Yes, and there's also this:

Whoopi Goldberg - more on the race issue

Don't have time to go into this in detail as am rushing to dr. appt., but a little bit.

I've been expecting a Jewish (propagandist, basically) response saying precisely what the JPost article did.

That is, taking advantage of this brouhaha to prop up the Jewish image in every way possible - forgiving, NOT a race (hence, Israel not "apartheid") and an infomational on the composition of world Jewry today from the POV of actual race.

No, of course, Jews are not a race per se (though, yes, an ethnicity - variably so depending on the origin of given Jewish communities, not even counting converts.)

Apart from race not even being a scientific construct, Jews are a motley crew. Nevertheless, Jews DO have shared genetic traits though they are spread out according to the varied background of the countries from which they originate.

Even the Ethiopian Jews ("Falasha" - pejorative) flown to Israel as accepted automatic immigrants were recognized by the strict Grand Rabbinate not only on the grounds of overlapping rites but genetic findings. (And, note, they are really dark-skinned, though less so than non-Jewish Ethiopians. Again, it's a case of ethnicity whereby their differences are recognized in their larger surroundings.)*

However (as an aside) it's NOT true that the Ethiopians were recognized with open-arms and equality (it's sad and disgraceful that within Israel there is considerable discrimination. The founding fathers there were were European, Ashkenazi Jews, and that group dominates much of the culture - not counting music and increasingly, Eastern beats have become popular on the airways.

Of course, it's patently untrue that Jews are actually a race (if such a thing exists) - though they are an ethnicity - ethnicities, actually, examining the whole body of Jewry. However, this scandal presented such a golden opportunity to contradict this fallacy (in self-flattering terms), it was inevitable that such replies would have been percolating ever since this scandal erupted.

That doesn't mean that within the myriad Jewish communities world-wide, Jews wouldn't have been treated prejudicially (in ways that endangered and shamed them) as a quasi race. Effectively as a race in the various contexts, including their possession overall of typical physical traits by which they were recognized and which endangered them when they were unpopular.

Gotta go!

Amanda or others,

I have heard that the babies of Ethiopian Jews in Israel are taken away to be raised by people of the ethnic majority (whatever we're calling them). Is there any truth to this?

* meant to elaborate about the Falasha, that they are overall ghettoized within Israel and treated as second class citizens to the point where many have left the country.

Yemenite Jews were treated similarly when there was a great wave of "Magic Carpet" immigration shortly after the founding of the state. Since then they have been gradually assimilated, though not entirely.

I have the sad feeling the same degree of acceptance is less likely to occur with the Falasha because of their more recognizably different color (Yemenite are dark but not as dark). Perhaps when enough intermarriage occurs, this degree of differentiation will disappear, though.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
Amanda or others,

I have heard that the babies of Ethiopian Jews in Israel are taken away to be raised by people of the ethnic majority (whatever we're calling them). Is there any truth to this?

It's one of those slanders that seems to have a small degree of truth (I think it happened in hospitals). Not sure about how much this was to have been an aid to assimilation and how much a matter of "baby hunger" (i.e., Holocaust survivors anxious to become parents) but there ARE Yemenite families today who complain their newborns were said to have died, when it seemed that in fact, they were forcibly adopted out.

Reading about this just now, it seems there is more than a kernel of truth to these terrible accusations (some say one out of eight Yemenite children were affected).

However, whereas some were adopted (all those affected were under the age of three), horribly, it seems most of the missing children actually did die - of neglect or disease in the early hospitals of the State. (The primitive immigrant housing the Yemenite - and other - immigrants were placed in were unsanitary and rough, simple, overcrowded plaster dwellings, so it makes sense that many children got sick.)

At any rate, it was not a matter of forcible assimilation (as with our native Americans) by a dominant culture. (Undoubtedly, though, the primitive large Yemenite families involved were treated far worse than happened to the Ashenazi/Western immigrants.)

Note, I had dinner with some shady Moroccan immigrants of their criminal element in one of the "Ma'abarot" still standing outside Be'ersheba - what turned into one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I will say too that I got very sick from the lack of sanitation of the food - dysentery.

The Coverup of the Disappearance of Yemenite Children after Operation "Magic Carpet"