.
Before arriving in Israel, most Ethiopian Jews had been semi-literate subsistence farmers living in simple villages, usually without electricity or modern conveniences. Being thrust into a fast-paced, high-tech society has been traumatic, especially for the older generations.
Some of Israel’s 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have done well, especially the children of community leaders, but many struggle.
Yitzhak Dessie became the first Ethiopian-born Israeli lawyer when he qualified in 1998. With the support of the New Israel Fund, which promotes social justice and human rights in Israel, he set up Tebeka — Center for Legal Aid and Advocacy for Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Though “the kind of prejudice that existed in pre-’60s America or apartheid South Africa is very rare in Israel,” says Dessie, “the main form of discrimination is still the belief that Ethiopian Israelis are not fully Jewish.”
Yet deep-rooted socioeconomic prejudices rear their heads, too. Some cities are reluctant to take in large numbers of Ethiopian immigrants, fearing that they will make the city less attractive for young middle-class couples. Last September, Yitzhak Bokovza, the mayor of Or Yehuda near Tel Aviv, reversed his refusal to register 42 Ethiopian Israeli immigrant children in the city’s schools after Tebeka appealed to the Supreme Court against the action.
Nonetheless, Dessie is hopeful about the Ethiopian Israeli community’s future. “The essential obstacle confronting Israel’s Ethiopian-born community,” he insists, “is not discrimination but lack of employment opportunities and their inability to grasp Israeli culture.”
With this in mind, Tebeka initiated a positive discrimination program with the Israel Bar Association last summer, and so far 12 Ethiopian Israeli law graduates have been fast-tracked as interns with leading Tel Aviv corporate law firms, with more on thd way.
Asher Elias had similar motivations and priorities when he established Tech-Career in 2004, a center for training Ethiopians to work in high-tech. He sees employment as key to the full integration of Israel’s Ethiopians. “Employment is tied to education,” he says, “but even so, there are over 3,000 university-educated Ethiopian Israelis. That’s a huge potential reservoir.
“The problem is that they are channeled toward low-paid careers in teaching, social work and nursing. Ethiopians cannot be accepted into the computer science departments of universities and go into high-tech, which is one of the most lucrative areas in the economy, because the academic elite has set criteria in the form of psychometric exams in which our community scores low.”
Elias, who gave up his own lucrative career in high-tech to prove that large numbers of fellow Ethiopians have the potential to make it in the advanced technology sector, set up Tech-Career together with American immigrant Glen Stein, who was involved with an American project called Byte Back, which trained the disadvantaged for work in high-tech.
Based on Kibbutz Nachshon, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Tech-Career offers a yearlong intensive program for high school graduates from the Ethiopian Israeli community. In the first year, nine of 15 students graduated the course and found work in high-tech.
Benjamin Melko, 26, is one of them. He joined a high-tech company as an Internet site developer, earning a salary far higher than in his previous job as a security guard.
“I immigrated to Israel at the age of 4 with my mother. My father stayed in Ethiopia,” Melko says. “I wanted to go to university, but I knew that in order to live I’d need to work at random jobs and that it would affect my studies. I heard about the Tech-Career project and decided to join. It’s one of the smartest decisions I ever made.” The salary “will be easier for me to finance my studies.”