Raising a voice against racism

With Ethiopian-Israeli anti-racism protests expected to reconvene on Sunday afternoon — possibly birthing a larger movement — the Hebrew papers on Sunday spotlight the mounting frustrations of members of the community about police brutality and discrimination.

Meanwhile, with a Wednesday deadline for the final coalition dealings, the papers also offer an update on the efforts to form a government, as well as the search for the last missing Israeli in Nepal — both of which appear to have hit a dead end.

Yedioth Ahronoth leads with the Ethiopian Israeli protests, which are set to spread to Tel Aviv later Sunday afternoon. Writing for the paper, Danny Adino Ababa, who is of Ethiopian origin, argues that the demonstrations are not merely about a shocking incident of police brutality recorded on camera, but rather the general discrimination against the community.

“It mostly hurt me to see that our protests are perceived as focused only on police brutality against Ethiopians. The truth is that this is just the tip of the iceberg: the violence and discrimination against us are not the police’s problem. It’s first and foremost your problem,” he writes. He maintains that the protests are the “accumulated frustrations of everything that happened to us in the past 30 years.”

“You did have mercy on us, but you’ve never seen us as equals. When I meet elderly women in bus stops, they often say: ‘You Ethiopians are cute’ and then add ‘it’s good that you were brought over here.’ At first I thought that you really loved us, but then I discovered that you belittle us — [treating us] not like people, but like infants. So sure, we’re harmless, but we are also not helpful. In your eyes, I am your darling Ethiopian, characterized as ‘cute’ in order not to challenge the senior status of ‘the real Israelis,’ the sabras.”

The paper notes that the organizers of the protest, most of whom were born in Israel, are furious at Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino for praising the cops for demonstrating restraint at the protests in Jerusalem on Thursday night, in which over a dozen people were injured. “He seems not to have understood why we went out to protest. I think that it was some nerve to say the police showed restraint. We are the ones that showed restraint,” Manny Yaso, one of the organizers tells the paper. He said he feared that “what will happen here will be like Baltimore, because the pain is great.”

The report also says that members of the Ethiopian Israeli community are angry with IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who has not yet condemned the attack on the IDF soldier, despite having immediately decried an attack on an ultra-Orthodox soldier several weeks ago.

“We are not far from the day when Ethiopian members of the IDF will issue a call to refuse army orders,” Amir Sabhat, a senior officer in the IDF reserves says. “Why should we protect the country if they don’t protect us?”

Over in Haaretz, the paper features a “Letter from a black student,” who writes that the soldiers’ beating was not the first incident of its kind, but merely the first to be widely publicized. Inlam Magnisto writes that “if it was an Ethiopian youth who was not in uniform, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have heard about it. And also, many would assume that he had broken the law. Make no mistake — in past years there were cases where teenagers from the Ethiopian community were attacked. Some of the cases were captured on camera and investigated, but most were not addressed.”

Magnisto, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, mentions the arrest of Yosef Salmasa, who committed suicide several months after he was detained by police and tasered. His parents maintain the incident drove him to suicide.

At the protest, “there were also people who shouted from their cars ‘good for you,’ or ‘good luck with the struggle.’ These well wishes created a feeling of foreignness and hypocrisy. Of my otherness as a black person. I wondered why there were no white people in this struggle. Are we not part of them, part of the broader society? Of course there were those who passed by with their faces blank. All this isn’t simple for the people for whom the victim mentality is such a big part of their identity, with regard to every remark, even a positive one, which comes out of his ‘group.’ I want to feel like I belong,” she writes.

Meanwhile, the coalition talks are front-and-center in Israel Hayom, which maintains that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to sign agreements with Yisrael Beytenu, Jewish Home, and Shas by the Wednesday deadline, but notes “there hasn’t been significant progress for a while.” The daily says that Netanyahu will announce the portfolios for Likud members on Thursday and Sunday. Overall, “the government will appoint 22 ministers: three in Kulanu, three in the Jewish Home, two in Shas, two in Yisrael Beytenu, and 12 in Likud.”

Haaretz, by contrast, indicates that members of the Likud party are concerned that Netanyahu won’t make the deadline due to Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman’s refusal to back down on their demands. Bennett is demanding that a deputy minister be appointed to the Religious Affairs Ministry, after the portfolio is set to be handed over to Shas. Meanwhile, the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog recently met with Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, Meretz leader Zahava Gal-on, and the Joint [Arab] List Ayman Odeh to ready the opposition, it reports.

The papers also spotlight the last missing Israeli in Nepal, Or Asraf, and his father’s pleading not to give up on the search for his son.

Or Asraf seen in the Himalayas. (Screen capture: Channel 2 via Facebook)

“I’m not going home without Or,” Patrick Asraf tells Yedioth from Kathmandu. “I will stay here as long as is necessary. I am optimistic. I believe Or is alive.”