[news] Hip Hoppers and Black Panthers in the Holy Land

[Ishaq]

Hip Hoppers and Black Panthers in the Holy Land

<mailto:montfu65 at hotmail.com>

    Ethiopian Jews often live in refugee camps reminiscent of those in
    which Palestinians are confined. Ethiopian Jews say they are often
    referred to as "primitives," that their Jewishness is regularly
    questioned and they are often made to go through conversion rituals
    despite being born and raised Jewish. ...In 1996, relations between
    the Ethiopian community and the Israeli state hit a low point, when
    it was discovered that Israeli hospitals regularly threw out all
    blood donated by Ethiopians for fear that it was contaminated by AIDS.

Hip Hoppers and Black Panthers in the Holy Land

By Hisham Aidi

Last week, the Jewish affairs weekly, The Forward, reported that a 
leading Conservative rabbi in Israel was charging two Orthodox kibbutzim 
in Israel with discrimination after they refused to admit two Ugandan 
Jews to their Hebrew language programs. The director of the Rabbinical 
Assembly of Israel, Rabbi Andrew Sacks, alleged that the two East 
Africans -- members of the Abayudaya community of 600 Ugandans whose 
forefathers embraced Judaism in 1919 -- were not allowed into the 
classes because they were black. "We have had a myriad of problems with 
the Interior Ministry in regards to persons of color," Sacks stated. 
"Virtually every Conservative convert that was a person of color was 
immediately suspect."

The incident sparked a lively discussion in Israeli newspapers about 
race and discrimination in Israeli society, and about the increasing, 
well "blackness" of African Jews in Israel. At the Central Bus Station 
in Tel Aviv, in an area known locally as Little Africa, one often sees 
Ethiopian Jewish teenagers milling around, sporting baggy jeans, Kangol 
hats, sports jerseys, voguish hairstyles - African braids, Rastafarian 
dreads, bald heads - and the occasional yarmulke. The Ethiopian youth, 
many of whom are often suspected of petty crime and drug use, are an 
indicator to many social critics that Israel is developing a new kind of 
underclass. They're also another example of how marginalized, 
disaffected youth of color the world over increasingly look towards 
African Americans, American black culture and the Civil Rights struggle 
when trying to make sense of their own predicaments.

The link between African America and Israel's African Jewry is more than 
a matter of shared style and global popular culture. In Operations Moses 
and Solomon in 1984 and 1991, over thirty thousand Ethiopian Jews were 
airlifted from their East African land of birth to Israel. Eleven years 
hence, and despite government policies of affirmative action (such as 
tuition-wavers for Ethiopian university students, and favorable mortgage 
terms) the situation of Ethiopian Jews, who make up one percent of the 
Israeli population, remains grave. A report earlier this summer in the 
Christian Science Monitor stated: "The gap between black and white 
Israelis seems, with some exceptions, to be growing. For Ethiopians, it 
is visible in impoverished neighborhoods, soaring unemployment, and the 
highest high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. 
Twenty-six percent of Ethiopian youths have either dropped out or do not 
show up for classes most of the time, raising concerns that the 
community's current difficulties may become chronic. Drug use, including 
glue-sniffing, is on the rise, and criminal activity, hardly known among 
Ethiopians before they came to Israel, has been growing." Ethiopians, 
according to various reports, are the poorest of Israel's Jews: 77 
percent of Ethiopian adults are unemployed, and 72 percent of Ethiopian 
immigrant children grow up in families that are living below the 
official poverty line.

Cultural differences, illiteracy, poverty and discrimination have 
contributed to the current predicament of the Ethiopian community. So 
has the fact that Ethiopian Jews often live in refugee camps reminiscent 
of those in which Palestinians are confined. Many of the Ethiopians were 
initially placed in mobile caravan communities on the periphery of 
cities, and many have yet to relocate (or be relocated) to urban areas. 
Mayors shamelessly urge the Israeli government to keep Ethiopian 
immigrants away from their municipalities. Masha Aroshes, an official 
from the Rishon LeZion municipality, told the Christian Science Monitor 
that Ethiopian families were not welcome in her municipality: "They are 
going to a neighborhood which the mayor has been trying very hard to 
improve. It is just starting to flower. Adding another 35 Ethiopian 
families is not right. It impacts on the education level."

Ethiopian Jews say they are often referred to as "primitives," that 
their Jewishness is regularly questioned and they are often made to go 
through conversion rituals despite being born and raised Jewish. Habad, 
one of Israel's orthodox religious groups, does not recognize the 
Ethiopians as Jews and does not allow their children into its 
kindergartens. Ethiopian Jews also complain of discrimination in the IDF 
(Israeli Defense Forces), and note that Ethiopians have the highest 
suicide rate in the army.

In 1996, relations between the Ethiopian community and the Israeli state 
hit a low point, when it was discovered that Israeli hospitals regularly 
threw out all blood donated by Ethiopians for fear that it was 
contaminated by AIDS. Ethiopian youths rioted, and the race row was 
commemorated by Ethiopian groups such as Dreams in rap style lyrics 
("You distanced us from society as defectives / But more than anything / 
you drew a conclusion / when you threw away our blood like dry leaves"), 
as the search for Ethiopian Jewish cultural identity leading 
increasingly not towards Israel but transatlantic, to African American 
and Caribbean identities. Rahamim Elazar, the director of Israel's Radio 
Amharic, says the marginalization of Ethiopian youth in Israel has led 
to a sense of solidarity with African Americans and West Indians. "When 
you see their behavior in terms of haircut, dress, and jewelry, it's 
entirely different than what we are used to," Elazar explains. "Black 
people in Israel don't feel they are part and parcel of the Israeli 
public or society, so they are trying to relate to African-Americans or 
Jamaicans."

To understand the particular "blackening" of Ethiopian Jews, one must 
examine the schism between Jews of African and Middle Eastern origin 
(called "Mizrahi") and the Jews of European ancestry (called 
"Ashkenazi"). In March 1971, riots erupted in the Musrara neighborhood 
in Jerusalem, home to Jews of North African (Mizrahi) origin. The riots 
were led by a group of unemployed, disenchanted North African (mostly 
Moroccan) youths who were protesting the neglect of the Labor government 
and the purported racism of the Ashkenazi political class. Calling 
themselves the Black Panthers, this local youth organization, which 
began with demands for better schools and extra-curricular services in 
their neighborhood, would become one of the most powerful and militant 
radical groups in Israeli politics whose legacy and influence would 
reshape the country's political landscape.

The Israeli Panthers evocation of the rhetoric and tactics of the 
American freedom struggle was obvious. The Israeli Black Panthers 
borrowed their name from the American Black Panthers, and the symbol of 
the panther and the fist was displayed on every banner and T-shirt. They 
sported Afros, and adopted black nationalist concepts and expressions 
such as "white power," "masters and slaves" and "police state," applying 
them to the Mizrahi/Ashkenazi dynamic. The Panthers also borrowed the 
tradition of uncompromising, aggressive protest, bringing together 
thousands in rallies in Jerusalem throughout 1971. At one rally in Zion 
Square, Jerusalem, the Panthers burnt an effigy of then Prime Minister 
Golda Meir, and declared: "We are warning the government that we will 
take all necessary means against show trials of the Panthers...a state 
in which half the population are kings, and the other half are treated 
as exploited slaves - we will burn it down." The Panthers rhetoric was 
controversial and polarizing: They claimed the Ashkenazi state was 
racist and that darker-hued Jews of North African were the victims of 
Zionism just like the Palestinians - a comparison considered the utmost 
treason by many Ashkenazi's.

Golda Meir responded to claims of racism by blaming the victims: "They 
brought discrimination with them. Back in the countries they came from, 
there was discrimination against them...They are not very nice boys." 
Then, in an eerie echo of events on the other side of the Atlantic, 
Black Panther "uprising," as it has been called, would fizzle out after 
a year, as state authorities granted some concessions and encouraged 
Panther leaders to run for seats in the Knesset. Because of their 
incendiary rhetoric and bad-boy image, the Panthers never gained 
widespread electoral support, but they did electrify and mobilize the 
Mizrahi electorate who bolted from the Labor Party. The absence of 
non-white votes lead to the so-called Upset of 1977, when the Labor 
government was dislodged from power after three decades by the even more 
conservative (and some would argue, xenophobic) Likud, an unintended to 
the Mizrahim's newfound political muscle.

Speaking by telephone from Tel Aviv, Dr. Sami Shalom Chetrit, a 
professor of cultural studies at Hebrew University who has written 
extensively on the influence of African-American ideas on Israeli 
politics, told Africana that the smaller (and more recently arrived) 
Ethiopian community has yet to develop a political movement on a par 
with the North African Mizrahi: "The Ethiopians feel rejected by Israeli 
society. They've adopted African-American and Caribbean styles, and they 
feel more at home with the [non-Jewish] African immigrants. But any 
protest has been local, it's not a movement yet."

Like the North African youths in the 1970s, the Ethiopians say they 
inhabit "the other Israel" - not the promised land of which their 
parents spoke. Nadav Haber, a lawyer/activist who works with Ethiopian 
youth, however, points to differences between yesteryear's Black 
Panthers and todays's Afrocentric Ethiopian youth: "Unfortunately, the 
African-American influence is quite superficial, coming mostly through 
MTV. Ethiopian kids do not understand English - 81 percent study in 
schools that don't teach English, so how can they be influenced by 
Malcolm X or Martin Luther King?"

Government officials emphasize that in 2002 there are 1,500 Ethiopians 
in universities, compared to a 100 in 1997, and that $600 million has 
been earmarked for a nine-year job-training and educational program for 
Ethiopian immigrants. Activists like Haber are unfazed. "They receive 
mortgages to buy houses, but the mortgage plans send them to the poorest 
neighborhoods, like in the city of Lod, a drug center that is now 50 
percent Ethiopian. There's a lot of anger at the establishment. Crime is 
growing rapidly. Very soon in all Ethiopian families there's going to be 
someone with a criminal record. And the sad thing is that there is no 
public discussion of this"

At street level, though, Ethiopian youth and other disaffected Israeli 
teenagers congregate regularly at Tel Aviv clubs such as The Soweto and 
The House. In May, a "hip-hop dance protest" was held in downtown Tel 
Aviv bringing together some 1000 youths calling for an Israeli 
withdrawal from the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. 
The rally was held under a gigantic banner that read, "Get out of the 
territories so we can get out of our houses," and included performances 
by Arab and Jewish rap groups. Born in American inner cities, hip-hop 
and the language of the black freedom struggle have traveled to the 
other side of the world, bringing together youths of different 
background to call for peace and social justice in one of the most 
troubled areas of the world.
First published: September 23, 2002
About the Author

Hisham Aidi is a writer living in New York.

http://Ethiopian Jews say they are often referred to as 
<http://%20Ethiopian%20Jews%20say%20they%20are%20often%20referred%20to%20as>


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