The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells - YouTube

The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells - YouTube

The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells

Unpacked

9,435 views  Aug 31, 2026  Borderlines with That_Semite

Israel promises to be a home for every Jew. But for Ethiopian Jews, arriving often meant having their identity questioned and their history erased. Sociologist Dr. Efrat Yerday joins Yirmiyahu Danzig to challenge the familiar Operation Moses rescue story, reveal the activism that came before it, and confront racism, belonging, and Zionism in Israel. Can a country face its failures and still become the home it promised to be?

#ethiopianjews #israel #zionism

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 <이스라엘이 거의 들려주지 않는 에티오피아계 유대인 이야기(The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells)>의 대화록을 바탕으로 작성한 요약과 평론입니다. 나를 향하지 않은 글의 지침에 따라 <해라>체로 서술하였다.

<이스라엘이 거의 들려주지 않는 에티오피아계 유대인 이야기> 요약 및 평론

1. 내용 요약

(1) 모세 작전 신화의 해체와 가려진 20년의 투쟁

이스라엘의 주류 담론에서 에티오피아계 유대인(베타 이스라엘)의 이주는 흔히 모사드(Mossad)와 국가 기관이 위험에 처한 동포를 극적으로 구출해 낸 영웅 서사인 <모세 작전(Operation Moses)>으로 기억된다. 그러나 사회학자 에프랏 예르데이(Dr. Efrat Yerday) 박사는 이 구출 서사가 역사를 왜곡하고 은폐한다고 지적한다.

실제로는 1980년대 대규모 공수 작전 이전인 1950~1970년대부터 에티오피아계 유대인들이 관광 비자나 취업 허가 등을 통해 자력으로 이스라엘에 입국하여 법적·사회적 기반을 다졌다. 예르데이 박사의 부친 역시 1970년 관광객으로 입국해 추방 명령을 피해 숨어 지내면서도, 키부츠와 협력 네트워크를 구축하고 1970년대 초 이디오피아 유대인 협회를 조직해 국가를 상대로 법적 지위 획득과 이주 승인을 위해 싸웠다. 모세 작전은 국가의 자발적 시혜가 아니라, 이들 선구적 활동가들과 미국계 유대인 인권 단체들의 집요한 압박 끝에 마지못해 취해진 지연된 조치였다.

(2) 국가 권력의 체계적 배제와 인종주의적 편견

이스라엘 건국 전후의 지배 엘리트들은 에티오피아계 유대인의 이주를 의도적으로 거부하고 차단했다. 1930년대 유대인기구(Jewish Agency)의 아서 루핀(Arthur Ruppin) 같은 인물은 우생학적 관점에 입각해 흑인 유대인의 혈통적 유대성을 부인했다. 다비드 벤구리온(David Ben-Gurion)과 골다 메이어(Golda Meir) 등 초기 지도자들 역시 에티오피아 유대인의 귀환법(Law of Return) 적용을 지속적으로 회피했다.

심지어 1960년대 이스라엘 국가는 에티오피아 현지에 이들을 위한 정착촌을 건설하여 예루살렘 귀환 열망을 무마하는 동시에, 이를 에티오피아 정부와의 군사·정보 협력 및 국경 감시의 도구로 활용하기도 했다.

(3) 세속적 법 체계와 종교법(Halakha)의 역설

많은 이들이 종교계가 배타적이고 세속주의 시오니즘 세력이 포용적일 것이라 짐작하지만, 에티오피아 유대인의 유대성 인정 과정에서는 역설적인 상황이 나타났다. 서구 식민주의와 제국주의적 인종 위계(아슈케나지·세속·백인 중심주의)에 젖어 있던 세속 국가 관료제는 이들의 시민권을 철저히 가로막았다.

반면, 세파르디 수석 랍비 오바디아 요세프(Rabbi Ovadia Yosef)를 비롯한 종교 당국은 15~16세기 랍비 데이비드 이븐 짐라(Radbaz) 등의 고전 종교 법령을 근거로 에티오피아 공동체가 완전한 유대인임을 선언하며 국가의 인종주의적 장벽에 균열을 냈다.

(4) 시오니즘과 유대 국가의 정체성에 대한 논쟁

진행자인 이르미야후 단지그(Yirmiyahu Danzig)와 예르데이 박사는 시오니즘의 본질을 두고 깊이 있는 대화를 나눈다.

• 예르데이 박사의 시각: 시오니즘은 태생적으로 유럽 제국주의와 식민주의, 우생학의 영향을 깊게 받은 세속적 기획이며, 디아스포라 유대인 전통에 대한 자기 혐오와 서구 백인 우월주의적 위계를 내면화한 국가 체제다. 따라서 서구의 여타 인종차별 사회와 다를 바 없는 억압 구조를 지닌다.

• 단지그 및 활동가들의 시각: 초기 건국자들의 인종적 편견과 제도적 과오는 명백히 비판받아야 하지만, 시오니즘은 헤르첼이나 벤구리온만의 전유물이 아니다. 수천 년간 시온을 갈망하며 걷고 투쟁해 온 베타 이스라엘과 다양한 유색 유대인들 역시 시오니즘의 정당한 주체이며, 국가는 완제품이 아니라 내부 투쟁을 통해 교정해 나가야 할 미완의 집이다.

2. 평론: 신화화된 구원 서사와 민족국가의 배타적 균열

(1) 온정주의적 <구출 신화>가 은폐하는 당사자성

<모세 작전> 서사는 전형적인 서구 중심적 <백인 구원자 서사(White Savior Narrative)>의 구조를 띤다. 곤경에 처한 무력한 타자를 근대화된 국가 기구가 극적으로 구원해 낸다는 이 드라마는, 이스라엘이 디아스포라의 피난처라는 민족적 도덕성을 과시하기에 더없이 매력적인 각본이다.

그러나 이 대화는 그 눈부신 신화 뒤에 가려진 당사자들의 20년에 걸친 생존과 연대, 합법과 불법의 경계를 넘나든 저항의 역사를 정확히 복원한다. 구출 신화가 소비되는 순간, 주체적 정치 투쟁은 지워지고 수동적 수혜자만이 남게 된다는 지적은 국가가 소수 집단의 역사를 어떻게 전유하고 탈정치화하는지를 날카롭게 폭로한다.

(2) 근대 민족주의와 식민주의적 인종 범주의 내면화

이스라엘이 서구 반유대주의의 피해자들로 세워진 국가임에도 불구하고, 내부적으로는 서구 제국주의가 발전시킨 인종적 위계와 우생학적 선별 기제를 고스란히 복제했다는 점은 근대 민족국가 기획의 본질적 모순을 드러낸다. 아서 루핀으로 대표되는 초기 시오니즘 관료들의 시선에서 비서구·흑인 유대인은 <진정한 유대인> 범주에 쉽게 들어올 수 없는 타자였다.

유대 민족의 안전을 도모한다는 명분 아래 성립된 국동체 안에서도 피부색과 출신 지역에 따라 <시민권>이라는 기본 권리의 문턱 자체가 차등화되었다는 사실은, 억압받던 자가 권력을 쥘 때 기존 지배 체제의 인종주의적 통치 술수를 어떻게 계승하는가를 적나라하게 보여준다.

(3) 법 실증주의의 냉혹함과 규범적 전통의 전복적 잠재력

세속 근대법과 종교법의 대립에 대한 통찰은 매우 흥미롭다. 통상 근대적 세속주의는 진보와 평등의 상징으로, 종교적 규범은 폐쇄와 고립의 상징으로 간주된다. 그러나 본 논의에서는 서구 식민 질서와 결탁한 근대 세속 관료제가 배제의 도구로 작동한 반면, 오히려 전통 텍스트에 기반한 종교법 해석이 근대적 인종 범주를 무력화하고 공동체적 연대를 확장하는 도구로 쓰였다.

이는 인종이라는 근대적 발명물이 확립되기 이전의 텍스트가, 근대 민족국가의 인종주의적 법 체계를 교란하고 저항하는 의외의 이론적 자원이 될 수 있음을 시사한다.

(4) 국가에 대한 소유권: 교정의 대상인가, 본질적 억압체인가

대담 말미에 드러나는 두 갈래의 접근법—체제의 식민주의적 DNA를 냉정하게 직시하는 사회학적 해체론과, <이곳도 우리의 집>이기에 끝까지 남아 투쟁하겠다는 참여적 실존주의—은 국가를 바라보는 소수자 정치학의 고전적 긴장을 대변한다.

건국자들의 이데올로기적 한계가 명백할지라도 그 이념의 지평을 주변부 주체들의 열망과 역사로 전유하려는 시도는 실천적으로 유의미하다. 그러나 동시에, 지배 권력이 설계한 근본적 인종 위계와 폭력을 온정적 애국주의나 <성장통>이라는 이름으로 낭만화하지 않기 위해서는 예르데이 박사가 보여준 냉철한 역사적 탈신화화 작업이 영구적인 비판적 긴장으로 동반되어야 할 것이다.

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<The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells> 요약·평론

이 자료는 Unpacked의 <Borders with That_Semite>에서 사회학자 에프라트 예르다이(Efrat Yerday)가 에티오피아계 유대인의 이스라엘 이주사를 자신의 가족사와 연결해 설명한 약 1시간 10분의 인터뷰를 옮긴 것이다. 제목이 암시하듯 중심 문제는 잘 알려진 <모세 작전(Operation Moses)>의 영웅적 구출 서사를 부정하는 데 있지 않다. 오히려 그 서사가 시작되기 훨씬 전부터 에티오피아 유대인들이 이스라엘에 가기 위해 스스로 조직하고 싸웠으며, 동시에 이스라엘의 국가기관과 유대 종교기관이 오랫동안 이들의 유대인성을 의심하고 이주를 저지했다는 사실을 복원하려 한다. 예르다이에게 이것은 단순한 역사 문제가 아니다. “나는 이 나라에서 태어나고 자란 아슈케나지 유대인이다. 그런데 이 나라가 누구를 정말 유대인으로 인정하는가?”라는 질문과 연결된 자신의 정체성 문제이기도 하다.

인터뷰의 출발점은 인종주의다. 진행자는 미국의 반흑인 인종주의와 이스라엘의 현실을 연결하려 하지만, 예르다이는 처음부터 <모든 서구 사회는 anti-black 사회이며 이스라엘도 예외가 아니다>라고 말하면서도 미국의 개념을 이스라엘에 그대로 적용하는 데는 신중하다. 미국 흑인의 역사에는 노예제와 대서양 노예무역이라는 독특한 구조가 있고, 에티오피아 유대인의 경험은 그것과 다르기 때문이다. 이스라엘에서 흑인성이 문제가 되는 방식은 유대 국가의 건설, 아슈케나지 중심성, 유럽 중심주의, 종교법, 이민정책, 시오니즘의 역사와 결합되어 있다. 따라서 그는 미국식 <white supremacy>라는 언어보다 이스라엘에서는 <아슈케나지 문화의 우위>, <세속주의적 국가제도의 우위>, 그리고 에티오피아 유대인에 대한 <anti-blackness>가 서로 중첩되어 있다고 보는 편이 더 정확하다고 주장한다.

이 지점에서 인터뷰의 가장 흥미로운 부분이 나온다. 예르다이는 흔히 알려진 “이스라엘이 위험에 처한 에티오피아 유대인을 발견하고 모세 작전을 통해 구출했다”는 이야기를 뒤집는다. 실제로는 1980년대 대규모 공수작전보다 20년가량 앞서 에티오피아 유대인들이 이스라엘로 오기 시작했다. 그의 아버지도 1970년 7월 관광비자로 이스라엘에 들어왔다가 체류했고, 추방 명령까지 받았다. 당시 일부 에티오피아 유대인들은 에티오피아와 이스라엘 사이를 오가거나, 키부츠에서 노동하며, 서로를 연결하고, 정치인과 랍비에게 자신들을 유대인으로 인정하고 귀환권을 적용하라고 요구했다. 이들은 단순히 구조를 기다리고 있던 수동적 난민이 아니었다.

예르다이가 특히 강조하는 것은 이들이 만든 <네트워크>와 <20년간의 운동>이다. 1960~70년대에 에티오피아 유대인들이 이스라엘 안에서 조직을 만들고, 이미 이주한 사람들과 에티오피아의 공동체를 연결하고, 언론·종교계·정치권을 움직였다. 일부 이스라엘인과 미국 유대인도 이들을 도왔다. 인터뷰에서 그는 모세 작전을 가능하게 한 배후에는 바로 이런 오랜 조직화와 압력이 있었다고 주장한다. 특히 미국의 작은 유대인 활동가 집단이 “이스라엘이 에티오피아 유대인을 버리고 있다”는 사실을 국제적으로 문제 삼겠다고 압박한 것이 정부 정책 변화에 영향을 주었다고 설명한다. 따라서 영웅은 모사드나 이스라엘 국가만이 아니다. 이주를 요구하고 자신들이 유대인임을 증명해야 했던 에티오피아 유대인들 자신이 역사적 행위자였다.

여기에는 상당히 불편한 역설이 있다. 이스라엘은 전 세계 유대인에게 귀환의 고향을 자처했지만 에티오피아 유대인에게는 오랫동안 그 문을 열지 않았다. 이들의 유대인성 자체가 의심받았다. 일부 종교 당국은 에티오피아 유대인이 이스라엘에 들어와도 다시 종교적 인정 절차를 밟도록 요구했다. 예르다이는 이것이 단순히 할라카의 기술적 논쟁이 아니라고 본다. 그는 과거의 주요 랍비들이 이미 에티오피아 유대인을 유대인으로 인정한 자료들이 있었음에도 불구하고 20세기 이스라엘의 종교·정치 엘리트들이 다시 그들의 유대인성을 문제 삼았다고 지적한다. 특히 피부색과 출신지가 이러한 의심에서 완전히 분리될 수 없다고 주장한다.

인터뷰의 또 다른 중요한 층위는 시오니즘에 대한 예르다이의 매우 복합적인 태도다. 그는 시오니즘을 거부하지 않는다. 오히려 자신을 시오니스트라고 명백히 말한다. 그러나 헤르츨, 벤구리온, 시오니즘 초기 기관들을 성역화하는 태도도 거부한다. 당시 유럽 사회의 우생학, 인종주의, 식민주의적 사고가 일부 시오니스트들에게도 존재했으며, 그것이 에티오피아 유대인을 바라보는 시각에 흔적을 남겼다는 것이다. 이 대목에서 진행자가 “그렇다면 시오니즘 자체가 문제인가?”라고 압박하자 예르다이는 중요한 구분을 한다. 어떤 사상의 창시자나 역사적 제도가 인종주의적 요소를 가졌다고 해서 그 사상이 반드시 그 요소로만 정의되는 것은 아니라는 것이다.

그는 미국의 예를 든다. 미국 독립선언의 자유와 평등의 이상을 제시한 사람들이 노예제와 관계되어 있었다고 해서 자유와 평등이라는 이상 자체를 폐기할 필요는 없다. 오히려 마틴 루터 킹 주니어가 그 이상을 미국 사회에 되돌려 들이밀며 “당신들이 선언한 원칙을 실제로 실천하라”고 요구했던 것처럼, 시오니즘도 그 최선의 약속을 기준으로 비판할 수 있다는 것이다. 예르다이가 원하는 것은 <시오니즘을 버리기 위한 비판>이 아니라 <시오니즘이 약속한 유대인의 자기해방과 귀환을 모든 유대인에게 동등하게 적용하도록 만드는 비판>이다.

이 점은 인터뷰의 마지막 부분에서 더욱 선명해진다. 진행자가 “이스라엘은 흑인 유대인에게도 고향인가?”라고 묻자 예르다이는 주저하지 않고 그렇다고 답한다. 흑인 유대인, 에티오피아 유대인, 미즈라히 유대인, 인도 유대인, 라틴아메리카 유대인, 카리브 유대인 등 모든 유대인의 집이어야 한다는 것이다. 다만 현실의 이스라엘은 아직 그 이상을 완전히 실현하지 못했다. 따라서 그의 비판은 <이스라엘에서 나가고 싶다>는 비판이 아니라 “이곳은 나의 집이기 때문에 더 나은 집으로 만들어야 한다”는 내부자의 비판이다. 인터뷰에서 반복되는 “나는 어디에도 가고 싶지 않다. 이것이 나의 집이다”라는 태도가 그의 입장을 가장 잘 표현한다.

이 자료의 가장 큰 장점은 에티오피아 유대인을 <구조된 사람들>에서 <자기 역사의 주체>로 바꿔놓는다는 데 있다. 국가 중심의 서사에서는 1984년 모세 작전과 이후의 공수작전이 절정이 된다. 그러나 예르다이의 서사에서는 진짜 역사가 그 이전에 시작된다. 관광비자로 들어와 체류한 사람, 키부츠에서 일한 사람, 히브리어를 배우고 조직을 만든 사람, 랍비에게 편지를 쓴 사람, 정치인을 설득한 사람, 미국 유대인과 연대망을 만든 사람들이 중심에 등장한다. 이것은 역사학적으로 중요한 시선의 전환이다. <국가가 사람을 구했다>에서 <사람들이 국가를 움직여 자신들을 받아들이게 했다>로 주어가 바뀌기 때문이다.

두 번째 장점은 인종주의를 단순한 피부색의 증오로 축소하지 않는다는 데 있다. 예르다이는 거리에서 누군가 흑인을 모욕하는 현상과, 누가 유대인으로 인정되는지, 누가 귀환법의 적용을 받는지, 누가 결혼을 위해 추가 종교절차를 거쳐야 하는지 같은 제도적 문제를 구분한다. 동시에 이 둘이 완전히 분리되어 있다고도 보지 않는다. 피부색, 유럽 중심주의, 종교적 권위, 국가의 이민정책이 서로를 강화할 수 있기 때문이다. 따라서 그의 분석은 “이스라엘은 인종주의 국가인가 아닌가”라는 단순한 찬반논쟁을 넘어선다.

다만 인터뷰에는 약점도 있다. 예르다이가 이스라엘의 anti-blackness를 서구 식민주의, 유럽 중심주의, 아슈케나지 우위와 연결할 때 개념들이 빠르게 겹쳐진다. 어느 순간에는 미국과 이스라엘의 차이를 매우 강조하다가, 다른 순간에는 “서구 사회는 모두 anti-black”이라는 넓은 명제를 제시한다. 또한 에티오피아 유대인의 수용을 둘러싼 종교법적 논쟁 가운데 무엇이 순수한 할라카적 문제였고 무엇이 인종적 편견과 결합되어 있었는지를 보다 엄밀하게 분리하지 않는다. 인터뷰라는 형식의 한계이기도 하다. 그의 가족사를 비롯한 구체적인 사례들은 설득력이 강하지만, 국가정책 전체에 관한 주장들은 별도의 문헌검증이 있으면 더욱 강해질 것이다.

또 하나 주목할 점은 그가 이스라엘 사회의 차별을 팔레스타인 문제와 쉽게 통합하지 않는다는 사실이다. 진행자가 두 문제를 연결하려 할 때 예르다이는 에티오피아 유대인은 이스라엘 국가가 포섭해야 할 유대인 집단이었던 반면, 팔레스타인인은 국가·영토·시민권의 역사에서 전혀 다른 관계에 놓여 있다고 지적한다. 따라서 <식민주의>, <인종주의>, <백인우월주의>라는 하나의 틀로 모든 집단의 경험을 설명하는 것은 역사적 차이를 지울 위험이 있다고 본다. 이 신중함은 이 인터뷰에서 상당히 중요한 미덕이다.

결국 <The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells>가 던지는 가장 깊은 질문은 “이스라엘은 인종주의적인가?”보다 “누가 유대인 역사의 주체로 기억되는가?”이다. 에티오피아 유대인의 역사를 국가의 구조작전으로만 기억하면 그들은 감사해야 할 수혜자가 된다. 그러나 그들이 수십 년 동안 스스로 이동하고, 조직하고, 설득하고, 투쟁했다는 역사를 복원하면 이야기는 전혀 달라진다. 그들은 이스라엘이 받아들여 준 주변인이 아니라 이스라엘을 자신들의 고향으로 만들기 위해 국가를 변화시킨 유대인들이 된다.

그래서 나는 이 인터뷰의 핵심을 <시오니즘의 반박>이 아니라 <시오니즘의 자기시험>이라고 읽는 것이 가장 적절하다고 본다. “모든 유대인에게 고향”이라는 시오니즘의 약속을 진지하게 받아들인다면, 그 약속에서 가장 오랫동안 밀려났던 에티오피아 유대인의 경험이야말로 시오니즘이 자신을 평가해야 할 중요한 시험대가 된다. 예르다이는 그 시험의 결과가 완전한 실패였다고도, 완전한 성공이었다고도 말하지 않는다. 이스라엘은 결국 에티오피아 유대인을 받아들였고 그들은 이스라엘 사회의 일부가 되었다. 그러나 그 과정에서 발생한 배제와 굴욕을 지워버리고 오직 <영웅적 구출>만 기억한다면 화해가 아니라 신화가 된다.

따라서 이 자료의 제목에서 <Israel Rarely Tells>라는 표현이 중요하다. 감춰진 것은 단순한 인종차별의 사례 몇 가지가 아니다. 감춰진 것은 에티오피아 유대인들이 이스라엘을 향해 품었던 시오니즘적 열망, 그리고 바로 그 시오니즘 국가가 그들을 받아들이기를 주저했다는 역설이다. 그 역설을 인정할 때에야 “이스라엘은 모든 유대인의 집”이라는 말은 과거를 미화하는 구호가 아니라 아직 완성되지 않은 정치적·도덕적 과제가 된다. 이 점에서 이 인터뷰는 이스라엘을 옹호하거나 고발하는 어느 한쪽의 단순한 자료라기보다, <소속되고 싶었으나 소속을 증명해야 했던 사람들의 역사>를 통해 이스라엘의 자기이해를 다시 묻는 상당히 좋은 텍스트라고 평가할 수 있다.

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Transcript

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0:000 secondsAll western societies are anti-black societies. Israel is no different. This is what the Jewish people want to believe that Israel is a safe haven for

0:099 secondsJews from around the world. But Ethiopian Jews were not accepted here.

0:1414 secondsYou come to Israel, the Jewish country, the place that's supposed to be the most safe for Jewish people in the world, and suddenly people question Judaism.

0:2222 secondsThat's why I'm so triggered when people talk about Operation Moses. There were 20 years of creating networks and

0:3131 secondsmovements and connecting all the dots and collecting all the people who are supported. It's [music] not the best place in the world, but I will fight for it like Tintel to make it better.

0:4444 secondsIsrael is supposed to be the place where every Jew can come home. So, what happens when black Jews get here and still have to prove they belong? For me, this is personal. I'm an Israeli Jew.

0:5555 secondsI'm also Caribbean, brown-skinned, a Jew of color. When I was younger, I thought that in Israel, none of that would matter. I could just be Jewish. But it's

1:031 minute, 3 secondsa little more complicated. This episode is about Ethiopian Jews, Operation Moses, the challenges many Jews of color

1:101 minute, 10 secondshave experienced. The Jewish state was built to be a homeland for the Jewish people. So why have some Jews had to fight so hard to belong? This is Border Lines.

1:201 minute, 20 secondsDr. Ephrat Yai, welcome to Border Lines with That Semite. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

1:291 minute, 29 secondsWhat keeps you up at night about the Jewish people these days?

1:331 minute, 33 secondsOh wow. [sighs] So actually I will start with uh concrete the question of where are we going to live when we'll be back here.

1:441 minute, 44 seconds[laughter]

1:461 minute, 46 secondsThat's what what keeps me at night where which school my daughter will go.

1:521 minute, 52 secondsUh I have a daughter so I don't think I don't need to think about the army.

1:581 minute, 58 secondsuh not so as mothers for sons for boys also my my ideology or the way I think I

2:092 minutes, 9 secondsdraw my ideas from my daily life and not from I can be

2:162 minutes, 16 secondsum uh attracted to certain philosophies or ideas but at the end of the day I

2:242 minutes, 24 secondsthink about where do I live tomorrow, which school system, where do [clears throat] I work, who are my friends?

2:312 minutes, 31 secondsSo, you think about it on a personal level, like where do you fit in? Where does your daughter fit in in this Jewish world?

2:392 minutes, 39 secondsMhm.

2:402 minutes, 40 secondsAnd and why is that why does that trouble you?

2:422 minutes, 42 secondsWe've been in the United States in the last three years, and it's interesting to be in this place because it's very

2:502 minutes, 50 secondsdiverse and it's very, we have a lot of curiosity. My daughter is in uh school that the majority of the students are

2:592 minutes, 59 secondsblack, which is a very exciting experience for us.

3:043 minutes, 4 secondsUm she didn't have it before here in Israel. Uh when she did have it for one

3:113 minutes, 11 secondsyear, it was a very low class um uh school uh or kindergarten.

3:203 minutes, 20 secondsAnd we enjoy the idea that there are black people which are middle class

3:283 minutes, 28 secondsuh and they're like us like we can we can fit in but in the deeper level uh

3:353 minutes, 35 secondswe're very different like I I like the idea that my daughter in second grade um she experience all this

3:443 minutes, 44 secondsdiversity which she she's not going to have here uh if we want to her to have a good education. So she will be in the

3:523 minutes, 52 secondsschool of uh that the majority is Ashkanazi probably.

3:573 minutes, 57 secondsSo I if we have time towards the end, I'd like to speak more about the comparison between your experiences in Israel versus in the United States. But

4:054 minutes, 5 secondsbefore we get into all of that and everything I want to discuss with you today, let's take a step back. Please tell me a little bit about yourself, who

4:124 minutes, 12 secondsyou are, where you from, and what you do uh just in a few lines.

4:164 minutes, 16 secondsYes. So I'm a fat. I was born and raised in Ashdod. Um I studied in the elementary school in the ultraorththodox

4:254 minutes, 25 secondssystem and uh in high school I was in the religious Zionist system uh high

4:324 minutes, 32 secondsschool all for girls religious high school. Um then I I did my BA in social sciences and my PhD in sociology.

4:434 minutes, 43 secondsAnd my research focused on Ethiopian Jews that were in Israel between the 50s and the 70s, which I realized it's a

4:524 minutes, 52 secondspart of history that disappeared from the narrative of the state, from the narrative of of Israel, the narrative of

4:594 minutes, 59 secondsthe Jewish people as a whole. And I was I I I grew up with the story that there

5:095 minutes, 9 secondswere Ethiopian Jews in Israel before the 80s, before the big operations of the state of Israel. And this this gap

5:185 minutes, 18 secondsbetween the story of my parents and the story that I've been told in the Israeli media, in the education system, um

5:275 minutes, 27 seconds[snorts] um pushed me to learn more about it and to research it. And that was my research.

5:345 minutes, 34 secondsSo just to contextualize a little bit a little bit this episode, this conversation that we're having for me.

5:405 minutes, 40 secondsSo I I grew up in a household where my father was Israeli, born in Israel, uh from a Jewish family that's been in this land for more than 10 generations.

5:525 minutes, 52 secondsUh and a Caribbean mother, a mother who was born and raised in Guyana and then moved to the United States and grew up in the Caribbean-American community. So

6:006 minutesI very much, you know, my throughout my youth grew up in multiple worlds. Uh a foot in the Israeli community, the

6:086 minutes, 8 secondsIsraeli-American community, also in Israel, but also in the Caribbean community, in the living my life in the

6:156 minutes, 15 secondsUnited States as a person of color, navigating what that means to be a Jew of color and and often, particularly in

6:226 minutes, 22 secondsthe United States where things are often divided between white and black, uh not really finding my place there. uh you

6:306 minutes, 30 secondsknow, too dark for for many in the Jewish community, too Jewish for many in the non-Jewish black community. And one

6:386 minutes, 38 secondsof the things that I thought was going to be resolved when I, you know, relocated my entire life to Israel was that in Israel, I could just be Jewish.

6:476 minutes, 47 secondsI wouldn't have to deal with all the complexities of of what it means to be a person of color and relationship to blackness and and you know, what it

6:566 minutes, 56 secondsmeans to be a Jew of color. all of those other different things. But then very quickly I realized that that is not the case. Um you know I also found that on

7:057 minutes, 5 secondsan individual level my Jewish identity was getting interrogated by individuals that there were also certain systemic realities uh in the project of Israel

7:137 minutes, 13 secondsthat I wasn't aware of and or at least that I was just aware of on a surface level and not a you know a experiential level. And I think that in

7:227 minutes, 22 secondsmany ways uh I started asking a question.

7:277 minutes, 27 secondsOkay, what does it mean to be, you know, this the Jewish state when you have Jews of all these other different uh

7:357 minutes, 35 secondsexpressions and colors and who really belongs in the Jewish state? Who what is this Jewish society? What does this Jewish state exist for? Who does it

7:447 minutes, 44 secondsexist for? And I think that a lot of Jews of color are asking this question.

7:477 minutes, 47 secondsI think a lot of Jews in general in the west in the United States are asking this question uh particularly when they come across stories of uh discrimination

7:577 minutes, 57 secondsor of racism within Israeli society. And there's one case study which I think

8:048 minutes, 4 secondskind of looms large amongst all the other different ones and that's the story of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Um for many people the story of Ethiopian

8:138 minutes, 13 secondsJews in Israel is mythologized. It's this kind of heroic story in which the heroes is are the state of Israel, the

8:218 minutes, 21 secondsmaybe Israeli institutions, the Mossad, and the Ethiopian Jews are essentially this group that was saved or rescued and

8:298 minutes, 29 secondsbrought to Israel. And this is an incredible testimony of the ways in which uh the state of Israel is fulfilling its purpose of being this

8:388 minutes, 38 secondshomeland for all of the Jewish people of rescuing Jews that are in danger and the ways in which that story is complicated

8:468 minutes, 46 secondsby history and complicated by the current reality then brings up questions about uh okay what's the true story?

8:548 minutes, 54 secondswhat's the nuanced way we can really understand uh the relationship between all of the Jewish people and all of its

9:019 minutes, 1 seconddiversity and the the reality of of the state of Israel today. I want to ask the question, right? A very blunt question,

9:099 minutes, 9 secondsbut I think it kind of gets to the core of what I'm thinking and what I'm wondering and I know a lot of people that have similar experiences to me are wondering.

9:179 minutes, 17 secondsIs Israel an antilack society?

9:239 minutes, 23 secondsSo I will try okay I will start from the end.

9:289 minutes, 28 secondsAll western societies are anti anti-black societies. Israel is no different. The other level is uh that I

9:379 minutes, 37 secondswant to decentralize the story of the US. We're not in the US. We want to look at the US to learn about ourselves. We

9:469 minutes, 46 secondscan learn some things from the US. But this is not the history of the state of Israel. There are systems of oppression

9:539 minutes, 53 secondsin every society, especially in western societies that western societies because of the history of imperialism and

10:0210 minutes, 2 secondscolonialism have this anti-lack racism part of their DNA. So, Israel is

10:1210 minutes, 12 secondsno different for me. That's why it's easier for me because I don't see Israel as a heroic story. I see Israel as

10:2110 minutes, 21 secondsanother state um that have these systems of oppression usually

10:2810 minutes, 28 secondstoward non-white people and actually also white ultraorththodox people. This

10:3510 minutes, 35 secondsis part of Israel DNA because of the history of Zionism.

10:4010 minutes, 40 secondsSo Zionism is a secular movement who admired imperialism and colonialism as

10:4810 minutes, 48 secondspart of Europe. This is not part of the story of Ethiopian Jews. And I think this is one of the sins of the main sins

10:5710 minutes, 57 secondsof Zionism that they uh connected between the state and Judaism and this

11:0511 minutes, 5 secondsis the source of the problem for me. So when Ethiopian Jews or Moroccan Jews

11:1311 minutes, 13 secondsprayed about Jerusalem, thought about Jerusalem, wanted to be saved and to come back to their homeland to Jerusalem, they didn't think about David Benu.

11:2311 minutes, 23 secondsSo when you want me to when you ask me is it a white supremacy place I think

11:3011 minutes, 30 secondsit's not different in any way in this kind of black and white from France from

11:3811 minutes, 38 secondsGermany from Holland from the US but it's not the worst white supremacist

11:4511 minutes, 45 secondsplace that people want to to claim. Uh I don't think that Israel is more white uh

11:5311 minutes, 53 secondssupremacist than the United States. Uh because the United States is the inventor of white supremacy, right? Or

12:0012 minutesmaybe Germany or the United States or both of them.

12:0412 minutes, 4 secondsWhile of course this isn't just theoretical for Efrat, she approaches this question as a sociologist mapping Israel's relationship with anti-blackness against the global

12:1212 minutes, 12 secondspattern. When I spoke to Israeli Ethiopian activist Ashager Aaro on the street, she came at the same question from a more personal angle. Here's her take.

12:2112 minutes, 21 secondsTomorrow, Benjamin Netanyahu can come and tell me Ethiopian Jews are not Jews and this would not affect my level of

12:2812 minutes, 28 secondsJudaism in any shape or form. I'm will always be grateful for my dad that he didn't like let the breaking of the

12:3612 minutes, 36 secondsspirit deter me from being a proud Israeli deter me from being like integrated to this society. It's not the

12:4512 minutes, 45 secondsbest place in the world but I will fight for it like to nail to make it better.

12:5012 minutes, 50 secondsThis is Aka and Kavahart. They are American Jews of color who made aliyah to Israel and were genuinely surprised by the level of racism they encountered

12:5712 minutes, 57 secondshere, especially in the ultraorththodox community they live in. What struck me about their perspective is that rather than connecting what they found to American white supremacy, they focused on what made racism in Israel distinct.

13:0813 minutes, 8 secondsTake a listen.

13:0913 minutes, 9 secondsIsrael is not racist. Israel has elements of racism inside of it that

13:1713 minutes, 17 secondsexist. When it comes with racism with in Israel versus racism in America, it's it's different. Meaning that in America,

13:2513 minutes, 25 secondswe know culturally like, okay, who's being racist? Like, bluntly, like it's obvious. In Israel, it's different because a lot of Israelis, they don't

13:3313 minutes, 33 secondsunderstand the difference of really what racism is. You know what I mean? A lot of them come to find out doesn't even know a little like about slavery like in

13:4213 minutes, 42 secondsAmerica, you know, the black Atlantic slave trade, those things. So those things were kind of shocking to us. At the end of the day, this is home. I

13:5013 minutes, 50 secondswouldn't want to go back. I wouldn't go want to be anywhere else but here in Israel. Obviously, this is our home. But we just we have work.

13:5713 minutes, 57 secondsSo maybe it would be helpful for us to before we get into like some of these terms more Zionism, anti-black racism.

14:0314 minutes, 3 secondsLet's let's define some things. So how do you understand the definitions of white supremacy and anti-blackness or anti-black racism?

14:1314 minutes, 13 secondsSo for me, white supremacy is the preference of white people over black

14:2114 minutes, 21 secondspeople that the the system is preferring whiteness uh and also on in the individual level.

14:3014 minutes, 30 secondsBut I feel that this term is not useful to other context that are out of the United States. M

14:3814 minutes, 38 secondsI think it's make it's if we want to learn if we don't want only to provoke this is not the right term.

14:4514 minutes, 45 secondsSo what what is the correct term then for let's say let's focus on Israel.

14:4914 minutes, 49 secondsWhat's the correct term or the more accurate or helpful term for the Israeli context?

14:5414 minutes, 54 secondsSo first in the Israeli context is the preference of Ashkanazi heritage, the preference of

15:0215 minutes, 2 secondssecularism and the preference of Jewish people. So these are the three things that will

15:0915 minutes, 9 secondsalways be preferable over other uh parameters or or yeah ingredients. Um

15:1815 minutes, 18 secondsbut I think that in the case of Israel for example if you see if you talk about Arabs Arabs are black brown like what

15:2715 minutes, 27 secondsare they? Um so this is a different context and you know also in the if if

15:3315 minutes, 33 secondswe look at the US we can say that uh uh why we prefer to say that it's anti-black and not anti-indig

15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsanti-indigenous for example there is no um rational reason for that it's just the way people

15:4915 minutes, 49 secondsprefer to talk about it the way the black story in the United States gain power in history. Um, so if we talk

15:5815 minutes, 58 secondsabout for example the Palestinians in Israel, we should compare them to Native Americans, right? If the state of Israel grabbed

16:0616 minutes, 6 secondsland or um um uh exiled Palestinians, so this is the case of indigenous. But we don't do that. Why?

16:1716 minutes, 17 secondsBecause the story of the black people gain power in the world in term of culture in term of history and all the

16:2516 minutes, 25 secondsworld as part of US imperialism looking to this story but it doesn't as a sociologist I can't do this comparison

16:3316 minutes, 33 secondsjust like that because when I look at the history of Ethiopian Jews or Palestinians in Israel and black people

16:4116 minutes, 41 secondsor specifically African-American in the United States some places is similar like the methods of oppression or uh

16:4916 minutes, 49 secondsstructural racism or systemic racism, it works in some some in some cases in some angles it doesn't work. So I hope I answered your question.

16:5816 minutes, 58 secondsSo I so if I'm understanding you correctly essentially there are some places in which comparing racism whether

17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsit's anti-blackness in America or anti-indigenous bias structural or individual uh is helpful in the Israeli

17:1417 minutes, 14 secondsmodel. And there's just as many cases, if not more, or different ways, if not more, that the comparison actually doesn't help. And that there's enough

17:2117 minutes, 21 secondsunique things to the history of Israel that make it so much more different than America that really the the comparison is isn't so helpful.

17:3017 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. And it doesn't solve the problem that the state of Israel have a lot of problems. The fact that it's not exactly a white supremacist as the United States doesn't mean that it's better.

17:4117 minutes, 41 secondsOkay? I can say that the state of Israel in 75 years managed to put so many black people in jail uh that the United States

17:5017 minutes, 50 secondsit took them like 200 years, right? The the amount of black and brown and Arab people in the Israeli prison system. So

17:5817 minutes, 58 secondsin some cases, I would say we're we're we're getting worse and worse and we're getting closer to the to the United States in such a short period of time.

18:0718 minutes, 7 secondsSo I'm not going I'm not trying to say that to use the term complicated in order to say Israel is better than the United

18:1618 minutes, 16 secondsStates or something like that. But if we want to understand the history of this place, we should look for other other

18:2418 minutes, 24 secondsways to compare or other other frameworks to to to talk about this case. So, so let's focus on Israel then

18:3118 minutes, 31 secondsbecause you know every time when every time you mention let's say Palestinians comparing them to Native Americans or let's say you know black Americans to to

18:3918 minutes, 39 secondsblack Israelis there's all these different types of differences keep popping up in my mind right in the ways that Palestinians are dissimilar to to

18:4618 minutes, 46 secondsNative Americans or black Israelis are dissimilar to black Americans in terms of the different histories you know different different contexts you know

18:5518 minutes, 55 secondsfor example if we're focused specifically on on anti-black racism the thing That's the elephant of the room in America is slavery, right? The mass

19:0319 minutes, 3 secondsenslavement of of millions of people, the human the human trafficking of millions and millions of people to to work on plantations in America.

19:1119 minutes, 11 secondsObviously, that history doesn't exist here.

19:1319 minutes, 13 secondsAnd so, let's focus on what anti-blackness means here, right? What is unique or what maybe not what's unique, how would you define anti-black

19:2219 minutes, 22 secondsracism in the Israeli context? what is unique about this um that is you know that somebody like who lives in America wouldn't understand.

19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsOkay. So I will focus on Jewish society.

19:3519 minutes, 35 secondsOkay. Before we go to other cases because anti anti- uh black racism toward Ethiopians is different than

19:4219 minutes, 42 secondsanti-black racism toward black Palestinians and toward black beds and toward refugees from right. So um in the

19:5219 minutes, 52 secondscase of Jewish society, the state of Israel proves again and again from the even from the 30s the Jewish agency

20:0020 minutesprove again and again that they don't want Ethiopian Jews in this land. Okay.

20:0720 minutes, 7 secondsSo we have uh the chair of the Jewish agency in the 30s that says we we don't

20:1520 minutes, 15 secondswant to give certificates for Ethiopian Jews. And then you say Ethiopian Jews in the 30s in Israel? Yes. Okay. We don't want them to be in this land. And then

20:2420 minutes, 24 secondsin 48 and uh and in the 50s during the 50s, this is before the establishment of before the establishment of the state of

20:3220 minutes, 32 secondsIsrael. In the 50s, David Beng said everyone who is interested in bringing

20:4020 minutes, 40 secondshere Ethiopian Jews must consult with me directly. Why? To push it back by himself.

20:4820 minutes, 48 secondsSo um we see it repeating through Bengurion through Gulame

20:5520 minutes, 55 secondsthrough different you know the Jewish agency is a very powerful organization especially in these years in this 50s

21:0221 minutes, 2 secondsand the 60s because their their work is to look for Jews around the world and when Ethiopian Jews say hey we're here

21:0921 minutes, 9 secondssay no you're not. So there is a whole history of rejecting Ethiopian Jews and

21:1621 minutes, 16 secondsthen that's why I feel that I need to demystify this story of bringing

21:2321 minutes, 23 secondsEthiopian Jews in Israel and and this is the this is what the Jewish people want to believe that Israel is a safe haven

21:3121 minutes, 31 secondsfor Jews from around the world but Ethiopian Jews were not accepted here.

21:3821 minutes, 38 secondsUm and then only in the 80s after Ethiopian Jews by themselves managed to enter Israel not from by the law of

21:4721 minutes, 47 secondsreturn the law that allow all Jew to arrive to Israel and get citizenship with working permits with tourist visas

21:5621 minutes, 56 secondswith different ways to enter Israel against the Israeli law. Actually they didn't break the law when they entered.

22:0322 minutes, 3 secondsThey break the law when they stayed after the visa expired.

22:0822 minutes, 8 secondsthey were the one to lead the struggle to force the state of Israel to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. So c can you

22:1522 minutes, 15 secondsmake the connection between this bias or this these policies that you're describing of preventing bed Israel

22:2322 minutes, 23 secondspreventing Ethiopian Jews from making aliyah to anti-black racism right let me just explain like what some of the listeners or viewers might be thinking

22:3122 minutes, 31 secondsat this point okay yeah like there these policies may have existed but perhaps it was because Ethiopian Jews were a

22:4022 minutes, 40 secondsdifferent situation because their Jewish identity was isolated from other Jewish communities. That's maybe some things that people would say that I'm I'm

22:4822 minutes, 48 secondsgiving you a stronger version of like of an argument that I don't agree with. But so how do you respond?

22:5322 minutes, 53 secondsI I made this argument like on a daily basis. Uh so in the 30s one of the most

23:0023 minutesuh notorious persons in the Zionist history was Alupin which we have college

23:0723 minutes, 7 secondsstreet institutions after his name. uh he was a German Jew uh and he was the chair of the Jewish agency during the

23:1623 minutes, 16 secondsthe 30s um uh and he was a eugenic.

23:2323 minutes, 23 secondsEugenic is someone that believe in the differences between races and that we need to separate

23:3223 minutes, 32 secondsraces in order to get better human beings which is sometimes I try to find different word

23:4123 minutes, 41 secondsthan Nazi framework but that's I'm even to say that it's hard for me

23:4723 minutes, 47 secondsbut I'm trying to tell myself that was the period we're in the 30s right right just just contextualize this, right? The eugenics, this concept

23:5623 minutes, 56 secondsof of race and racism was like accepted science and like standard practice. Like

24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsthe Nazis, we we remember them for for their contribution, horrific contribution to this legacy, but if I'm not mistaken, the Nazis learned it from

24:1124 minutes, 11 secondsthe Americans, from the United States, eugenics.

24:1524 minutes, 15 secondsI don't know. There is a [sighs and gasps] a debate about it. I didn't want to get into it.

24:1924 minutes, 19 secondsWho started first, the Germans or the Americans?

24:2124 minutes, 21 secondsI don't care. Right. [laughter] Either way, it was a bad idea and it was it was a bad idea and yeah uh and Israel

24:2924 minutes, 29 secondsdid not even invent [clears throat] in invent it. Let's that's why when we go back to our earlier part of the conversation, Israel is not like the worst white supremacist case.

24:3924 minutes, 39 secondsUh so Aloopin um his claim was that this group are negroes and that's why they

24:4724 minutes, 47 secondshave no blood relations to the Jewish people. He he so most of the people who did who were uh thinking through

24:5524 minutes, 55 secondseugenics were not biologist were not physicians they were social science scientist. Uh Alto Rupin is we can say

25:0525 minutes, 5 secondsthe first Jewish demographer in the the modern uh Jewish history. So when he

25:1325 minutes, 13 secondssaid with this claim was coming back again and again until the 70s. So in 73

25:2225 minutes, 22 secondsuh there were already around 150 Ethiopian Jews in Israel that came to Israel like in different ways from

25:3025 minutes, 30 secondsdifferent back doors and they were meeting with different politicians who were more supportive of their cause.

25:3925 minutes, 39 secondsuh one of them was Rabbi Vaj Joseph who was the chief rabbi of te uh of Tel Aviv but it it was it was very clear that

25:4725 minutes, 47 secondshe's going to be uh the chief rabb this far chief rabbi of the state of Israel um and he they asked him Ethiopian Jews

25:5725 minutes, 57 secondswith with their um uh supporters such as Kzio which was a Yemeni Jew but I don't

26:0526 minutes, 5 secondswant to uh talk about it too much that uh they asked him to make his argument

26:1326 minutes, 13 secondsabout the Ethiopian Jews public, which means that he believed through his

26:1926 minutes, 19 secondsresearch and through his um um reading reading that Jewish law that

26:2826 minutes, 28 secondsEthiopian Jews are Jews. Uh and and they they asked him to make it public. They asked him to make it public because

26:3726 minutes, 37 secondsEthiopian Jews that enter in Israel not through the law of return were in um were afraid from deportation. They got

26:4626 minutes, 46 secondsmy father got deportation order from the ministry of interior in 1972.

26:5126 minutes, 51 secondsSo your father was one of those Ethiopian Jews that came here and stayed.

26:5526 minutes, 55 secondsYes. My father came here in July 1970 as a tourist. He left behind my mom and my

27:0127 minutes, 1 secondeldest sister. Wow. and he had to hide from police from the minister of

27:0827 minutes, 8 secondsinterior and and he got this deportation order that he must leave the country uh within 48 hours.

27:1527 minutes, 15 secondsWhat year was this? 1972.

27:1827 minutes, 18 seconds1972. 1972. State of Israel has existed at this point for quite a while. And your father is evading police as a

27:2827 minutes, 28 secondsJewish person in the Jewish state, right?

27:3027 minutes, 30 secondsHow did we get here? Right. what is what is the what is the the conversation that's happening in Israel about Ethiopian Jewish identity?

27:3927 minutes, 39 secondsSo there is a debate uh within Jew Jewish institutions

27:4727 minutes, 47 secondsuh and even within the Israeli uh rabbinic institutions. There is a debate.

27:5427 minutes, 54 secondsUm but the the people in power are the one rejecting Ethiopian Jews as a whole.

28:0328 minutes, 3 secondsthere are not we can't find like blatant racism uh because people don't talk like that

28:1228 minutes, 12 secondsunless you're in the out in the 30s uh but they find different way to explain why Ethiopian Jews shouldn't

28:1928 minutes, 19 secondscome here um for example one of the most uh amazing things that the state of Israel

28:2628 minutes, 26 secondsis doing is um building a settlement for Ethiopian Jews in in Ethiopia

28:3328 minutes, 33 secondsin the 60s in Ethiopia which is I wanted to I I called this chapter in my PhD uh the aliyah to

28:4228 minutes, 42 secondsEthiopia [laughter] which is what was the logic behind this like building the logic behind this was this

28:5028 minutes, 50 secondsjust just explain what it is that we're talking about like so what was this settlement in Ethiopia for Ethiopian Jews so uh Ethiopian Jews realized that the

28:5928 minutes, 59 secondsstate of Israel is not interested in them coming back to Israel So they tried to find other way to

29:0629 minutes, 6 secondssurvive in Ethiopia because the situation was was dire like they they they they couldn't many of them didn't

29:1329 minutes, 13 secondshave the um uh they were not allowed to have land of their own. So they wanted

29:2029 minutes, 20 secondsto the the idea was if Ethiopian Jews will have land maybe they will forget about Jerusalem.

29:2929 minutes, 29 secondsWe will make the situation better. This way will continue the alliance we have with the state of Ethiopia. Israel was

29:3829 minutes, 38 secondsvery connected to the state to the Ethiopian state. The Ethiopian state wanted to have a a security border and

29:4529 minutes, 45 secondsto have intelligence. So actually the state of Israel wanted to use this Jewish settlement for intelligence and

29:5329 minutes, 53 secondsto have this uh cooperation with Ethiopia. So, Israel will go back again.

30:0030 minutesGeopolitics during this period of time, Israel was cooperating with the European states, especially in intelligence, security, weapons, and agriculture.

30:1230 minutes, 12 secondsThey were Jewish enough to to work for them in Ethiopia.

30:1630 minutes, 16 secondsThey were not Jewish enough to get citizenship and to come to Israel. So, we see it in different places. For

30:2430 minutes, 24 secondsexample, when my father came to Israel, he didn't have he didn't have no one here. But there was a group of people

30:3330 minutes, 33 secondsfrom from the kibbutim. actually not a group specifically one person from Kibutma

30:4030 minutes, 40 secondswho needed working hands and you know the connection with

30:4830 minutes, 48 secondsthese random people uh that made this connection and actually Ethiopian Jews that came here

30:5530 minutes, 55 secondsyou know they were 18 to 25 years old uh they came and they went straight to uh

31:0331 minutes, 3 secondswork in the kibbutim Their Hebrew was perfect. Like you read their letters after a year in Israel and

31:1031 minutes, 10 secondsthey write amazing because they spend so much time in in panim of in the kibbutim. So for example the the I I

31:1831 minutes, 18 secondsfound the whole line how they manage to stay here without citizenship. So they

31:2531 minutes, 25 secondswill come through mostly through Masawa Eetria to Elat by boat because that was the

31:3231 minutes, 32 secondscheapest way unless you're super rich and you'll take the plane mostly from Gond region. People that have more money

31:4031 minutes, 40 secondswill take the plane but usually they come to the port of Elat will connect to family that was already here in

31:4831 minutes, 48 secondsAshkalon. This family, this couple, they were not even family yet, will send them to Kibutarot. They will stay in

31:5631 minutes, 56 secondsKibbutarot for five months. Then they finish the five months, they go to another kibut of they finish five months

32:0332 minutes, 3 secondsin they will go to So I'm telling you their Hebrew was so good.

32:0832 minutes, 8 secondsIt's an incredible network of people like that are working clearly toward if we look you know retrospect towards a certain goal, right? Because these

32:1632 minutes, 16 secondsdefinitely these individuals they start a movement. They start a movement of activism to try and change

32:2432 minutes, 24 secondsgovernment policy with regards to Jews in Ethiopia and the relationship to the state of Israel. They forced the state to accept them.

32:3132 minutes, 31 secondsThey established in 72 they established the association for Ethiopian Jews. The chairperson the first chairperson was

32:3832 minutes, 38 secondsVadia a Yemeni Jew who speak Ethiopian languages because he he grew up in Eetria. and the second chair was my father from 1976.

32:4732 minutes, 47 secondsSo they they create this network. They collected all the people who were

32:5432 minutes, 54 secondssupportive of their cause uh from the kibbutim from for example there was one

33:0133 minutes, 1 secondultra orthodox guy who work in Israeli factory inita and he he he he learned about this story

33:1133 minutes, 11 secondsand he became one one of the fierce people to support them. He actually hosts people in his own house. So it's

33:2033 minutes, 20 secondsit's from nothing they create this movement. So that that's why I'm so triggered when people talk about

33:2833 minutes, 28 secondsOperation Moses. There were 20 years of creating networks and movements and connecting all the dots and collecting

33:3733 minutes, 37 secondsall the people who are supportive and and the end product was the operation that people talk about. The problem is the people start the story right there

33:4533 minutes, 45 secondsas opposed to the 20 years of activism and struggle that led up to it.

33:4933 minutes, 49 secondsYeah. And also the operation was the worst option they took

33:5633 minutes, 56 secondscuz they could do it in 75 before the civil war in Ethiopia. They could could do it in 78 when people started started

34:0434 minutes, 4 secondsto run away from the famine that started in Ethiopia.

34:0834 minutes, 8 secondsThey needed to wait until the last moment where we lost at least 2,000 people in this way. And then they

34:1834 minutes, 18 secondsmanaged to do it after American Jews, American Jews, very small group, very loud and small group of American Jewish

34:2634 minutes, 26 secondsactivists told them, "We're going to shame you in front of the world." That's when the state of Israel said, "Okay, we're going to do it."

34:3534 minutes, 35 seconds[snorts]

34:3534 minutes, 35 secondsSo this what you're describing in terms of a group of committed activists both within Israel and in Ethiopia and with their allies abroad in North America.

34:4634 minutes, 46 secondsThere's this isn't the first time something like this happened where it led to a type of change. The history of

34:5334 minutes, 53 secondsthe Benet Israel, the Jews from from from India, particularly from the the Mumbai region, right? They also went through something

35:0135 minutes, 1 secondsimilar in that they were they made aliyah. They arrived in Israel um shortly after the establishment of the

35:0835 minutes, 8 secondsstate and yet their Judaism was called into question and there was a popular

35:1635 minutes, 16 secondsprotest movement that led to a change in policy. Do you see this?

35:2035 minutes, 20 secondsAnd to the to the people 150 probably 150 people go went back to India. They're being deported, right?

35:2735 minutes, 27 secondsNo. No. They just didn't want to be here.

35:3035 minutes, 30 secondsSo, so wait, so can you imagine Jews who dream for 2,000 years to come back and they say no thank

35:3835 minutes, 38 secondsyou? Like what in what situation you need to be in order to say no? So, the history of of the Ben Israel, this

35:4635 minutes, 46 secondsIndian Jewish community, how does this fit into the history of antilack racism in Israel and and what

35:5335 minutes, 53 secondsdoes it tell us about how blackness is understood uh racially in Israeli society?

35:5935 minutes, 59 secondsSo, [sighs and gasps] again, I think Israel is no different. There is nothing special here. This is the idea of when

36:0736 minutes, 7 secondsyou read Jabotinsky and he walks in Istanbul and you say I need to cover my head not to get the dust of the orient

36:1436 minutes, 14 secondslike these are the people who who who created this place. uh the interesting

36:2136 minutes, 21 secondsthing why I think that the state of Israel is just another state like any other western state is that even in the

36:2836 minutes, 28 secondscase of religious law the Israel were allowed to come to Israel

36:3536 minutes, 35 secondsthey said that you can't marry someone out of your community because you're not Jews enough if you want to marry someone

36:4336 minutes, 43 secondsout of your community you need to go through the villa the ritual mikvah ritual bath um you need to do this process. But Ethiopian Jews were rejected as a whole.

36:5636 minutes, 56 secondsUm, so Ethiopian Jews at the end of the day they they their their case was was

37:0337 minutes, 3 secondseven worse like it's it's parallel cases because it's the same discussion about their practices

37:1237 minutes, 12 secondsum and their skin color but Ethiopian Jews were the one that the state chose

37:1937 minutes, 19 secondsto reject them and not to tell them okay you can come here but you you'll need to go to through a certain ceremonies or religious ceremonies.

37:2937 minutes, 29 secondsMhm.

37:2937 minutes, 29 secondsThat's why that was a later stage in the this history.

37:3237 minutes, 32 secondsYes. That's why uh when people say this is the halaka, no it's not.

37:3837 minutes, 38 secondsIf this is the same case in terms of halaka, why they treat it differently? M so when someone tells me this is I want

37:4837 minutes, 48 secondsto read the halaka which I read the the shoot the questions and answer of Joseph

37:5437 minutes, 54 secondswhen he argue with the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the state of Israel Isaac Herzog and he tells him why you decide

38:0438 minutes, 4 secondsin the case of Ethiopian Jews to read scientists that are not even Jewish like the arguments that Rab Ysef make

38:1338 minutes, 13 secondsare so strong he never used the word race only in uh through the religious law of

38:2138 minutes, 21 secondsthe Jewish people. Why in the case of Ethiopian Jews you decide that Davidid Iben Zimra from the 15th century from Egypt was wrong.

38:3138 minutes, 31 secondsYeah. if the Jewish law prefer.

38:3438 minutes, 34 secondsJust just for the listener right and or the viewer the all the way back in the 15th 16th century significant rabbitic

38:4238 minutes, 42 secondsauthorities were already had already talked about this issue already made rulings about the status of Ethiopian Jews. So when the in the 50s Rabbi

38:5138 minutes, 51 secondsIsaac Herzog decided that maybe they were wrong maybe they they write it very because it's it's religious people

38:5938 minutes, 59 secondsit's not like us that I can say Artoin is crazy eugenic like they have this this language of religious law which is

39:0939 minutes, 9 secondsit's very blatant but it's very respectful and Rabf even say I didn't want to make

39:1639 minutes, 16 secondsit public because I wanted to respect Rabbi Isaac which is say no like someone older.

39:2739 minutes, 27 secondsUm but the argument that if you if you if you think Ethiopian Jews are not Jews, you need to ask about all the communities.

39:3639 minutes, 36 secondsYou need to ask all of them. So on that subject right often what I've heard and I've been having conversations with a lot of people about this subject in order to to make this piece and

39:4539 minutes, 45 secondssomething I've heard from not just uh you know people from outside the community but even people from with within the community is the comparison

39:5239 minutes, 52 secondsto certain challenges that other uh communities dealt with during aliyah during their immigration process to Israel. um comparison to Misrai Jews in

40:0140 minutes, 1 secondgeneral. Even you made the comparison between, you know, some kind of orientalism or, you know, anti-misrai prejudice uh and the case of Ethiopian

40:0940 minutes, 9 secondsJews. Um obviously we we hear something similar about from the from the ultraorththodox community today that that they don't feel like they've ever

40:1640 minutes, 16 secondsbeen fully uh accepted or respected within uh Israeli society. Um why is why is this different or or maybe it's not

40:2540 minutes, 25 secondsdifferent? Maybe this is just, you know, the the same type of challenges that every community has dealt with in their acclamation, absorption into Israel,

40:3340 minutes, 33 secondsjust with an added element of uh of of blackness or race on top.

40:3940 minutes, 39 secondsSo, how do I start? So, I don't think racism toward brown,

40:4640 minutes, 46 secondsblack, um, it's the same. It's the same route like some difference. Some people they differentiate between it's just a matter

40:5540 minutes, 55 secondsof terminology. Some people talk no it's just anti-ulture or ethnicity. There is

41:0241 minutes, 2 secondsno difference between racism toward Moroccan, racism toward African-American. It's the same root.

41:0941 minutes, 9 secondsYou hate someone, you don't want him uh to be around you because he's black,

41:1641 minutes, 16 secondsbecause he's brown. Um it's the same. If this show's got you thinking, good. That's the whole point

41:2441 minutes, 24 secondsand it's kind of what we do around here at Unpacked. Borderlines with that semite is just one of the things we're creating at Unpacked to help you dig into Israel, Jewish history, and

41:3241 minutes, 32 secondsidentity through our YouTube videos, podcasts, socials, and articles the same way I try to with real curiosity, real

41:4041 minutes, 40 secondsnuance, and no oversimplifying. So, here's where to go next. If you want to keep up with everything we make, subscribe to our newsletter,

41:4741 minutes, 47 secondsunpack.dia/join, media/join and you'll get a weekly roundup of all the stuff we're creating. That's unpack media/join.

41:5541 minutes, 55 secondsSee you there.

42:0142 minutes, 1 secondMoroccan Jews. Uh there were quotas for I'm using Moroccan because this is the

42:0842 minutes, 8 secondsthe the the majority of misrai. But when I say Moroccan, I want to say misrai in general. Yeah. And I also familiar more with this specific group.

42:2042 minutes, 20 secondsUm um Moroccans were having quotas. Uh so in the case when you compare the way

42:2842 minutes, 28 secondsthey talk about Polish or Hungarian or East European Jews to Moroccans, there

42:3442 minutes, 34 secondswere more criterias on who is allowed to enter Israel. in the case of brown Jews,

42:4442 minutes, 44 secondsI will call them, than in the case of off-white Jews.

42:5042 minutes, 50 secondsUh the difference with Ethiopians is that they didn't have in even the quotas. Now we have the quotas like how

42:5742 minutes, 57 secondsmany Ethiopians can come from Ethiopia today, but back then you were not allowed to enter, which means that you

43:0443 minutes, 4 secondsdon't have the mother of rights, which is citizenship. If you don't have citizenship to today, you're nothing.

43:1243 minutes, 12 secondsSo from the beginning, like all the the writing even in Israeli academia, it's about the integration crisis, the

43:2143 minutes, 21 secondsghettos, the police brutality. I want to go back a little bit earlier. Ethiopian Jews were not eligible for the law of

43:2943 minutes, 29 secondsreturn which which means they were not eligible for Israeli citizenship which is different from any other group in in

43:3843 minutes, 38 secondsthe Jewish society. You said something about the Israel.

43:4243 minutes, 42 secondsSo the Israel Ben Zimra get the same question about Israel in the 16th

43:4943 minutes, 49 secondscentury from Baghdadi Jews from we call them white Jews that moved to India and

43:5643 minutes, 56 secondshe said there are Jews you can you can pray with them and they don't accept them. They don't want to. And then they send the same

44:0544 minutes, 5 secondsquestion 50 years later to his student Maharikash and say he said I my my my my

44:1244 minutes, 12 secondsteacher already replied there are Jews you can pray with them you can marry with them everything is good they don't I I think that's the perfect segue into

44:2044 minutes, 20 secondswhat I want what I want to ask now and that's that essentially one of the things that makes the Israeli reality and the Israeli history different from

44:3044 minutes, 30 secondssome uh western examples and certainly from the United States is that Israeli societies comprise of two major

44:3744 minutes, 37 secondspopulations or two large populations, Ashkanazi Jews and Misrai/North African Jews. And both these communities have

44:4544 minutes, 45 secondsunique yet different histories with antilack racism. Both of those communities lived in societies that were slave trading societies that went into

44:5244 minutes, 52 secondsAfrica and trafficked in human beings on the basis of their skin color. for the the case of of the West, the transatlantic slave trade, in the case

45:0045 minutesof of the Arab and Islamic world, the transherent slave trade. And so antilack racism bias existed in both of these

45:0945 minutes, 9 secondssocieties. And you have both of the the Jewish communities that lived in that larger society, in that larger social

45:1645 minutes, 16 secondscontext, returning, immigrating, making aliyah to Israel and bringing with them some of these ideas or many of these

45:2445 minutes, 24 secondsideas. And so there's there's two kind of lenses that I can look at this history and this reality today. One is

45:3245 minutes, 32 secondsperhaps a postcolonial lens that we have a population that is literally coming out of societies that were engaged in

45:3845 minutes, 38 secondsdifferent forms of antilack racism, imperialism, perhaps even colonialism if we want to use that term in in the Arab

45:4645 minutes, 46 secondsIslamic context as well. And then we also have the Jewish history lens, right, of a people that went into exile

45:5445 minutes, 54 secondsin different places and came out of exile to return to their homeland. And maybe this is where in my from my

46:0146 minutes, 1 secondperspective, the two lenses, the postcolonial and the Jewish history lens meet because this is a society which is in the process of trying to free itself,

46:1046 minutes, 10 secondsliberate itself from the things that we learned in exile that enslaved us. Um, and at the same time trying to figure

46:1946 minutes, 19 secondsout what it means to be a Jewish state, a Jewish society in our homeland, uh, free from, you know, imperial forces,

46:2746 minutes, 27 secondswhether those imperial entities were European or euroentric or Arab and Arabentric.

46:3546 minutes, 35 secondsSo I I think when you're racist and you have power, it's different than when you don't have power and you're racist,

46:4346 minutes, 43 secondsright? So you're talking about the difference between like institutional racism versus individual racism or Ashkanazi racism to versus Mizrai racism.

46:5246 minutes, 52 secondsSo break that down for us.

46:5346 minutes, 53 secondsSo Mizrai for example, you can call me the Hebrew nword in the street. Okay?

47:0147 minutes, 1 secondBut he he's not the one who interviewing me for a job.

47:0447 minutes, 4 secondsHe's not the one who decide where my daughter will go to school. He's not the one to decide whether my father is a

47:1347 minutes, 13 secondscitizen is eligible for citizenship or not. So there is a difference. I don't believe in good and bad. There there is

47:2147 minutes, 21 secondsno such a thing like these are the good Ashkanazi are bad, Misrai are good and like all this crap. Sorry. It doesn't work like this.

47:3047 minutes, 30 secondsToo simplistic. It's it doesn't work like this.

47:3347 minutes, 33 secondsI I think I want to add to your like these differences you you were talking about. I think one of the main what

47:4147 minutes, 41 secondscomplicate things here not in terms when you see evil you identify it. I don't think like there is a question for us.

47:5047 minutes, 50 secondsUh but there is a difference between religious law and secular law.

47:5647 minutes, 56 secondsFor me secular law is part of colonialism.

48:0048 minutesThe secular law like what it means democracy. Democracy could not exist without colonialism. Right? Capitalism

48:0848 minutes, 8 secondscould not exist without robbing like Africa and Asia, right? So all these

48:1448 minutes, 14 secondsenlightened ideas are born from corruption and anti-black racism and

48:2248 minutes, 22 secondsrape and slave trade. Okay. So religious law for me, I want to believe that

48:3048 minutes, 30 secondsreligious law is I'm going to to say something here that is a little bit weird. religious law can be better from

48:4048 minutes, 40 secondsthis secular law because Rab can argue with

48:4648 minutes, 46 secondsum Rabbi Isaac Herzog and tell him we're religious. We follow the Rambam, we follow Rashi, we follow Rabi David Iben Zimra, we follow Maharikash.

48:5848 minutes, 58 secondsWho are these scientists you're talking about? this anthropologist to travel in Ethiopia like we have very um uh

49:0649 minutes, 6 secondsorganized set of books as Jewish people and that's what we follow racism did not

49:1349 minutes, 13 secondsexist during this period of time when we hear even the story I love the story of Miriam that became white because she

49:2249 minutes, 22 secondstalked about the black wife of Moses do you have something more radical and

49:3049 minutes, 30 secondsbeautiful than something like that in your Bible, anti-racism within the Torah.

49:3549 minutes, 35 secondsWhen I think about um uh the secular law, when we talking about like the state, democracy, like all these ideas,

49:4449 minutes, 44 secondsthese ideas were born on the expense of black bodies. it it couldn't like after

49:5349 minutes, 53 secondsuh Britain finished robbing ended robbing Africa they invented democracy right that's that's that's what happened

50:0250 minutes, 2 secondsin history so when we I I feel that I can find more answers in like

50:1250 minutes, 12 secondssometimes I will say sometimes in the religious law and not to follow these categories that we like also in as as

50:2050 minutes, 20 secondsacademic right that we like to okay this is good this is bad this is better this is worse like it doesn't work

50:2850 minutes, 28 secondsobviously we don't have the time to litigate all the history and development of democracy and capitalism and colonialism that we'll save that maybe

50:3550 minutes, 35 secondsfor the next time uh but it I think you're getting at something which is like a core tension that a lot of people have when they look at this issue or

50:4450 minutes, 44 secondssimilar issues in Israel's history and in the west history and maybe the Arab and Islamic world's history And that's

50:5050 minutes, 50 secondsthe relationship between an idea and the actual history, right? And you know whether we're talking about democracy or

50:5950 minutes, 59 secondswe're talking about Zionism, you know, is an idea limited by the founding institutions or founding generation of

51:0751 minutes, 7 secondsthose systems or is it beyond that? So, a lot of people when I've had this conversation about the history of of racism, whether it's, you know, tensions

51:1551 minutes, 15 secondsbetween Ashkanazi Jews and other Ashkanazi Jews, like there was a tension between, you know, central European Jews and Eastern European Jews or between

51:2251 minutes, 22 secondsAshkanazi Misrai, between black Jews and non-black Jews. There's this this idea

51:2851 minutes, 28 secondsthat well we don't we don't reject Zionism or we don't reject Israel and the idea of a Jewish nation state

51:3751 minutes, 37 secondsbecause some of those founding institutions were racist or the founding generation was racist. These were ideas

51:4451 minutes, 44 secondsthat however they you know explain it or contextualize it that were grandfathered in through generations of exile or

51:5251 minutes, 52 secondsgenerations of being colonized and and persecuted themselves. And we had our own ideas of what it means to be to have

51:5951 minutes, 59 secondsa relationship and aspiration for Zion or to be you know a free member of a society i.e. a democratic society. And

52:0752 minutes, 7 secondsso when for example when Martin Luther King to go quickly into like an American parallel was looking at the US Constitution and acknowledging the

52:1652 minutes, 16 secondsracism and the antilackness that existed in the founding of America but also pointing to the inter to the eternal

52:2452 minutes, 24 secondsliberatory principles within those same documents to say this is who we really are or this is another version of who we can be. And so likewise, I've seen a lot

52:3352 minutes, 33 secondsof people tell me I've had I've heard a lot of people tell me in the process of this project saying, "I'm a Zionist. I'm

52:4152 minutes, 41 secondsnot a Zionist because of Herzel or because of Goldenier or Benon. I'm a Zionist because of Abu Mahari. I'm a Zionist because of Yona Bugala. I'm a

52:4952 minutes, 49 secondsZionist because of all these other different people uh that had an aspiration to live in Zion as free and

52:5752 minutes, 57 secondsliberated Jews. Is that not a version of of Zionism, a version of of Israeli identity that has kind of also always

53:0653 minutes, 6 secondsexisted and and and can be where we aspire to to arrive nowadays?

53:1153 minutes, 11 secondsSo I think the more I read Yeah. So the more I read the the writing of the

53:1853 minutes, 18 secondsfounding fathers of the state of Israel, I don't I don't feel comfortable with this term.

53:2553 minutes, 25 secondsI think that if some people will read uh Gulame, David Bengurion, Jabutinski,

53:3553 minutes, 35 secondsRupin um all these people that have we have their names here on this on the streets

53:4453 minutes, 44 secondsaround us, they will feel less comfortable.

53:4753 minutes, 47 secondsUm I want I think that there is something in Zionism

53:5553 minutes, 55 secondsuh by definition that maybe we won't have time to explain it but there is

54:0254 minutes, 2 secondssomething about uh self-hating in this uh ideology

54:0954 minutes, 9 secondsbecause these people and yeah I'm a I'm a sociologist but I really love history.

54:1354 minutes, 13 secondsI'm sociologist use use history. Um these people wanted to get rid of

54:2254 minutes, 22 secondsreligion. They they they they didn't respect their previous generations. They

54:2954 minutes, 29 secondsmany of them thought that we suffer from anti-semitism because we live in the ghetto and we practice Judaism. And

54:3754 minutes, 37 secondsthese ideas trigger triggers me. It triggers me as I'm hearing you say that like

54:4454 minutes, 44 secondsand we know that in the 50s what happens with Yemeni Jews, it's I get chills when

54:5254 minutes, 52 secondsI think about it. Uh the way they um they thought that um Yemeni Jews should

55:0155 minutes, 1 secondget rid of their practices from their pious from their religion in order to

55:0955 minutes, 9 secondsbecome good Israelis. But did they justify these things because they were Zionists? I.e. they believed in the right for the Jewish people to self to

55:1755 minutes, 17 secondshave self-determination in their ancestral homeland or did they justify this because they lived in societies that were racist and and eurosentric and anti-lack etc and anti-religion?

55:2955 minutes, 29 secondsDoes it matter? I look it depends on how we answer the question whether or not an idea or ideology or identity is defined

55:3855 minutes, 38 secondsby the individuals that originally espoused it or by the central principle that people continue to identify with.

55:4555 minutes, 45 secondsFor example, right, I think a lot of people would feel including myself very deeply uncomfortable reading a lot of the the writings of the founding fathers

55:5355 minutes, 53 secondsof the United States like like I mentioned with Martin Luther King and they should right because those founding fathers would have enslaved me, right? right?

56:0056 minutesBoth of us. And yet the [laughter] And yet at the end of the day, I can't but

56:0856 minutes, 8 secondsalso be incredibly inspired by, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglas, just as a few

56:1556 minutes, 15 secondsexamples that looked into those same documents and said, "This and this, I'm throwing this in the garbage because uh

56:2456 minutes, 24 secondsthis is this is anti-human, right? And yet these ideas that I can get around that I can create a collective identity,

56:3256 minutes, 32 secondsan aspirational American uh patriotism that that actually uh that that deres

56:4256 minutes, 42 secondsthat appeals to the the best of humanity as opposed to the worst. And so when I look at the founding fathers and mothers

56:5056 minutes, 50 secondsof Zionism and of Israel, I can look at some of those writings and be horrified because I can say, "Wow, they wouldn't

56:5756 minutes, 57 secondsthey wouldn't have seen me as being uh, you know, a full member of this project." But at the same time, I can look at other parts of the writing and other parts of the actual project in

57:0657 minutes, 6 secondshistory and be inspired in the sense that it appealed to the best aspects of our humanity for an aspiration that Jewish people like all other people in

57:1357 minutes, 13 secondsthe planet should be able to have liberation, freedom, and self-determination just like any other people.

57:2057 minutes, 20 secondsI agree on the last one. Uh but um I think it's very rare to have people who

57:2957 minutes, 29 secondstalk about the way you talk about the found founding fathers on the of the US to talk about David Benuan like this.

57:3757 minutes, 37 secondsMaybe we need more time.

57:4057 minutes, 40 secondsBut here it's very uh it's much more very much defensive.

57:4857 minutes, 48 secondsuh if you say something about these people you you you are a traitor right

57:5557 minutes, 55 secondsI'm not talking about Benjamin Netanyao I'm talking about Herzel I'm talking about David Benu people cannot hear it so maybe in in

58:0458 minutes, 4 secondstime people will feel more comfortable to to talk about this you can read this only in academia

58:1258 minutes, 12 secondsit's not something that someone like you and me can just talk about and I There's two there's two reasons for that. Number

58:1958 minutes, 19 secondsone, as you mentioned, we're a young society, right? We're we haven't existed for that long. And I think we're we're growing to that slowly but surely. And

58:2758 minutes, 27 secondsat the same maybe not surely, but slowly, we're growing into that. And at the same time, there's another element.

58:3258 minutes, 32 secondsThere's an elephant in the room and that's that most people that are having conversations about the founding of Israel, about the founding fathers and

58:3958 minutes, 39 secondsmothers of Israel, about the present reality in Israel are not also saying what you said in the beginning of this conversation, which is that Israel

58:4858 minutes, 48 secondssuffers from a lot of the same pathologies or problems that all societies suffer from. In particular,

58:5558 minutes, 55 secondssocieties that are deeply diverse, ethnically and racially and religiously diverse. Many people are not saying

59:0259 minutes, 2 secondsthat, right? They're uniquely looking at Israel as because it has all these different flaws and problems, then it doesn't deserve to exist. And I think

59:0959 minutes, 9 secondsthat a lot of the defensiveness uh comes from that uh experience.

59:1459 minutes, 14 secondsI think that's the difference between or just for the matter of

59:2259 minutes, 22 secondshow do how do we translate that into English? Uh an argument for the sake of heaven.

59:2759 minutes, 27 secondsAn argument for the sake of heaven or an argument for the sake of argument, right?

59:3059 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. Yeah, this reminded me of something Ashagir described being a fierce critic of racism inside Israel while remaining fully committed to the Zionist project

59:3859 minutes, 38 secondsand seeing herself as defining what Zionism means no less than the founders of the state. This is how she put it in its core that Zionism like the

59:4759 minutes, 47 secondsZionist dream has no color. Meaning in in the core Zionism is the belief that Jewish people as a whole deserve to have

59:5559 minutes, 55 secondsa self-determination in their historical homeland point. It doesn't matter if you are Moroccan Jew, Yemenite Jew, Persian

1:00:021 hour, 2 secondsJew, Polish Jew. It doesn't matter. It's a place where Jewish Jewish people after years of like upon years of discrimination in every different

1:00:101 hour, 10 secondscountry they live are deserving of coming back and returning to their home.

1:00:141 hour, 14 secondsThat is that and when you talk about this Israel state, the same idea of like a home for the Jewish people. And is

1:00:221 hour, 22 secondsthere phenomenons in those uh categories that create um racism that create discrimination for different

1:00:291 hour, 29 secondscommunities? 100%. But the idea is still the same idea. Like the reason that I'm a proud Israeli is not because Israel is

1:00:381 hour, 38 secondsa perfect country. Is Israel can be a perfect country or close to perfection with the work of young people who will speak up who want to create a change.

1:00:471 hour, 47 secondsThere is a lot of gray. You can criticize the government. You can criticize the people. You can criticize everything. But at the same time, you will like there is a war. You put up

1:00:551 hour, 55 secondsyour uniform and you will be the first one to jump. Why? Cuz it you love this place. The duality that we ex like we have here, it's very unique.

1:01:041 hour, 1 minute, 4 secondsSo I want to do something a little bit different just for the the remaining time that we have.

1:01:091 hour, 1 minute, 9 secondsUh I want to ask some rapid fire questions. And so every question I ask, I just want you to say the first thing that comes to mind. One word to describe Israeli society right now.

1:01:201 hour, 1 minute, 20 secondsAh, a mess.

1:01:231 hour, 1 minute, 23 secondsOne Jewish personality, historical or present, that inspires you? My parents.

1:01:321 hour, 1 minute, 32 secondsWhat moment made you proudest to be Israeli?

1:01:351 hour, 1 minute, 35 secondsNo comment. [laughter] We'll come back. We We need to come back to this question. I'll come back. We'll come back to that.

1:01:421 hour, 1 minute, 42 secondsUm, what is the biggest lie that gets told about Ethiopian Jews? that they were saved.

1:01:511 hour, 1 minute, 51 secondsOne thing you wish every Israeli Jewish child learned in school, the history of Ethiopian Jews before the 80s.

1:02:011 hour, 2 minutes, 1 secondIf uh or even the history of Ethiopian Jews beyond anti-semitism, if a black American Jew or a Caribbean

1:02:101 hour, 2 minutes, 10 secondsJew makes aliyah tomorrow, what is the most beautiful thing that is waiting for them? The beach.

1:02:191 hour, 2 minutes, 19 secondsAnd what is the most what is the if a black American or a Caribbean Jew makes aliyah tomorrow? What is the most challenging thing that waits for them?

1:02:271 hour, 2 minutes, 27 secondsThe line to the bus. [laughter]

1:02:331 hour, 2 minutes, 33 seconds[gasps]

1:02:341 hour, 2 minutes, 34 secondsWhat's changed that you've seen in your lifetime that gives you hope in Israel? Ethiopian artist.

1:02:421 hour, 2 minutes, 42 secondsWhat's one moment that made you proud to be Jewish?

1:02:461 hour, 2 minutes, 46 secondsMost of the time I read religious Jewish text, I'm proud.

1:02:541 hour, 2 minutes, 54 secondsIsrael in 100 years. What do you want it to look like?

1:02:581 hour, 2 minutes, 58 secondsPeople speak Arabic as fluently as Hebrew, not for the years of the IDF.

1:03:041 hour, 3 minutes, 4 secondsIs Israel the home for black Jewish people? There are black Jewish people in Israel.

1:03:091 hour, 3 minutes, 9 secondsSo So just the reality is that it is. We're here.

1:03:131 hour, 3 minutes, 13 secondsWe live here. [laughter] We're here also like does Israel have the right to exist? It exists, right? We're here.

1:03:211 hour, 3 minutes, 21 secondsIt's a struggle. It's challenging. There are many problems, but we're here. Does the United States is the the home for African-Americans?

1:03:331 hour, 3 minutes, 33 secondsThey live there. It's challenging. It's it's it's it can be brutal, but this is their home. And people will always look for the way to live in dignity.

1:03:461 hour, 3 minutes, 46 secondsSo that's the struggle. Do you have hope for the future?

1:03:501 hour, 3 minutes, 50 secondsOf course. [sighs] [gasps] I have many plans, many hopes, many ideas about

1:03:591 hour, 3 minutes, 59 secondshow to to live in dignity, to have a better future. Especially as a mother, you know, when you're you're you're single, you like you're going through

1:04:081 hour, 4 minutes, 8 secondsthings for yourself, but then when you you're you're you're a parent, it's have more urg like it's more urgent. So,

1:04:181 hour, 4 minutes, 18 secondsDr. Erat, thank you so much for being with me today.

1:04:221 hour, 4 minutes, 22 secondsThank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

1:04:271 hour, 4 minutes, 27 secondsLike I said before, this episode is personal for me given my own identity and background. I'm Israeli. I'm Jewish.

1:04:331 hour, 4 minutes, 33 secondsI'm Middle Eastern. I'm Caribbean. I'm a person of color. And for a long time, I think I carried a hope that Israel would make those categories. Maybe not

1:04:411 hour, 4 minutes, 41 secondsirrelevant. They are an important part of me, but certainly less loaded, less definitive. In America, I was often too dark for parts of the Jewish community

1:04:501 hour, 4 minutes, 50 secondsand too Jewish for parts of the black and brown communities. So, there was something powerful about the idea that in Israel, I could just be Jewish. Then

1:04:581 hour, 4 minutes, 58 secondsI came back here and I started fielding questions I didn't expect in a Jewish state. Questions about my Judaism. Questions about where I was really from.

1:05:071 hour, 5 minutes, 7 secondsQuestions that made me realize Israel carries a lot of the same sicknesses other societies carry. Of course, that doesn't make Israel uniquely evil. It

1:05:151 hour, 5 minutes, 15 secondsmeans Israel has a lot in common with the Western and Arab countries many of us came here from. And it was built by people who brought their hopes, their

1:05:221 hour, 5 minutes, 22 secondswounds, their courage, their fears, and yes, their prejudices with them. all the broken ideas they absorbed in the places

1:05:291 hour, 5 minutes, 29 secondsthey lived before. Dr. Ephrat was very clear about this. Israel did not invent racial prejudice, nor is it the worst

1:05:371 hour, 5 minutes, 37 secondsversion of it. But anti-black racism exists in parts of society here, and it determined the way Ethiopian Jews were treated from the beginning. The history

1:05:461 hour, 5 minutes, 46 secondsis painful, and it's painful, too, that few Israelis and Jews seem to be aware of it. Because the story most Jews know about Ethiopian Jews is the rescue

1:05:551 hour, 5 minutes, 55 secondsstory. Operation Moses, the Mossad, the heroic image of Israel reaching across the world to bring endangered Jews home.

1:06:021 hour, 6 minutes, 2 secondsThere is a lot that is true about that story. It's also incomplete. Ephrat is asking us to look at the part of the story that came before the rescue. The

1:06:111 hour, 6 minutes, 11 secondsyears when Ethiopian Jews were trying to get to Israel and Israeli institutions that did not want them here. The activists who came anyway. The people

1:06:191 hour, 6 minutes, 19 secondswho entered on tourist visas, work permits, whatever they could find. The Ethiopian Jews who had to organize, lobby, push, pressure, and fight for the Jewish state to recognize them as Jews.

1:06:301 hour, 6 minutes, 30 secondsHer father was one of them. A Jewish man in the Jewish state hiding from deportation. That's difficult to come to terms with, but we must confront it. One

1:06:391 hour, 6 minutes, 39 secondsof the most striking parts about the conversation was that flat's point about religious law and secular institutions.

1:06:451 hour, 6 minutes, 45 secondsA lot of people assume the religious establishment was the obstacle and the secular Zionist establishment was the open modern inclusive force. In this story, the reality is more complicated.

1:06:561 hour, 6 minutes, 56 secondsSome of the strongest support for Ethiopian Jews came from Sephardic rabbis, especially Rabbi Ovado Yusf, who from the beginning argued from Jewish

1:07:041 hour, 7 minutes, 4 secondslaw that Ethiopian Jews are Jews. At the same time, many secular institutions which were supposed to be building the

1:07:111 hour, 7 minutes, 11 secondsmodern Jewish state resisted them. And then we got to Zionism itself. If Zionism as a movement born in a European

1:07:181 hour, 7 minutes, 18 secondscolonial world and therefore carrying some of that world's racism with it. I understand that critique. When you read some of the founding figures of Zionism,

1:07:271 hour, 7 minutes, 27 secondsit can be painful. Some of them wrote about Mizakahi Jews, religious Jews, black Jews, Arabs, and others in ways that are ugly, arrogant, and racist. We

1:07:361 hour, 7 minutes, 36 secondsshould be honest about that. But I also pushed back because Zionism cannot only be defined by Herzel, Bengurion,

1:07:431 hour, 7 minutes, 43 secondsGoldmayer or the institutions that failed Ethiopian Jews. Zionism also belongs to Abu Mahari and the Ethiopian

1:07:501 hour, 7 minutes, 50 secondsJews who dreamed of Jerusalem. It belongs to the beta Israel elders who carried Zion in their prayers, their imagination, their longing. It belongs

1:08:001 hour, 8 minutesto the Jews who walked, suffered, organized, and fought to come home even when the state that was supposed to welcome them did not welcome them. That

1:08:081 hour, 8 minutes, 8 secondstoo is Zionism. And for me, that may be one of the most important takeaways from this episode. We cannot reduce the Jewish story to the people who hold

1:08:161 hour, 8 minutes, 16 secondspower at any given moment. Israel belongs to the Jews who founded it and to the Jews they failed to recognize. It belongs to the Jews who arrived first

1:08:251 hour, 8 minutes, 25 secondsand to the Jews who had to fight their way in. It belongs to Ashkanazi Jews, Misrai Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, African-American Jews, Caribbean

1:08:331 hour, 8 minutes, 33 secondsJews, Latin American Jews, Ebo Jews, Lemma Jews, and every Jew who sees their future tied to the future of this

1:08:401 hour, 8 minutes, 40 secondspeople. At the end of the day, as Kavan said, this is home. Not because Israel is perfect, not because the pain

1:08:481 hour, 8 minutes, 48 secondsdisappears, not because racism can be explained away as absorption difficulties or cultural misunderstandings or a few bad moments

1:08:561 hour, 8 minutes, 56 secondsfrom the past. And we don't abandon our home because of its flaws, no matter how serious those flaws are. We stay and fight tooth and nail to make it better.

1:09:061 hour, 9 minutes, 6 secondsThat's what I heard from even through her critique. That's what I heard from Ashagir. That's what I heard from the Lev family, American Jews of color who

1:09:131 hour, 9 minutes, 13 secondsmade aliyah and are now facing anti-black racism from within the community. There is something very Jewish about that. And actually, this is

1:09:211 hour, 9 minutes, 21 secondswhat real belonging means. Saying this is mine, too, and I'm going to help fix it. Let's be clear. Black Jews in Israel

1:09:281 hour, 9 minutes, 28 secondsshould not have to prove their Judaism, dilute their identity, or wait for the rest of Israel to catch up. But I believe Israel can become better than this. It has already become better in

1:09:371 hour, 9 minutes, 37 secondscertain ways. Not enough, not everywhere, not for everyone. But our society, like any other, is a work in progress. Israel is the home of the

1:09:461 hour, 9 minutes, 46 secondsJewish people. And the Jewish people came home in many colors. Ultimately, that is what makes the Jewish people so beautiful and so strong. We are not the same. Still, we are one.

1:10:001 hour, 10 minutesBorder lines with That Semite is a production of Unpacked, part of Open Door Media. The show is sponsored by the Marcus Foundation. I'm your host Meow

1:10:081 hour, 10 minutes, 8 secondsDancing. Border Lines is produced by Paul Aquestkin and our team includes Noam Sol Auz, Simon Abau, Jenny Falcon, Andrew Miller, Ari and Ricky Stern.

1:10:181 hour, 10 minutes, 18 secondsThanks for joining us.

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The Story of Ethiopian Jews Israel Rarely Tells

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9,435 views  Aug 31, 2026  Borderlines with That_Semite

Israel promises to be a home for every Jew. But for Ethiopian Jews, arriving often meant having their identity questioned and their history erased. Sociologist Dr. Efrat Yerday joins Yirmiyahu Danzig to challenge the familiar Operation Moses rescue story, reveal the activism that came before it, and confront racism, belonging, and Zionism in Israel. Can a country face its failures and still become the home it promised to be?

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107 Comments

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@FishareFriendsNotFood972

7 hours ago

FANTASTIC interview here, really eye opening and honest. Thank you so much for your work, I learned so much about Project Moses

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@shardanette1

1 day ago

Meaanwhile, in Gaza, black Gazans live in an area called Al Abeed, or, the slaves.

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1 reply

@gcolwill

23 hours ago (edited)

I very much appreciate the statement at the end.

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@jasonwelle

1 day ago

This was an OUTSTANDING conversation! That Semite is definitely one of my favorite Israel educators.

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@ThePharmacist2004

1 day ago (edited)

I agree, Israel is not color blind, and it bothers me significantly. And yet, revisionism with a political bias is completely unacceptable. 

Individuals of African extraction were brought forcefully, dying along the way into slavery—contrary to Ethiopian Jews. The Ethiopian Jews were oppressed and massacred by Ethiopians.

Theodor Herzl was the marketer of zionism, but his ideas and the indirect influences were from Rav Yehudah Bibas. 

America, England and France ended a bad practice of slavery that was in existence for thousands of years.

People of all colors, ethnicities and religions need to be accountable to themselves. The narrative of victim and oppressor is a communist narrative—the same narrative that created the Arab-Jewish conflict post 1948. 

The people she criticizes (pioneers of Israel) atheists and socialists are within her own camp. Shamefully, the pioneers were prejudiced against everyone looking a shade darker, including Mizrahi Jews. The prejudices and politics are influences of Europeans including separation of Jews into denominations. 

The opinions of the interviewed individual are revisionist narrative with deflection, self-loathing, and adulteration of definitions to advance a personal and political ideology.

Yirmiyahu, thank you for tactful pushback, showing that you are far more educated and balanced without the in-“doctor”-inator title after your name.

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@BiniBoeva

1 day ago

This is not true... in Europe there are many countries that have never been colonizers. Some even have been colonized by the Ottomans.

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4 replies

@christophersmith1155

1 day ago

78% - 80% of Israelis are people of color . From India to Spain.. European Jews are the minority. In the USA it's the opposite.

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@shardanette1

1 day ago

I'd rather hear from non-Academic Israeli Ethiopians like I have met in Israel.  They have such a different world view than miserable academics whose mind's have been poisoned with neo-Marxist nonsense.

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@yochevedijeoma

1 day ago

This is one of your best works ever. Your ending remarks/ conclusion statement will stand the test of time. 

Our Fathers from Abraham to date did not embellish our stories; they said the uglies along with the beauties. We should expect perfection; rather, we should strive to ensure that when we leave the situation, it will be better than when we met it, adjusted to our greater good.

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@rafapimenta9701

1 day ago

What an amazing woman!

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@MAZ440

1 day ago

I'm an Israeli-Ethiopian, and I have to say I'm sick of all these "intellectuals" mansplaining our community using terms they picked up in some university that only teaches one narrative. Let's be real, anti-blackness isn't just a Western thing. The Arab community can be super racist, the Asian community too, and honestly, even our own community deals with internalized anti-blackness, let's not pretend otherwise. We literally have a specific derogatory term for Africans who were slaves in Ethiopia.

I never get why these conversations have to happen in English. If you actually want to fix the problem from the inside out, have the discussion in Hebrew. We're a patchwork of people who arrived in Israel from every corner of the globe, and naturally, different cultures view the world differently. Show me a single human being who doesn't have some sort of bias.

I actually get the average Israeli citizen. Before October 7th, their main exposure to Ethiopians was through protests and endless talk about systemic injustice. Let's be honest, we can only start moving forward once we own that reality. But importing outside culture wars that don't belong to us just because we're being funneled into that mindset completely damages our sense of belonging, at least in my eyes.

Look at media representation even within our own culture, where people always default to showing lighter-skinned Habesha as the face of Ethiopians, while you will practically never see people from Gambela who have darker skin represented the same way. Colorism exists everywhere, and we love to pretend it does not.

You can only actually fix things when you prove you're more than just a walking complaint about racism (and I genuinely mean that with zero cynicism), because we are so much more than that. The struggles we face are really the struggles of any economically disadvantaged community. We immediately attribute everything to our skin color, but if you look closely, those same hardships happen to almost anyone who lacks financial leverage (just like anywhere else). We only hear about ours because we have a tight-knit community screaming from the rooftops. I challenge you to look at the facts for what they are.

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@melibrarian

1 day ago

I was expecting to hear more about systemic racism in modern-day Israel, but there wasn’t really any mention of that. I think it’s great to bring to light stories of people’s past struggles, especially how they advocated for themselves and triumphed. But presenting society’s lack of education regarding a true history of a struggle as an indicator of modern racism doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a big proponent of if it sucks, fix it. Don’t dwell on past injustices and claim victimhood and whine because it doesn’t help anything, and honestly, it’s getting really annoying. MLK definitely approached it in a brilliant way. We need more of him.

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@Elias-l1g5t

1 day ago

My brother כול הכוח to you and the team for your dedication in explaining and bringing to light the nuance and richness am isroal

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@aleksandrapopovic2527

1 day ago

Also why concentrate on negative , when there is a lot of positive in the story . In not so many years ( historically) , a lot of progress was made.

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@OSinghGyallll

1 day ago

I'm from the same country as the hosts Mom.  My partner is a Moroccan Israeli. When I told him OMG he is a GUYANESE Jew.. he says oh let me research this. I never heard this. I look at him and said both of your parents are African and you're challenging his Jew identity 😂. That is an example of other brown Israeli having a white supremacy Mindset. I asked him. Isn't that what ashkbazi said to your parents when they came from Morocco to Israel. He says nothing.  I asked him if he were from Turkey or Ireland or Armenia... Would you have to question him. However I can tell you he is not a racist and see Ethiopian and yemenite 

As his blood brothers

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@civri6698

1 day ago

Great, critical and necessary discussion.    

     Dr. Efrat does a great  job bringing forth historical information that is often sidelined, forgotten or misrepresented. She brought up the idea of mikveh l'chumra that was pushed for the Benai Yisrael of India in  situations pertaining to marriage outside of their community and with the Ethiopian Jews. Imo she should have brought up the fact that the almost 1 million Russians that made Aliya had no such requirement, even when they couldn't show halakhic means of Jewishness.... They were not even able to show by chazaqah.  

Chacham Ovadya  challenged the other chachamim  who interestingly enough decided to forego halakha and utilize secular teachings.

When DNA is brought up, it is necessary to know that Jewishness is not determined according to DNA. Regardless, the Ethiopian Jews DNA show ancient levantine DNA, along with some having the Cohen haplogroup, which aligns with both the Shlomo ha Melek and the queen of Sheba story, as well as the Danite heritage story, in regards of timelines. The Amharic, Tygre and many other habesha people also show levantine DNA, which speaks of the long standing historical Jewish Kingdom in the areas of Yemen and across in Ethiopia.

Anyway, great job and thank you.

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@tzm1843

1 day ago (edited)

It is annoying and misinformation when an educated person you are interviewing states things that are Not True:A) All the Arabs who live in Israel are not indigenous. They all moved here 2 or 3 or so generations ago for work and for better living conditions. Islam originated in Arabia, where all Arabs are from, and it gained numbers through conquest and threats of death if one did not convert. Many other scholars of Middle East have stated exactly that. It is too bad that she has bought into the 'Palestinian" propaganda that is All Lies. I could not finish watching her.

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@roamingelectron

1 day ago (edited)

Great talk. Buuuuutt...

It was a very promissing interview, but the interviewee was completely hijacked by the neo-Marxist frameworks which have completely conquered academia.

A nuanced conversation would not have discussed this through this lense, but would have shown the sins, challenges, obstacles and the very big successes. 

This was - sadly - not nuanced at all. It does not reflect the reality of this community and its integration within the Israeli society.

A miss..

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@Libby-Sameaj

1 day ago

I mean, I am white and trying to convert because I want ir and then I discovered that I have jewish roots and there is no essy way to return to Israel at all. We all have a hard  path to do it and we all have to keep going.

I am glad they were able, one way or another, return❤

HaShem bless you and all Am Yisroel❤

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@yuribliman8999

1 day ago

The most cringe video on this channel I've ever seen. 

We're not perfect, we're not angels, as one Ashkenazi grandma said.

If you wanna learn about the history of Ethiopian Jews, don't listen to this lady.

Much respect to her father, though.

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@shainazion4073

1 day ago

There is still questions on the origin of the Ethiopian Jews. Their DNA does not match Levantine DNA. They are closer to non-Jewish Ethiopians than to any other branch of Jews.     

    How and when they adopted Judaism is also in question. There is no historical evidence that they are thousands of years old.  There are still anthropologists and others like Dr Malka Shabtay that are cataloging their ancient culture and traditions.  According to Jewish laws they are Jews, according to Israeli laws they are Jews. We may never understand the full history of the Ethiopian Jews, but they are a part of Am Yisroil and that is what matters!

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@judithpollack8951

1 day ago

Yes, their DNA may not show the same as other Jews, I assume the Ethiopian Jews Converted thousands of years ago, but they are still Jews! Israel needs all the help it can get! I believe they were made to convert again when they entered Israel? I don’t think that was appropriate. I think all Jewish sects should stand together! This nonsense that some Jews are not Jews such as the Kariate Jews is ridiculous. I am an Ashkenazi Jew, and I think that the core beliefs of our sect, and who is controlling who is Jewish, needs to be changed. Those Jews who only believe in the original Tanaka are just as part of the Jewish culture as those who believe in the Talmud. Soon we may be totally isolated and we need all Team members to Come together!!

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@OSinghGyallll

1 day ago

This conversation is so important for brown and black ppl who are trying to understand Israel and social dynamics and honestly people who want to care and want to support but we don't see our struggle represented in Israel society and we don't see how Israeli would support our causes as POC in the States, in Canada or in Latin America. Very good conversation.

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1 reply

@CVBv-j4p

11 hours ago (edited)

אין לנו ארץ אחרת 🇮🇱🫶🇮🇱🙏

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@HumbleCarpenter

1 day ago (edited)

All societies have had systems of  oppression towards others in their society.... NOT western society in particular... I do not diminish the issues raised but I do contest the language of SYTEMS OF OPRESSION.... Japanese were supremacist Chinese were supremacist Arabs were and are Supremacist, Indigenous Americans were supremicist. Making this an particular colonial imperial issue is a false narrative that simply puts in place the tools TO CREATE NEW SYSTEMS OF OPRESSION.

This line of reasoning is the same demoralization of society from withing as is happening in the rest of western society. The reality is western society ENDED slavery and CHAMPIONES PLURALISM through a process and over time.

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@sandrafederic8910

1 day ago

I love Yirmiyahu’s perspective—the positive lens that sees reality through the challenges of a long and painful exile. We are in the process of Geulah, but it is not easy to get rid of foreign ideas! Zionism is a Torah concept, not an idea of the 20th-century Zionists

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@גליתאס

1 day ago

Israel is no different from any other country. It is not a racist state, though there are likely racist individuals—just as there are everywhere. I haven’t encountered them myself—perhaps because I am not Black—but I can say that racism is not widespread here, largely due to the educational system and military service, which act as the country's melting pot. My daughters, for instance, have had—and still have—friends of Ethiopian descent. I reject the comparison between Israel and the U.S. regarding the claim that we have subjugated another people; that is political nonsense, and it is unfortunate.

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@poldavyJEW

17 hours ago

I like Our Root Ethiopian Minhag ,

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@deavman

1 day ago

My bs sensor went haywire, Major L for you .

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@abdulazizclare9545

16 hours ago

I remember a blood drive some years ago.Ethiopian Jews had it hard. I don't think Yemeni Jews have it easy. Long live Yemen

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@youtub6521

1 day ago

The more you do for these people, the more they resent you. 

I’m an Ultra Orthodox Ashkenazic Jew (not from a Baal Teshuvah family). When I got married, the officiating Rabbi did a birur yuchsin (a genealogical audit to ensure my/our Judaism). 

Ethiopia was not a Jewish community, even if there are some ethnically halachik Jews. While I aint an expert on their genealogy, I never met a Jew who went to Yeshiva in Ethiopia now, nor pre 1939, the way that some young Jews went yeshivah in Poland from the US. So naturally Rabbis want to see Ethiopians make a conversion if they engage in Yiddishkeit, to make their Jewish status unquestionable.  Not to hurt them! 

Not to mention that the Ukrainians, Russians, etc. are vetted too, and if their lineage can’t be proven (such as they spoke Yiddish for generations matrilineally), they must undergo conversion if they pursue Judaism. 

This woman has a major chip on her shoulder and trashes the US and Israel, the two countries that took her family in. An ingrate par excellence.

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@Fjrcw

7 hours ago

In the USA if you don’t look ashkenazy they question your Jewishness. They don’t know that there are other types of Jews outside of the US. It’s very strange. They seem isolated there.

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@lauraevenzahav7932

16 hours ago

It is not nice the way she categories groups, like Ashkenazis, Sephardi, Misrahi, etc., 

how about the Jews by choice or converted Jews who are of different colors. The way she calls Ultra Orthodox  Jewish as  superior, looks like she has met or mingle with Conservative Jews, ,etc. 

The way she speaks of Zionism in such a derogatory way.  

Does not she get it, because of Zionism we have a Jewish country.  She is welcome to stay in the US.

Or if she wants to stay in Israel, she can advocate to advance the Ethiopian communities, motivate education , get the young Ethiopians be like every other Israeli by serving in the IDF, by studying get full scholarships to be anything they want.

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@gordumherseyi

1 day ago

half this channel's videos, whose audience is mostly gentiles though its style is outreach to assimilated jews, are esoteric debates the jews hardly understand but which are always used by nazi and isis trolls to harass them. extremely dumb.

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@D993-s1f

22 minutes ago

If the Ethiopian were not welcome why did Israel bring them. Answer me this lady.

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@jeromeshaguy4137

14 hours ago

I wish a day will come where us black parents don't pass this victim mentality to our children. Statements like "All Western Countries" have a racism problem, this is a very unfortunate statement, that does huge harm to the children we're raising. Racism is NO LONGER the major problem in most societies, Inequality is, let's focus on solving this.

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@BoldenedTruth

13 hours ago

Did she say Arab-Palestinians are to Israel what Native Americans are to the USA?

I learnt a lot from this video and yes even as a pro-Israel black African I condemn Israel's bad treatment of blacks but also would praise them for paying $30m to Mengitsu govt to allow black Ethiopians move to ISrael. Bro, no African country ever did this for others. YES ISRAEL HAS TO BE CRITICIZED BUT ALSO PRAISED FOR ITS GROWTH. But why is she denying the saving? I mean, whether Israel was pushed to go pick up the Ethiopian jews or not, they went to pick them up meanwhile the Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardic moved there themselves.

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@lenamuller3637

1 day ago (edited)

Comparing Zionism with European Colonialism is so wrong and hair raising that I had to stop watching unfortunately still seeing the part, where she compares ‚ Palestinians‘ (does she mean the Jewish or the Muslim or the Christian Palestinians?…) to the indigenous people of America who have been deprived of their land… No words.. was she smuggled in from some current anti- Israel movement to ‘ dismantle’ the Jewish unrighteousness..? … ‚As a Jew‘… not knowing what Zionism means and why and how it became a livable idea and vision by Herzl and turning everything ‚Jewish‘ upside down and perverting a whole history and truth to the modern woke opposite is really’ a thing’… Even if feeling hurt or misunderstood maybe through her personal history she should or would have to understand that there were not only ‚ real‘ Jews, if black, or lighter skin-colored, that claimed their ‚ right to return’ ( not to colonize by the way again…) in fact were Jews and a lot of fraud was attempted… So, if not in fact harming herself even more it would be more helpful and also just and correct to analyze the problems of acknowledgment through the reality and concerns of this only Jewish State in the world that also is and has to be a shelter for the Jews. Thank you

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@barrys.9040

14 hours ago

It's not an issue of color.  Ethiopians and other were separated from the Jewish world for millennia and didn't have access .  There were intermarriages and they needed to be certain of Jewish lineage for religious laws.

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@Sara-k6y4h

1 day ago

This goes to show that "No good deed ever goes unpunished". Israel bent itself backwards to bring the Falashas to Israel. It is disappointing to hear this.

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@samthesomniator

13 hours ago

She describes it as the sin of Zionism, that it connected jewdaism with a state... The fact Israel is a state is the only reason it was able to lauch that rescue missions that saved the ethiopian jews from being whiped out of existence by genocide. After preventing that to happen to european jews, arab jews, asian jews... The very reason Israel as a state exists, is to function as that safe heaven, as you are as a jewish minority in any other state constantly endangered of extermination. 🤔

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@franciscoriosanac7241

1 day ago

O entrevistador e a entrevistada são dois divisionistas frustrados e ressentidos.

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@jamescrawford9565

21 hours ago

She seems to believe America, one of the youngest white countries, invented white supremacy. Her personal experience clouds her scholarly objectivity.

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@frances.ca.1191

1 day ago (edited)

if Someone is 'against Whites' so to put it, can 'impossibly be Jew' in the 'Sense' of 'Torah', 

provided the 'Multiethnicity' of the 'Family of Nuh' as in 'Genesis' Chapter 9, for 'Shem, Cham, Japhet', 

that are supposed to have 'populated' both 'the East' and 'the South' and 'the West' 

and 'Japhet' is in 'Gupta' the 'Empire of India', 

and in 'EGypt', that is 'the House of the biblical Characters' 

included 'Nefrot iti' and 'a Ken a Théon' being 'Naämah' and 'Nuh' 

and 'Twt an Kamon' for 'Dwid that comes' and 'Ankh en Shen Amen' for 'Anchor of the living, heavenly Essence that is ascertained' that was 'Betshebä' 

and 'Nefrot Ari' that was 'Tzephrah' and 'Re Mosheh 2' that was 'Mosheh' 

and 'the Exodus' was from 'the Orient' or 'Mitzrahi' to 'the new Kingdom: Egypt, holy Land, Lebanon, Syria', 

and 'Paröh' in 'Exodus' Chapter 2 is 'Pariah', a 'social Status' of the 'oriental Tradition'.

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@eliezerbendaniel3625

13 hours ago

The Ethiopian jews did not have the oral tora which moses received with the written tora at mount sinai.

Their answer was that they were cut off from the jewish people for centuries. But the oral tora is part of the tora.

So the religious Jews did not accept them unless they underwent convertion.

A sign is that the lebovitch rabbi did not send emmesseries to the Ethiopian jews.

In the end, from what I know or have heard, is that most Ethiopians in israel are not religious.

I am from new york 41 years  and 29 years in israel. I accept all Israeli people, including non Jews, but someone who is called a jew but is not by jewish law a jew, is acceptable as a person but not as a jew.

If an American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, or from any nation, converts to be jewish by jewish law, I accept them just as a naturally born jew, regardless of their external appearance.

I was not a racist in new york and definitely not to my fellow jews in israel.

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@ScenariosOfDrea

3 hours ago

I just want to point out slavery and such has existed since the dawn of time, the idea that America started that wasn't exactly 100 percent correct, Portagal had a slave trade, Arabs had a slave trade etc They are racist as well.

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@lauraevenzahav7932

17 hours ago

Most Israelis don't mind at all the person"s color as long as they are Zionists, are loyal to Israel,  believe in the right of have, preserve, defend the one and only Jewish country in the world, because it's ancestral history,. 

The fact that she does not know Jewish history and the right for the Jews to Israel, does not justify her unloyalty to Israel.

If would be up to her, looks like  she would give another state to the arabs so called Palestinians. Looks like she does not know that during the British mandate of Palestine, the British were the arabs's allies, they already gave the Arabs 77% of the region or territory called Palestine to form the Arab  fake kingdom of Jordan.

She speaks of the Jews and Israel, like many of the Jew haters that  speak publically against Israel, I am sure she will be invited to the hater's podcast like tucker Qatar Carlson, Fuentes, Meghan, etc.

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@motorheadski

10 hours ago

Israel rescued Ethiopian Jews Yemenite Jews..

Rescued tens of thousands of Sudanese christian people..

Israel has all races colors cultures religions.

Fact check.

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@AdoptedCats

1 day ago

Jewish Soldiers in the Nazi Military

The involvement of Jewish individuals in the Nazi military is a complex topic.

Total Numbers — Approximately 150,000 Jews and part-Jews served in the Wehrmacht.

Mischlinge Classification — Many of these soldiers were classified as Mischlinge, meaning they had partial Jewish ancestry.

Full Jews — Thousands of full Jews also enlisted, despite the risks involved.

Historical Context — Some believed that serving well would protect them and their families from persecution.

High-Ranking Officers — At least 77 officers of Jewish descent, including 25 generals, were permitted to serve.

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@AdoptedCats

1 day ago

Historical Context vs. Theories 

Abrahamic/Ancient Roots: Genetic research supports a Near Eastern/Levantine entry point rather than a medieval Khazarian origin, aligning with deep historical integration into ancient Jewish communities. 

Contrasting Hypotheses:  

While some earlier genetic genealogists debated strict timelines pointing to Abrahamic eras, modern population genetics confirms a single prominent paternal founder event that expanded during the demographic growth of Ashkenazi Jewry. 

Netanyahu Y-DNA is: R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites

 R1a or R1b either is not Semitic bloodlines like CMH J1-P58 or J-M267 (J1) even with R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites. 

R1a or R1b either is not Semitic bloodlines like CMH J1-P58 or J-M267 (J1) even with R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites.

Near Eastern haplogroups such as J1 and J2 dominate contemporary Ashkenazi paternal lineages, while R1a and R1b are recognized as distinct European-associated inputs that integrated into the population over time. The distinction between these lineages highlights a complex history of demographic shifts, where some markers reflect indigenous Near Eastern origins and others signify significant historical dispersals or community-specific founder effects.

Are R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites linked to original Semitic populations?

Haplogroup Typical Association Role in Ashkenazi Lineages

J1-P58 lineage Near Eastern/Arabian Identified as a primary Semitic-era marker common among the Cohanim

J-M267 marker Northeastern Syria/Anatolian Represents a deep-rooted lineage tracing back to ancient Holocene dispersals

R1a-M582 variant Eastern European Serves as a striking founder effect occurring in nearly half of Levites

European haplogroups Continental Europe Reflects historical genetic admixture distinct from indigenous Semitic roots

🧬 Semitic Lineage Origins

Indigenous Semitic markers like J1-P58 (J1a2b) are often cited in genetic studies as evidence for early Bronze Age inflows into the Levant. These patrilineages are linked to broader Semitic-era expansions that coalesced regionally several millennia ago, distinct from the deep Paleolithic ancestry found in other parts of the Near East.

Ancient DNA research suggests that early, non-P58 sibling lineages were present on the Volga steppe by approximately 5,000 BCE, illustrating why informal haplogroup attributions require verification.

Genetic studies suggest that J1-P58 expansion was fundamentally shaped by mid-Holocene climatic shifts, specifically the desertification of the Arabian Peninsula around 4,000–3,000 BCE.

Haplotype sharing patterns underscore that while Jewish lineages often carry specific subclades, they maintain strong parallels with Arabian distributions, emphasizing a shared historical trajectory rather than isolated ethnic paths.

🌍 European and Admixture Signals

Distinctive R1a subclades reach unusually high frequencies within Ashkenazi Levite populations, providing a unique case study in how founder effects can skew distributions away from regional averages. These European-associated markers appear alongside traditional Near Eastern lineages, documenting the complex nature of Jewish migration and integration across the diaspora.

Multiple genetic origins characterize the broader Ashkenazi population, combining a majority Near Eastern signal with traceable inputs from European source populations.

Extended Y-haplotype resolution has allowed researchers to distinguish between various unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood, confirming the presence of multiple founders.

Aharonic descent claims are currently being investigated through deep-tree testing, such as examining the J1-S17446 sub-tree, to see if specific lineages can be definitively traced back to Biblical figures.

Genetic evidence underscores that while haplogroup labels like R1a or J1 provide a snapshot of ancestry, the full history of the Ashkenazi people requires looking at community-specific dynamics and ancient, multi-regional contributions.

[12:05 PM, 8/31/2026] David SN: White Europeans do not integrate to other populations, rather they will judge you if your mindset is not focus on their own agendas. The difficulty is: For black populations, 'If you don't mess with them, they will not attack you. 

But, if you don't fight back with white populations, they will coming to attack you continuously. So, that, you don't quiet yourself until you defeat them completely once for all. 

Nazi soldiers descendants in Ashkenazi Jews and how many numbers?

During World War II, approximately 150,000 individuals of Jewish descent served in the German military, including both full Jews and those classified as Mischlinge (mixed ancestry). This surprising statistic highlights the complex identities and circumstances of these soldiers within the Nazi regime. 

Jewish Journal

+1

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@AdoptedCats

1 day ago

Nazi soldiers descendants in Ashkenazi Jews and how many numbers?

During World War II, approximately 150,000 individuals of Jewish descent served in the German military, including both full Jews and those classified as Mischlinge (mixed ancestry). This surprising statistic highlights the complex identities and circumstances of these soldiers within the Nazi regime. 

Jewish Journal

+1

Jewish Soldiers in the Nazi Military

The involvement of Jewish individuals in the Nazi military is a complex topic.

Total Numbers — Approximately 150,000 Jews and part-Jews served in the Wehrmacht.

Mischlinge Classification — Many of these soldiers were classified as Mischlinge, meaning they had partial Jewish ancestry.

Full Jews — Thousands of full Jews also enlisted, despite the risks involved.

Historical Context — Some believed that serving well would protect them and their families from persecution.

High-Ranking Officers — At least 77 officers of Jewish descent, including 25 generals, were permitted to serve.

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@AdoptedCats

1 day ago

R1a or R1b either is not Semitic bloodlines like CMH J1-P58 or J-M267 (J1) even with R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites. 

R1a or R1b either is not Semitic bloodlines like CMH J1-P58 or J-M267 (J1) even with R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites.

Near Eastern haplogroups such as J1 and J2 dominate contemporary Ashkenazi paternal lineages, while R1a and R1b are recognized as distinct European-associated inputs that integrated into the population over time. The distinction between these lineages highlights a complex history of demographic shifts, where some markers reflect indigenous Near Eastern origins and others signify significant historical dispersals or community-specific founder effects.

Are R1a-Z93 Ashkenazi Levites linked to original Semitic populations?

Haplogroup Typical Association Role in Ashkenazi Lineages

J1-P58 lineage Near Eastern/Arabian Identified as a primary Semitic-era marker common among the Cohanim

J-M267 marker Northeastern Syria/Anatolian Represents a deep-rooted lineage tracing back to ancient Holocene dispersals

R1a-M582 variant Eastern European Serves as a striking founder effect occurring in nearly half of Levites

European haplogroups Continental Europe Reflects historical genetic admixture distinct from indigenous Semitic roots

🧬 Semitic Lineage Origins

Indigenous Semitic markers like J1-P58 (J1a2b) are often cited in genetic studies as evidence for early Bronze Age inflows into the Levant. These patrilineages are linked to broader Semitic-era expansions that coalesced regionally several millennia ago, distinct from the deep Paleolithic ancestry found in other parts of the Near East.

Ancient DNA research suggests that early, non-P58 sibling lineages were present on the Volga steppe by approximately 5,000 BCE, illustrating why informal haplogroup attributions require verification.

Genetic studies suggest that J1-P58 expansion was fundamentally shaped by mid-Holocene climatic shifts, specifically the desertification of the Arabian Peninsula around 4,000–3,000 BCE.

Haplotype sharing patterns underscore that while Jewish lineages often carry specific subclades, they maintain strong parallels with Arabian distributions, emphasizing a shared historical trajectory rather than isolated ethnic paths.

🌍 European and Admixture Signals

Distinctive R1a subclades reach unusually high frequencies within Ashkenazi Levite populations, providing a unique case study in how founder effects can skew distributions away from regional averages. These European-associated markers appear alongside traditional Near Eastern lineages, documenting the complex nature of Jewish migration and integration across the diaspora.

Multiple genetic origins characterize the broader Ashkenazi population, combining a majority Near Eastern signal with traceable inputs from European source populations.

Extended Y-haplotype resolution has allowed researchers to distinguish between various unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood, confirming the presence of multiple founders.

Aharonic descent claims are currently being investigated through deep-tree testing, such as examining the J1-S17446 sub-tree, to see if specific lineages can be definitively traced back to Biblical figures.

Genetic evidence underscores that while haplogroup labels like R1a or J1 provide a snapshot of ancestry, the full history of the Ashkenazi people requires looking at community-specific dynamics and ancient, multi-regional contributions.

Reply

@ketzerm8672

1 day ago

When are you talking about settler violence against palestinians in the west bank?

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@TheDemographicsPodcast

1 day ago

Israel doesn’t recognize Asians or blacks as Jews lol

1

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1 reply

@etanpc

5 hours ago

I am pure black and this doctor is making me errr! Wokism at its PEAK.

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