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HEBREWISM OF AFRICA PART 3 (267 hits)

HEBREWISM OF AFRICA PART 3

Report calls Israel's Ethiopian Jews `black underclass'

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM -- Misguided Israeli educational policies are "steadily transforming Ethiopian immigrants into a black underclass," according to a new report by the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews.

Titled "Creating an Underclass: How Israel's Educational System is Failing Immigrant Youth," the just-published report accuses the government of providing substandard education to Ethiopian immigrants and of segregating them from other Israelis.

While acknowledging that many officials in the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Education and Absorption ministries have made "heroic efforts" to help Ethiopian olim (immigrants) succeed, the report charges the government with educational neglect.

The report, compiled four years after the Operation Solomon airlift brought 14,400 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, is subtitled "A Call to Action."

"While the problems posed by inadequate housing and job prospects are well-known," the report says, "the most critical obstacle to the absorption of the Ethiopian community is the education system."

"Noting that about half of Ethiopian adults are unemployed, the report says......"
The education system, the report concludes, "has only contributed to a vicious circle of poverty, unemployment and juvenile delinquency."