Wednesday, May 6, 2015

A time for introspection - Ainao Freda Sanbato





by Ainao Freda Sanbato

 There is not a single organization without an Ethiopian-related project. If those donors truly want to see a change in the Ethiopian community's situation, they must demand answers as to what is being done with the money and whether it has produced results.


For members of the Ethiopian community, the time has come for introspection. It is painful to say, but we have made ourselves charity cases. Over the years, we have not done self-examination and delved into where we went wrong as a community or what part we ourselves played in our failed absorption and integration into Israeli society. There is not and cannot be only one side to this coin. We have a role in this and we need to address it.

People who could barely lead themselves, let alone other people, openly declared themselves heads of the Ethiopian community, even though they lack a basic understanding of leadership, planning or taking responsibility for failures.

There have been countless demonstrations by the Ethiopian community and in each one we ended up beaten and exploited by spineless wheeler-dealers serving their own interests. 

In the past couple of days, the media has been desperately searching Ethiopian neighborhoods in the hope of finding independent personal initiatives and learning what is keeping them from succeeding. But there are not enough such initiatives, and the ones that do exist are not the work of the people currently being covered by the media.

It seems that these people simply found an opportunity to receive media exposure, with the hope that those planning to form yet another new trendy party would see them and recruit them as decoration for their party's list. 

It pains me that these wheeler-dealers are doing huge damage to the young people who took to the streets out of genuine distress and despair. These young people want real change and integration and have had enough of the cynical profiteering. 

Jewish communities in the U.S. and Canada have been donating a great deal of money to organizations that deal with the development of the Ethiopian community. There is not a single organization without an Ethiopian-related project. If those donors truly want to see a change in the Ethiopian community's situation, they must demand answers as to what is being done with the money and whether it has produced results. We were not born poor and deprived, these groups have made us so. 

Instead of issuing empty promises, the government needs to take an active stand and do something. And we as a community have the responsibility to demonstrate cautiously and not be used as a tool by haters of this country. Israel's image is our image; we are Israelis, we belong to no other people and nowhere else. 

There is absolutely no connection between the African-American protests in the U.S. and the ones taking place here. They suffered slavery and entered America through the cotton fields. We arrived in Israel due to religious, Zionist and ideological reasons -- we must not blur these differences. 

We have been suffering discrimination and racism, but the policies in Israel are not racist. We are not subservient here. This is our country as well.

The government should close the Steering Center for Ethiopian Immigrants, which is a center for suppressing independent thought and an agent of barriers and limited integration of Ethiopian-Israeli children in the school system. It is a body that receives public funds only to create social lethargy and segregation. We need unifying structures and the school system is the right place to heal the rifts in our society.

We do not need to raise the community's head in the city square, but rather in our neighborhoods, where we need to be proactive and get involved by initiating various programs, instead of shooting ourselves in the foot. 

It is time to face reality, without letting ignorant people incite our community. It is time to take responsibility for ourselves.


Ainao Freda Sanbato is an Israel Radio reporter.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=12485

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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