Ethiopian Jews endure racism and poverty in Israel

Looks like racism isn't just a gentile thing:

Nobody doubts that many of the Ethiopian Jews were happy to leave Ethiopia not only because of their religion, but also to escape one of the world's poorest countries and a land haunted by war and famine.

While they may be financially better off in Israel than in Ethiopia, they are struggling compared to most other Israelis.

Some 60 percent are considered to be living in poverty compared to 20 percent of the general population, according to figures from Meyers-JDC-Brookdale, a prominent Israeli social research institute.

"We are making an effort to stop this through new programs," said David Yasu of Israel's Immigration Ministry, adding that Ethiopians get more state aid than other immigrants to Israel.

Encouraging immigration is a cornerstone of policy in a country where officials worry about the faster birth rates of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians than Jews and falling immigration from other parts of the world.

Still, newcomers have traditionally complained of being hard done by -- whether they are Jews who emigrated from Arab countries in the 1950s and 1960s or from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

As Ethiopians came with little more than the clothes on their backs and could neither read nor write any language, their difficulty adapting was hardly a surprise.

But Ethiopian immigrant leaders express disappointment that many of their Israeli-born children with fluent Hebrew have fared no better and complain that the real problem is discrimination by white Israelis.

"These aren't isolated incidents, it's pure discrimination," said Batia Eyob, director of an immigrant advocacy group that has documented a rise in anti-Ethiopian behavior in the past five years.

Ethiopians complain of problems finding employers to hire them but say the discrimination starts at school.

Figures show a dropout rate among Ethiopians of 23 percent by the age of 17 compared to 15 percent for other Israelis. Ethiopian youngsters say they find themselves the butt of racial slurs from some teachers as well as pupils.

Asher Balata, 18, said he hit his school principal "because he called me a nigger" and ended up expelled just months before high school graduation.

So where is the Civil Rights movement in Israel?