The Economist - USA (2019-07-13)

46 Middle East & Africa The EconomistJuly 13th 2019

T

he violentprotests that shook Israel

on July 2nd had all the hallmarks of race

riots. A young black man had been shot

dead by an off-duty policeman in unclear

circumstances. Thousands of Ethiopian

Jews took to the streets, throwing stones at

police officers, blocking roads and over-

turning police cars. Their claims of system-

atic racism and police brutality were met,

on the whole, with condescending denial.

Politicians chided them for the violence,

while issuing vague expressions of sympa-

thy. Few bluntly mentioned the word rac-

ism. Media outlets and pundits supporting

the government aired conspiracy theories

suggesting that left-wing organisations

had incited the violence.

Nearly all the Jews in Ethiopia, whose

ancestors had lived in Africa for centuries,

moved to Israel quite recently. Big airlifts

began in the 1980s, when Ethiopia suffered

tyranny and famine. A sympathetic Israel

welcomed them with open arms, though

rabbis had long debated whether the Beta

Israel, as they are known, were really Jew-

ish (and therefore eligible for Israeli citi-

zenship). Today there are 150,000 of them

in Israel (1.7% of the population).

They have suffered a range of indigni-

ties (though none to compare with life as it

was back in Ethiopia). The Chief Rabbinate,

which regulates marriage, demanded that

they undergo a full conversion process to

Judaism. Health authorities rejected their

blood donations, fearing hiv.

Complaints of racism have been gener-

ally dismissed. In 2012 an immigration

minister scolded Ethiopian-Israeli activ-

ists, telling them to “say thank you for what

you have received”.

Ethiopian-Israeli minors are three

times as likely to be arrested as their non-

black counterparts. In 2016 Israel’s police

commissioner said it was “natural” for his

officers to be more suspicious of Ethiopi-

an-Israelis (and indeed Israeli-Arabs). The

justice ministry’s anti-racism unit says the

number of arrests has dipped since then,

but the Ethiopians still feel “overpoliced”.

“Despite all the efforts to integrate into

Israeli society, the feeling of young men

and women confronted every day with rac-

ist remarks is that when they get pulled

over by police they have nothing to lose,”

says Asher Seyoum, a former member of

parliament and the first Ethiopian-Israeli

to have been appointed head of the Jewish

Agency in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

Unlike most previous waves of immi-

grants to Israel, who often arrived well-

schooled and credentialled, most Ethiopi-

an Jews had been subsistence farmers. Few

arrived with the skills to thrive in a high-

tech economy.

It is taking time for them to catch up.

Among the younger generation of black

Jews, most were born in Israel or have

spent most of their lives there. In the past

decade only 22% who left high school went

on to higher education, half the national

average. That is progress, of course. Chil-

dren raised in families with little tradition

of literacy seldom do as well as those from

more bookish backgrounds. But many

would like to see them catch up faster.

A classic Israeli comedy sketch shows

each wave of Jewish immigrants over the

past century or so—from Russia, Poland,

Yemen, Germany and Morocco—arriving

on the promised land’s shore and immedi-

ately joining those already on the beach to

hurl abuse at the next wave. The most re-

cent wave, from Ethiopia, faces tougher ob-

stacles than most. 7

JERUSALEM

The children of Ethiopian refugees

complain of police brutality

Israel’s black Jews

Problems in the

promised land

A

sidefromitsname,BeirutSouks

could be anywhere. Gone is the

labyrinth of alleys that rambled down to

the port. Instead, soulless walkways

lined with shops sporting global brands

have buried the maze of spice and gold

markets that once were filled with the

braying of donkeys. The grand edifice

pockmarked by shells that formerly

housed L’Orient-Le Jour, Lebanon’s

French-language newspaper, is a lone

reminder of the grandeur that used to

prevail around the Souks.

Few projects arouse Lebanese pas-

sions as much as the rebuilding of Beirut.

Some praise it for raising the city, phoe-

nix-like, from the ashes of its 15-year civil

war that ended in 1990. Others complain

that it has let tycoons and politicians

evict a jovial medley of religions and

classes from the old city to grab its best

real estate.

For the project’s supporters, it is

enoughthatBeiruthasrevivedatall. The

war had left Lebanon bankrupt. So a

building magnate, Rafik Hariri, was

elected its prime minister. He let Sol-

idere, a new company in which he was a

shareholder, requisition chunks of land

in the centre. But before he was assassi-

nated in 2005, he equipped the city cen-

tre with its own electricity and fibre-

optic network, while the rest of Beirut

suffered blackouts and a snail-paced

internet. Hariri built tunnels en route to

the airport, avoiding hellish traffic jams.

Devastated churches and mosques rose

up again. The Place de l’Etoile, a star-

shaped plaza with a clock-tower in the

middle, resurfaced as if the war had

never happened. “Solidere brought

Beirut back from the dead,” says Jamal

Saghir, a Lebanese former bigwig at the

World Bank.

But critics say Solidere ousted ordin-

ary folk—and destroyed more houses

than the war had done. It aimed to attract

a new class of people with the new, pric-

ey buildings. Glitzy stores selling Gucci

bags pushed out local schools and old

shops. Politicians, including Hariri’s son

Saad, Lebanon’s present prime minister,

took up residence behind barricades

guarded by private-security firms. “But

you have to imagine how keen Lebanese

were to get on with things and erase the

memory of the war,” explains one of its

planners.

Still, Place de l’Etoile feels as empty as

it once did when it was a no-man’s-land

that people scuttled across for fear of

snipers. It serves as a buffer between the

Christian, Sunni and Shia zones into

which the war divided the city. “Recon-

struction destroyed downtown as a space

for mixing,” says Mona Fawaz, a profes-

sor of urban planning at the American

University in Beirut. “It finished the

work of the war.”

Anti-cementism

Beirut rebuilt

BEIRUT

The “Paris of the east” is still arguing over its post-war reconstruction

Then came gentrification