Israel’s true colours

Israel’s true colours showed when Ethiopian Jews took to the streets to protest their living conditions and the open discrimination against them, and were met with police brutality in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv last Sunday.

These black Jews are treated as second-class citizens even though they share the same faith with Israeli Jews.

They do not seem to be able to take the treatment they are subjected to any longer.

Thousands of African Jews were complaining about high unemployment among their communities, inferior education offered to their children and downright unbearable racial discrimination.

Some commentators attributed the rise of racial clashes in Israel to the upsurge in racial tensions in many parts of the US; the last such incident recently took place in Baltimore after Freddie Gray, a young black man, died while in police custody from injuries sustained at the hands of the police.

The killing caused an immediate outcry and wild reaction from both black and white communities, in Baltimore and in many other US cities.

Yet claim of such connection does not hold water, especially when Israel touts itself as a fair, democratic country — at least for its people — free of racism and other discriminatory practices.

Well, Ethiopian Jews seem to believe otherwise and their grievance might change the opinion of others in the world about Israel’s “evenhandedness”.

The racial problem has been brushed under the carpet in Israel for much too long.

It will be interesting to see how Israel deals with the issue of racism amongst its own.

Now it is not even a matter of discrimination against Palestinians, but against Jews themselves.

Where’s the fairness?