qanta ahmed

Qanta Ahmed MD is the author of In the Land of Invisible Women (2008), a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion and Associate Professor of Medicine, State University of New York. Follow her on Twitter @MissDiagnosis.

She has written an opinion piece in Haaretz.com, arguing against an academic boycott of Israel.  Including this interesting comment:

“…The reality is simple: Calling for an Israeli boycott invites no reprisals. It is more than socially acceptable; it is a badge of honor brandished by those claiming to defend ‘minorities’. Yet ironically, while the costs of boycott will be shouldered by every Israeli, the major costs will be born by Israel’s own minority population, including Israeli Muslims of Palestinian heritage. This is a population which is for the first time becoming highly educated, advancing in the workplace, collaborating with their fellow Israeli Jewish citizens and eager to enter the global marketplace of ideas. These Israeli Muslim Arabs are the keystones to lasting peace in the region. No one else is better positioned to bridge conflicts and cultures and yet no one else will be more penalized by boycott…”

Her article, in full:

The Poverty of Boycotting Israel

Qanta Ahmed.     25/07/2013.     www.haaretz.com

As a woman, a Muslim and as a physician of Pakistani descent, I can attest personally to the inordinate importance of academic freedom in Britain and the United States. This freedom was extended to me even during the time I was practicing medicine in Saudi Arabia, where – like all women – I was subject to gender apartheid. Because of this experience, I can only see the closing of the academic mind in the form of the ‘academic boycott’ of Israeli citizens and institutions as the act of invertebrate hypocrites. Boycotting Israel, whether academic or cultural is not an act of moral indignation, but an act of moral turpitude.

Academic freedom builds relationships, tolerance, and opportunity. When I moved to Riyadh 15 years ago, I had no doubts about maintaining my professional relationship with my own Jewish American mentor who had guided me throughout my then early career.

While I lived and worked in a country where as a Muslim I could worship but my mentor and his coreligionists could not, I was given every opportunity to develop in the American academic space because of his intellectual generosity. While I was subject to legislated male supremacy and relegated to being a legal minor, no Western academic suggested boycotting the medical academe hosting me in the Kingdom.

Academic freedom was in fact my only freedom at the time and I was determined to share it. I connected my Saudi colleagues – leading Saudi Muslim academics – with my mentor which led to the publication of jointly-authored papers on patient care in the Arab Gulf, benefiting primarily Muslim patients. This work sowed the seeds for subsequent conferences where both my Saudi Muslim and American Jewish colleagues met and developed their own relationships.

In contrast, boycotting Israeli entities penalizes apolitical individuals, their institutions, their innovations and ultimately, stymies a global market of ideas which benefits humanity. Perhaps it’s possible to make a more generous assessment of why the various scholars, writers and entertainers who call for a boycott of ‘apartheid Israel’ claim to act in the interests of Palestinians: That it’s based on simple ignorance. They would certainly be wiser if they had had the same opportunity that I recently enjoyed when I visited Israel to meet Israeli academia, and – critically – examined how such a boycott, whether overt or covert, particularly damages Israeli Arabs, or Palestinian citizens of Israel.

I spoke to Arab Muslim undergraduates at Haifa’s Technion University during my visit in May this year. Arab undergraduates (most of whom are Muslim with a smaller Christian representation) lead a program to remove barriers to success of fellow Arab undergraduates there. Professor Daoud Bshouty, Dean of Undergraduate Studies (and both Israel’s and Technion’s first Christian Arab faculty member) and Sara Katzir, former Israeli Airforce officer and head of the Beatrice Weston Unit for the Advancement of Students, explained the origin of the program, joined by Assistant Professor Youseff Jabareen, an Arab Israeli Muslim graduate, and the Muslim undergraduate Maysoun Hindawi, who related their own experiences as minorities.

When, eight years ago, the Technion examined their own data, they were dismayed to find a high drop-out rate amongst Arab undergraduates, even though they had met the rigorous entry criteria to a university consistently rated amongst the top three science institutes in the world. This was an untenable loss of intellectual talent for the university and in their mind, for Israel.

Since then, the Beatrice Weston Unit for the Advancement of Students has developed one-on-one peer mentorship by and for Israeli Arab undergraduates, with men mentoring men and women mentoring women in view of the cultural sensitivities. The program was funded by Jewish American philanthropists intent on serving all sectors of Technion’s students, majority and minority alike.

In the program, Technion students run after-class tutorials to help each other keep pace with the rapid absorption of knowledge required; sometimes, student mentors intervene in family dilemmas to advocate on behalf of a fellow student to his distressed family. They do so by mediating between student and parents struggling to resolve traditional cultural mores with the demands of advanced education. They render personal counseling on these and other adjustment difficulties, concentration and learning difficulties and the challenges of making vocational choices.

In less than a decade, the Weston Advancement Unit has improved the Technion’s Israeli Arab undergraduate retention rate by over 50 percent, with more gains likely. But The Technion’s support extends beyond their undergraduates. Many Israeli Arabs attend Arabic medium schools, so the move to the Hebrew-language university is a significant challenge. In response, candidates identified as Technion material are given intense year-long programs preparing them (and their Hebrew) – developed by the university itself.

Dumbfounded, I asked why an institution, supposedly pitiless when it comes to academic competition, would devote energies to empower the disadvantaged? Surely academia was the base evolutionary battle of our times: “survival of the fittest”? After all, Technion is affectionately known by its faculty and students as “The City with No Pity’ (referring to Technion’s purist, hardcore meritocracy).

“We have a moral obligation to develop everyone who enters the Technion, because we must nurture scientific ability. It is our responsibility,” Katzir told me. The advancement program has been so effective at closing disparity gaps that it has now been rolled out across the institute and offered to every Technion undergrad who needs it, minority or not. After winning national awards, this program is being emulated at other Israeli institutions at government request.

There are also life experience and leadership gaps that need to be overcome for minority students. At the Technion, Maysoun explained, Arab Muslim students are often the first in their families -sometimes in generations – to enter higher education, and, in the case of women, may be breaking stereotypical gender roles in conservative families who may not approve of a female student living on campus. Arab Muslim students must also overcome a leadership gap created by the military service that their Jewish peers have gone through. The program develops the leadership skills of its Israeli Arab Muslim undergraduates who direct many activities themselves, based on merit, not ‘quota’.

My Technion experience clarified for me how calls for academic boycott would particularly imperil the future of these Arab Israeli students and the progressive opportunities they are offered. The shockingly ignorant acquiescence to the widespread braying for boycott, now a socially acceptable sport eclipsing the spirit of academe, whether led by Stephen Hawking or others, reveals the depth to which anti-Israel bias is now entrenched in our ivory towers.

The reality is simple: Calling for an Israeli boycott invites no reprisals. It is more than socially acceptable; it is a badge of honor brandished by those claiming to defend ‘minorities’. Yet ironically, while the costs of boycott will be shouldered by every Israeli, the major costs will be born by Israel’s own minority population, including Israeli Muslims of Palestinian heritage. This is a population which is for the first time becoming highly educated, advancing in the workplace, collaborating with their fellow Israeli Jewish citizens and eager to enter the global marketplace of ideas. These Israeli Muslim Arabs are the keystones to lasting peace in the region. No one else is better positioned to bridge conflicts and cultures and yet no one else will be more penalized by boycott.

Academic freedom means the freedom to collaborate, the freedom to cooperate, the freedom to communicate, the freedom to investigate, and the freedom to know the other. Isolating Israelis imposes upon all of us outside of Israel the worst kind of self-isolation, one which denies our engagement not only with the richly intellectual and extraordinarily productive Israeli academic community but access to those minorities facing the greatest challenges in Israel. The boycott flattens the painstakingly earned, inch-by-inch progress towards coexistence within and outside Israel; and coexistence is surely the primary step towards regional peace. At this discouraging time of increasing academic and cultural siege, every thoughtful academic should join me in lending their name and their reputation to fighting the boycott.

things you don’t know about israel

This.

This.

And this.

the rabbinate has been busy

Bourekas are an Israeli favorite – puff pastry pockets filled with any number of things – fluffy white cheese, mushroom, potato etc.

Finally the Rabbinate in Israel has got their act together and regulated the different shapes of bourekas, so that the consumer will know if the filling is dairy or non-dairy.

They have managed to put aside dealing with the smaller issues of the day – civil marriage, kashrut certificates in restaurants, corruption within the system, and of course the matter of fixing the candidates for the posts of Chief Rabbi’s.

Now we just need to remember what the different shapes tell us about the contents – triangle, square, rectangle and even crescent-shaped…

It may have been easier just to instruct the shops to indicate the fillings with little signs on the shelves.

 

hit the road, ami

The man who gave the voice to the Waze navigation app is asking for a cut of the money from the huge buyout that happened this week.

Waze is an Israeli navigation app that was bought by Google this week for a cool $1.1 billion.

Ami Mendelman was paid about $55 for his voiceover work in 2009, and now he thinks he deserves a share of the money!

Is he joking?

Would he have been willing to chip in and pay creditors if it had ended up as one of the failed start-ups?

If I was one of the owners, I would give him another $55 and replace his voice with someone else.

As the old joke goes, when you look up the word “chutzpa” in the dictionary, it will have his name there.

lack of diplomacy

From Haaretz.com, a worrying assessment of democracy Bibi-style.

Electoral reform is the answer to most of the problems afflicting this country.  Until the voters get control of the politicians, they will continue to rule like in a fiefdom instead of making decisions that will benefit the whole country.

https://viewfromtheedgeofsanity.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/electoral-reform/

From Turkey reconciliation to Palestinian talks: How Netanyahu made the Foreign Ministry obsolete

The prime minister has taken to bypassing the Foreign Ministry by using personal envoys and making it irrelevant to the decision making; Israeli diplomats’ appalling pay and benefits is closely tied to the Foreign Ministry’s deteriorating status.

By Barak Ravid     |      Jun.11, 2013

The Foreign Ministry is becoming more irrelevant under Netanyahu. And so far, officials have been unable to halt the slide

Last week, the state told the High Court of Justice that it has reached an agreement with an African country to absorb Eritrean labor migrants currently in Israel. This announcement shocked the Foreign Ministry’s Africa department.

Israeli diplomats were bewildered that they hadn’t even been told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had appointed Hagai Hadas to coordinate talks with this country.

But bewilderment quickly turned into real anger, which was directed at Hadas. “We worked with Hadas and helped with everything he asked,” a senior Foreign Ministry official said. “We were running around African capitals for months trying to find a country that was willing to take in Eritreans, and we suddenly got a smack in the face − from our own side. We really feel idiotic.”

A similar event occurred a few days beforehand, when National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror held a special briefing for European Union ambassadors serving in Israel. The Prime Minister’s Office did not even bother to inform the Foreign Ministry, much less invite a ministry representative to the briefing. The ministry only found out that the event had taken place after it was already over.

“The foreign ambassadors get the message and understand that the Foreign Ministry is irrelevant to the prime minister,” a senior ministry official said.

Several senior Foreign Ministry officials who talked to Haaretz for this article said they weren’t actually surprised by these two events. They see them as another stage in the slow disintegration of Israel’s foreign service. Bypassing the Foreign Ministry by using personal envoys and making it irrelevant to the decision making that shapes defense and foreign policy has become customary during Netanyahu’s tenure.

While Hadas was busy in Africa, Netanyahu sent Joseph Ciechanover to Turkey as his personal envoy for the reconciliation talks with Ankara − almost completely excluding the Foreign Ministry from the process. Netanyahu also entrusted his personal lawyer, Isaac Molho, to act as his envoy with the Palestinians; the Foreign Ministry only learns about his activities through rumors, or conversations with foreign diplomats.

Netanyahu conducts himself similarly with regard to the relationship with the United States. Other prime ministers also confined relations with the White House to a small inner circle, but Netanyahu has taken it much further. The Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, was a political appointment by Netanyahu. He deals with both the U.S. administration and the Prime Minister’s Office on his own, while leaving the embassy staff and the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem out of the loop.

Over the last few years, whole areas of foreign policy have been transferred out of the Foreign Ministry. The battle against anti-Israel boycotts and the delegitimization of Israel − a subject that used to fall under the ministry’s purview − was transferred by Netanyahu to the Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Ministry, along with budgets worth tens of millions of shekels. The Foreign Ministry’s Diaspora division has been weakened and paralyzed, but the Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Ministry has a yearly budget of tens of millions of shekels.

Things have gotten even worse since Netanyahu established his new government in March. There is a palpable sense of demoralization in the marble corridors of the impressive building at the entrance to the government complex in Jerusalem. The Foreign Ministry of June 2013 is a humiliated, beaten-down organization without a parental figure. Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, has visited it once over the last three months.

The condition of Israel’s foreign service can be compared to that of a luxury vehicle waiting for its owner in the parking lot, but being dismantled into spare parts that are handed out on a first come, first served basis in the meantime. Since making a political deal with former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman under which no full-time foreign minister would be appointed until the end of Lieberman’s trial, in hopes that he would be able to return, Netanyahu has created a type of replacement foreign ministry called the Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Ministry as a political prize for his friend Yuval Steinitz. Netanyahu has also officially severed the Foreign Ministry’s connection to the Palestinian issue by transferring that responsibility to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.

Missing Lieberman

At the moment, quite a few people in the ministry are missing their former minister, Lieberman. He drastically increased its budget, opened a new office and also tried to improve the diplomats’ pay and benefits.

On the other hand, he wasn’t particularly interested in the ministry’s political work. Lieberman did not throw his political weight behind strengthening the Foreign Ministry’s role in decision making as opposed to that of the defense establishment. He scolded diplomats on a regular basis for capitulating to other countries and not upholding the national honor. He heard the ideas submitted by members of his ministry, but he rejected most of them out of hand, shoved them into a drawer and didn’t take them to cabinet discussions.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s attitude toward the ministry is even worse − a combination of disgust, disrespect and suspicion. He does not see any need for the ministry to really engage with defense and foreign policy issues.

The best demonstration of this was the army’s botched raid on a 2010 flotilla to Gaza. Netanyahu preferred to rely on the defense establishment rather than the diplomats, and we all saw the result on the decks of the Mavi Marmara.

Similarly, Amidror told an ambassadors’ convention that the Foreign Ministry would be better off focusing on public diplomacy, cultural activities and international assistance in the areas of agriculture and medicine.

Netanyahu, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the 1980s and then deputy foreign minister, has cultivated the image of being a media expert and an outstanding diplomat. He believes that most professional diplomats don’t come close. Like Lieberman, he also believes that Israeli ambassadors across the world aren’t properly dealing with criticism of Israel, especially when it comes to the Palestinians.

But Netanyahu’s paranoia about information leaking to the media is the source of much of his suspicion of the Foreign Ministry. While he dislikes keeping minutes of policy meetings and avoids sharing information, the Foreign Ministry’s work is based on composing and sending diplomatic cables to a wide range of people in order to encourage dialogue and an exchange of information and ideas. On more than one occasion, Netanyahu and his people have instructed ambassadors not to keep records or send cables summarizing his meetings with foreign leaders.

The feeling of disgust, in contrast, stems from political reasons. A few months ago, Amidror attacked ambassadors who dared to ask questions about the government’s policy on settlement construction. He told the ambassadors, “Whoever dislikes the government’s policies can quit or go into politics.” His outburst won’t be forgotten anytime soon at the Foreign Ministry.

“The bottom line is that Netanyahu sees us as a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official who has spent many hours with the premier. “His fantasy is to dismantle the ministry and rebuild it with new employees in his image, who share his opinions.”

The defense establishment is also playing a major part in the process of weakening the Foreign Ministry. Like Netanyahu, high-ranking army officers are convinced that anything the ministry can do, they can do better. Instead of working with it, the army excludes the Foreign Ministry, while at the same time blaming its members for leaks.

It’s no wonder that the Israel Defense Forces, the Mossad and the Shin Bet security service didn’t think twice about helping Netanyahu break the Foreign Ministry workers’ strike. Later, they also accused the diplomats of harming the country’s security.

“It’s an impossible situation,” a senior diplomat said. “We are fighting delegitimization of Israel abroad and fighting delegitimization of the Foreign Ministry at home.”

But the blame doesn’t rest only with Netanyahu, Lieberman or the defense establishment. Part of the blame for the situation the Foreign Ministry finds itself in also belongs to its employees. Instead of pushing for new initiatives and being assertive, the ministry’s corporate culture encourages mediocrity and suppresses creativity. This weakness and lack of backbone are part of the Israeli foreign service’s DNA.

On Tuesday morning, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will hold a special session on the Foreign Ministry strike. Immediately afterward, the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee will hold a meeting on Netanyahu’s use of the defense establishment to break the strike. At the same time, hundreds of diplomats will demonstrate outside the Knesset to demand an improvement in their pay and an end to what they have dubbed “the dismantling of the Foreign Ministry.”

The diplomats’ appalling pay and benefits in comparison to that of their peers in the intelligence services and the defense establishment is closely tied to the Foreign Ministry’s deteriorating status. When the ministry doesn’t have a full-time minister, when ministry employees are excluded from the decision making that shapes defense and foreign policy, and when the prime minister gives the impression that he thinks the ministry is utterly irrelevant, there’s no chance that the Finance Ministry will lift a finger to improve diplomats’ salaries.

wow tolerance

“…Demanding that others change their behavior, in order to show tolerance for our sensibilities, is the height of intolerance….”

Hannah Katsman, a religious woman, has some sensible words for those who oppose the Women of the Wall.

The absurd thing about this issue is that the “religious” side are trying to stop a group of people who wish to worship God, in precisely the same way as the “religious” do it.  Yet they use violence to try to stop them – even though the women are not breaking any Jewish law in practice.

All over the country there are “religious” people asking the secular for money, or offering to help them put on tephilin or to pray.

Is this some sort of joke?

netbus – brilliant idea

During their compulsory IDF army service 4 guys decided to do something about their frustration at having to wait at bus stops not knowing when the bus would arrive.

Thus the NetBus app was born.

the cruel, oppressive apartheid regime

Another one for those ignorant BDS’ers – instead of searching for the negative and exaggerating it to make their anti-Semitic views known, they should read some facts.

Better yet, come to Israel and spend some time seeing the reality.

I have have visited a couple of Israeli hospitals recently – plenty of Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians are there walking around freely, as they should be able to do.  However, I doubt any Jewish Israeli would be able to do the same in any Palestinian hospital.

They receive the same medical care, from the same doctors, that all Israeli citizens receive – as they should do.  The problem is that this is the ugly truth that the haters don’t want to publicise.

Read about the plight of Mohammed, a 3 year-old from Gaza.

“…Mohammed’s plight is an extreme example of the harsh treatment some families mete out to the disabled, particularly in the more tribal-dominated corners of the Gaza Strip, even as Palestinians make strides in combating such attitudes.

It also demonstrates a costly legacy of Gaza’s strongly patriarchal culture that prods women into first-cousin marriages and allows polygamy, while rendering mothers powerless over their children’s fate.

Mohammed was rushed to Israel as a newborn for emergency treatment. His genetic disorder left him with a weakened immune system and crippled his bowels, doctors say, and an infection destroyed his hands and feet, requiring them to be amputated.

In the midst of his treatment, his mother abandoned Mohammed because her husband, ashamed of their son, threatened to take a second wife if she didn’t leave the baby and return to their home in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis…”

And what of the evil Israeli doctors?

“…His 55-year-old grandfather cares for him. Mohammed’s Israeli doctors, who’ve grown attached to the boy, fund-raise to cover his bills, allowing him and his grandfather to live in the sunny pediatric ward…”

making education worthwhile

Below is an opinion piece from www.haaretz.com on Israeli NGO that has been doing great work in helping Ethiopian families get the most out of the education system.  Much more work needs to be done by the Government to make their lives easier, and they should take a lead from groups like The Fidel Association.

Ethiopian Israelis take their education – and fate – into their own hands.

Haaretz.com    Apr.23, 2013 | 2:20 PM    By Don Futterman

The Fidel Association, one of the first Ethiopian-led NGOs in Israel, just celebrated its 15th anniversary. Fidel, which means “alphabet” in Amharic, was the brainchild of Dr. Nigist Mengesha, who reached Israel in 1984 with four children and a social work degree. Mengesha believed that if the next generation’s experience was going to be any different from that of her own, Ethiopian immigrants would need to help themselves.

(Full disclosure: I am the Israel program director for the Moriah Fund which has supported Fidel from day one, and direct an NGO, the Israel Association for Educational Innovation (ICEI), which partners with Fidel.)

While working at Shatil, the technical support organization for NGOs, Mengesha was recruited to the Mandel Leadership Institute, a program to transform mid-career professionals into educational leaders. Despite the fact that seven years had passed between Operation Moses and Operation Solomon in 1991, Mengesha believed that Israel’s school system had learned little about addressing the needs of Ethiopian children, an intuition reinforced by her informal survey of Ethiopian parents at temporary caravan camps. She became convinced that education was the top priority for the new immigrants, and that special education was being used as a dumping ground for Ethiopian children whom the school system did not know how to serve.

As her final project at Mandel, Mengesha tried to re-envision the role of the school-based megasher (from the Hebrew, to bridge), a liaison who functioned primarily as an Amharic-Hebrew translator. In Mengesha’s view, the megasher would instead mediate between three groups: the Ethiopian students, their parents and school faculty. They could provide on-site emotional support for Ethiopian students, boosting their self-image and confidence, and help each party navigate the mutually misconstrued Ethiopian and Israeli cultural codes.

The misunderstandings were many, and they fostered bad feelings and bad policy. School faculty, for example, were ignorant of the strict rules dictating Ethiopian children’s interactions with adults; in conversation, Ethiopian children are taught to face down rather than look adults in the eye, to answer when spoken to but not to initiate exchanges, and to respond in a soft voice, all out of respect to their elders. Teachers and principals routinely misinterpreted these behaviors as reluctance to engage, disrespect or stupidity.

Equally baffling to educators was the disappearance of children for several days as their families attended funerals or weddings of even distant relatives. Megashrim help faculty understand that absence from such events leads to extreme social ostracism within the Ethiopian community, and helps parents grasp the need to notify the school in advance, so that children can make up missed instruction.

Another example involves children’s names. Very young Ethiopian children are called by a different name by each adult member of their family: Mom might call you Shoshana, while Dad calls you Esther, and your grandmother calls you Talia. Children who were asked their names (“How are you called?” in Hebrew) sometimes did not know which name to give, and were then referred for special education. Had the question been framed differently – What does your father call you? What does your mother call you? What does your grandmother call you? – the children could have rattled off a list of monikers used by specific relatives.

Mengesha was encouraged to think big by two “mentors”: Ariel Landau, the vice president of Elbit, who read an interview with Mengesha in Haaretz and insisted on helping her found her own NGO, and Mary Ann Stein, president of the Moriah Fund, who believed in Mengesha’s idea and provided the seed money for the new organization.

When the new megashrim training program was launched at Beit Berl, nobody was sure enough qualified Ethiopian candidates – they needed at least a high school diploma – could be found. When the time came, Landau, lawyer Miki Safra and businessman Nochi Dankner joined Mengesha to interview the 70 applicants, 30 of whom were accepted.

To date, Fidel has trained 144 megashrim, more than 80 percent of whom remain involved in the field. The importance of their role was eventually recognized by the government, and the majority of megashrim now working in schools are employed by the Education Ministry through a steering committee.

The training program has also spurred higher education; graduates earned a full year’s credit at Israeli colleges and universities, and Fidel arranged for scholarships to continue their studies. Most megashrim have at least a bachelor’s degree. While prejudice has not disappeared, megashrim have dramatically affected the expectations between school faculty and Ethiopian parents.

Fidel has also scored some big wins on the advocacy front, notably the requirement to have an Amharic-speaking megasher or social worker present at all special education placement hearings for Ethiopian pupils, so parents can understand the proceedings. Parents also learned that they don’t have to allow their children to be assessed. While the initial crisis was largely resolved, as the number of Ethiopian children referred to special education dropped dramatically, a new challenge arose for megashrim, if on a smaller scale: some Ethiopian kids who need special education don’t get it because their parents are so suspicious they refuse to allow them to be assessed.

Seven years ago, Fidel led the fight to re-open the Hadarim School in the isolated neighborhood of Kiryat Moshe in Rehovot and the school, renamed for Ethiopian Jewish leader Yona Bogale is considered a success, and an example to Ethiopian activists about their capacity to influence policy.

At the fifteenth anniversary celebration, Mengesha recalled desperate attempts to get the Education Ministry’s attention and marveled at the roster of speakers, which included former Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and recently retired Air Force Maj. Gen. and former head of Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin – one of several pilots so affected by taking part in an Ethiopian airlift that he joined Fidel’s board. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a video-taped message.

Mengesha herself went on to earn a PhD, and to be the first head of the Ethiopian National Project, a large-scale joint venture between the North American Jewry and the Israeli government. But she lamented that her initial prediction – that Fidel would help solve the community’s educational problems within a decade – has not proven accurate.

The community’s needs have diversified; new immigrants are arriving, many of whom are illiterate, but there are also young parents who were educated largely in Israel who have completed army service and college degrees. Alongside numerous individual success stories are the symptoms of incomplete integration, including high dropout rates and a disturbing gap between Ethiopian students and their non-Ethiopian peers. Anyone trying to close these gaps must find a way to inculcate a culture of literacy and expectation early, and raise achievement levels to them a fighting chance in competitive, high-tech Israel.

As other agencies were charged with supervising megashrim, Fidel refocused on empowering young people and parents through youth centers and leadership programs. They have also partnered with my own organization, ICEI, in a turnaround program for underachieving elementary schools with high concentrations of Ethiopian students. They are also considering training a new cadre of megashrim, focusing on parents’ empowerment within schools.

Fidel is now led by Michal Avera Samuel, who also arrived in Operation Moses as a nine-year-old village girl who had spent a full year in Sudan. Samuel was separated from her family at age 10 – to her regret she was sent to boarding school as part of a blanket policy applied to Ethiopian immigrant children – and went on to earn a master’s in guidance counseling. After confounding visitors as a delegate to the Israel pavilion at Epcot for a year (“They couldn’t understand that I was a black Jew”), Samuel joined Fidel, providing guidance and support to megashrim in the field. In 2011, she was named the fourth director of Fidel, embodying Mengesha’s dream that the next generation would help the community take its educational fate into its own hands.

Don Futterman is the program director, Israel, for the Moriah Fund, a private American foundation which supports the Fidel Association and several additional Ethiopian-led NGOs in Israel. He can be heard bi-weekly on the Promised Podcast.

bds, suck on this

Not much needs to be said about this short list of Israeli developments and discoveries.

If they were serious and sincere, BDS advocates would also boycott all these products and innovations, and any other products that have been developed from them.

Any takers?