Integrate Ethiopians

Editorial reprinted from The Jerusalem Post, September 7, 2005

On the first day of school last week 50 youngsters – dressed up, toting schoolbags and new supplies – were turned away from Or Yehuda's Sa'adya Gaon Elementary School by orders of the mayor, who protested "the imposition" on his anyway underprivileged township of immigrants even worse off than the original population.

After a petition to the Supreme Court, severe rebukes from the state comptroller, concerted attacks from the Knesset Education Committee and a unanimous media thrashing, Mayor Yitzhak Bukovsa relented and allowed the pupils – all children of immigrant Ethiopian families – into the classes they were to attend in the first place.

In Israel's entire history of absorbing disparate immigrants from the far-flung corners of the globe, not a single group encountered anything of the sort. In this the Ethiopian experience is unique.

The sad fact, however, is that there isn't much new in the Or Yehuda story.

Other immigrant groups have not suffered similar rejection, but the Ethiopians certainly have. Bukovsa's bid to exile Ethiopians from city's schools has previously been attempted elsewhere, too. The only difference is that Bukovsa's executive decree has attracted considerable press attention, whereas identical moves by other mayors in the very recent past somehow escaped notoriety.

Only last year, for instance, Kiryat Yam refused to accept any more Ethiopian pupils to its schools. A school-within-a-school was almost set up in Ashdod to essentially segregate Ethiopian enrollees, who, local parents feared, would drag their own children down.

There are plenty of local authorities that bus their Ethiopian pupils to more distant schools in other localities. Often families acquiesce, raise no squawk and nobody's the wiser. Thus children from culturally deprived backgrounds fall further behind when they spent hours on the road to and from class, some starting their day as early as 5 a.m.

Bukovsa's response is that his critics "are hypocrites from well-to-do neighborhoods where Ethiopians don't congregate." Unpalatable and legally irrelevant as his in-your-face retort is, we must in all honesty admit the veracity of another of his observations: that the shunting aside he advocates locally is already being conducted nationally.

Bukovsa notes that his town, founded by Iraqi olim and bolstered later by North African newcomers, is problem-ridden to begin with. Its city government is nearly bankrupt. The influx of a thousand Ethiopian families makes a bad situation worse and bodes ill for the prospects of the Ethiopian youngsters themselves. He figures the Ethiopian communities ought to be dispersed in smaller numbers in wealthy towns.

Perhaps he is right, but the coarse social engineering methods of the past are not sufficient to deal with the problem.

Unlike other immigrants, Ethiopians receive special housing grants, yet even these won't go far in costly locations and the taxpayer certainly cannot finance luxury housing. Ethiopian families thus per force gravitate to locales they can afford and this makes economic sense.

They also seek each other out, as immigrants everywhere do. As a result, Rehovot's Kiryat Moshe, for instance, is heavily Ethiopian and 10 kindergartens there are 95% Ethiopian. It has its own tiny school in which the enrollment is 90% Ethiopian. The pupils at Netanya's Rambam school are also 95% Ethiopian.

Things frequently hinge on how new a family is to Israel. The more veteran meander out of immigrant communities. The newest are generally concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods.

Bukovsa is right about one thing, that the challenge of integrating Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society should be a national one, and that the burden of doing so should not fall predominantly on communities that are least able to shoulder it.

Full integration may never have been a realistic goal for those who late in life were rescued from the desperate conditions in their native land, whisked to a place they knew only from their prayers. It is not acceptable, however, that the second generation – born in Israel, speaking fluent Hebrew and ostensibly receiving a full Israeli education – is not being giving more of an opportunity to fully integrate into Israeli society.

That eager, innocent children who showed up for their first day of school were turned away just begins to show the depth of the problem. That act was shameful, but the continued refusal to address the wider situation is worse still.