African-Israeli personalities hoping to change community’s image

By Ben Sales · March 31, 2013 -- JTA

Yityish Aynaw, shown meeting President Obama during his visit to Israel, is among several Israeli figures hoping to use their fame to improve the standing of African-Israelis, March 2013. (Avi Ohayon / GPO)

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- When Yityish Aynaw immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at age 12, she was thrust into an Israeli classroom. An orphan lacking Hebrew skills, Aynaw says she relied on other kids and her own sheer ambition to get through.

Ten years later Aynaw, 22, is the first Ethiopian-Israeli to be crowned Miss Israel -- a title she hopes to use to showcase Israel’s diversity.

“Israel really accepts everybody,” she told JTA. “That I was chosen proves it.”

Ethiopian and other African-Israelis have historically struggled with poverty and integration. But recently, several African-Israeli women have made a pop culture splash.

Along with Aynaw, Ethiopian-Israeli actress Ester Rada, 28, has just released her first solo rock record to positive reviews. And Ahtaliyah Pierce, a 17-year-old Black Hebrew Israeli, reached the semifinals on Israel’s edition of “The Voice,” a reality show in which emerging singers compete.
Though their personal stories diverge, each woman has experienced challenges as an African immigrant and wants to use her fame to help other African immigrants better integrate into Israeli society.

“It’s hard for Ethiopians to adapt, but they should be who they are, be the best that they can be,” said Rada, who was born in Jerusalem to Ethiopian parents who spoke Amharic at home. “Don't let others keep you down or make you feel like we don't belong.”

Rada's parents stayed close to their Ethiopian roots, eating traditional foods and listening to traditional music. But Rada rebelled. She refused to speak Amharic and failed to understand why she should feel tied to a country she had never seen and did not understand.

In recent years, the resistance has softened. Ethiopian culture “is a part of me and I can't run away from it,” Rada said. “I decided to embrace it. And it’s helped me define who I am, in my culture and in my music.”

Aynaw says it's important for Israelis to see the positive side of the Ethiopian community. She compares the effect of her winning Miss Israel to Barack Obama's election as president of the United States. The two met at the Israeli president's residence during Obama's recent trip to the region.

“There are wonderful things about the [Ethiopian] community, and it’s important that [Israelis] see it,” she told JTA. “Israel is a multicultural state. We’re diverse and we come from different countries, so we need to show that outwardly.”

Rada and Pierce report incidents of racism directed at them because of their skin color. A woman once accused Rada of coming to Israel only for the money. And Pierce says in her hometown of Dimona, she used to be called “kushi,” a Hebrew pejorative used to describe blacks.

“There are many stigmas about the community, and unfortunate stories,” said Hava Tizazu, an Ethiopian-Israeli actress who works with at-risk African youth. “Now there are new personalities who are beautiful and positive. It helps to change the image, but it’s just one step in a longer process.”

Since she advanced to the semifinals on “The Voice,” Pierce says the slurs have all but stopped. She was voted off the show in March, but like Rada she hopes to keep performing after her army service.
“I want to be on stage,” Pierce said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m modeling, singing or acting. I have to be on stage.”

Aynaw also hopes to model and act, and to support youth arts clubs during her year as Miss Israel. She will represent Israel at the Miss World competition in September in Indonesia.

“I feel like a very important person,” Aynaw said. “I don’t usually get up and see myself on all of the TV channels. I’m definitely getting used to it.”

JTA's Chavie Lieber contributed to this story.

Resisting, Overcoming Racism

"This is why Somalia is having a civil war and Holland isn't." It was all there. People in Holland agree that violence is bad. They make a huge effort to teach their children to channel aggression and resolve their disputes verbally. They had analyzed conflict and set up institutions to regulate it. This was what it meant, to be citizens.
I wasn't strong enough to think all these things through just yet. I didn't feel ready to step back and ask myself why so many immigrants -- so many Muslim immigrants -- were violent, on welfare, poor. I just absorbed the facts. But I was beginning to see that Muslims in Holland were being allowed to form their own pillar in Dutch society, with their own schools and their own way of life, just like Catholics and Jews. They were being left politely alone to live in their own world. The idea was that immigrants needed self-respect, which would come from a strong sense of membership in their community. They should be permitted to set up Quranic schools on Dutch soil. There should be government subsidies to Muslim community groups. To force Muslims to adapt to Dutch values was thought to conflict with those values; people ought to be free to believe and behave as they wish.
The Dutch adopted these policies because they wanted to be good people. Their country had behaved unspeakably in Indonesia, and didn't (much) resist Hitler; in Holland, a greater percentage of Jews were deported during the Second World War than in any other country in Western Europe. Dutch people felt guilty about this recent past. When massive immigration began in Holland, which wasn't until the 1980s, there was a sense among the Dutch that society should behave with decency and understanding toward these people and accept their differences and beliefs.
But the result was that immigrants lived apart, studied apart, socialized apart. They went to separate schools -- special Muslim schools or ordinary schools in the inner city, which other families fled.
At the Muslim schools there were no children from Dutch families. The little girls were veiled and often separated from the boys, either in the classroom or during prayers and sports. The schools taught geography and physics just like any school in Holland, but they avoided subjects that ran contrary to Islamic doctrine. Children weren't encouraged to ask questions, and their creativity was not stimulated. They were taught to keep their distance from unbelievers and to obey.
This compassion for immigrants and their struggles in a new country resulted in attitudes and policies that perpetuated cruelty. Thousands of Muslim women and children in Holland were being systematically abused, and there was no escaping this fact. Little children were excised on kitchen tables -- I knew this from Somalis for whom I translated. Girls who chose their own boyfriends and lovers were beaten half to death or even killed; many more were regularly slapped around. The suffering of all these women was unspeakable. And while the Dutch were generously contributing money to international aid organizations, they were also ignoring the silent suffering of Muslim women and children in their own backyard.
Holland's multiculturalism -- its respect for Muslims' way of doing things -- wasn't working. It was depriving many women and children of their rights. Holland was trying to be tolerant for the sake of consensus, but the consensus was empty. The immigrants' culture was being preserved at the expense of their women and children and to the detriment of the immigrants' integration into Holland. Many Muslims never learned Dutch and rejected Dutch values of tolerance and personal liberty."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel

These, the experiences, thoughts and conclusions of a Somali woman who escaped the traditions of Islam that would have given her in marriage to a man she did not know, chosen by her father to provide a comfortable life for her, and which she rejected as not being in her best interests before she even became fully aware how she would achieve her best interests. 

Escaping the marriage to become a refugee in Holland, later a human-rights campaigner and later still a member of Dutch parliament she became notorious in her battle to reform Islam and shame Islamists. Her collaboration with Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in producing the film Submission, resulted in his violent death and her ongoing battle against violent Islamism.

Her observations about the tendency of the Dutch to 'respect' the traditions and the heritage and the religious system of Sharia among their growing Muslim population, leading to the prevailing conditions of enmity between clans and sects and tribal enmities so common within Islam have not changed in the years since she found refuge in Holland. 

The threats against her life finally led to her having to go into hiding where she was protected by Dutch security. Even that was not possible; the potential for violence so unabated that she was forced to move again; her Dutch citizenship was in danger of being revoked and she was forced to resign from parliament. Finally leaving Holland altogether, to begin a university teaching career in the U.S.

Now another young Muslim living in Holland has also been forced to go into hiding to protect his life from vicious threats directed against him by irate Muslims who feel his activities, like hers years before, have thrown them into disrepute, and have insulted Islam by revealing the extent of their anti-Semitic beliefs, and their habit of inciting their youth to racial intolerance.

Mahmet Sahin is a doctoral student living with his family in the Netherlands. It came to his attention that there is a prevailing attitude of rabid anti-Semitism common among Muslim youth. An earlier round of interviews had made it plain that among all Dutch youth anti-Semitism still rears its ugly head, but among Muslim youth the numbers who are virulently anti-Semitic is even larger. 

While interviewing Muslim high school students of Turkish extraction Mahmet Sahin was appalled to hear the level of their hateful invective against Jews and their stated admiration for Adolf Hitler. He admonished them for their attitude in stating "What Hitler did to the Jews is fine with me"; "Hitler should have killed all the Jews" (YouTube (http://is.gd/6qpuHY). And he felt obliged to do what he could to debunk their beliefs.

His reward was a petition that was circulated seeking his expulsion from the area largely comprised of Muslim residents. And because of death threats issued against him the Mayor of Arnhem felt it would be advisable for him to go into hiding. He and his family now live within a witness protection program, for his having protesting Muslim youth in Holland openly and proudly espousing rabid anti-Semitism. 

Ahmed Marcouch, a member of the Dutch Parliament has announced he will raise the subject for discussion in parliament. "It is horrible that someone has to be afraid because he has done something that we all should do -- teach children not to hate." 

If a previous Dutch parliamentarian was unable to succeed in moving the Netherlands to act to put a halt to this distinct malfunction in a pluralist society under even more dreadful circumstances  -- the atrocity committed against Theo van Gogh -- one can reasonably conclude the issue is not viewed as important enough for full attention.

The solution to the problems facing the Netherlands today, just as it poses similar threats to the orderly and secure social functioning of other European countries like France and Switzerland, Britain and Sweden, lies in swift measures to be taken to better integrate their large and growing Muslim populations and expecting them to obey the laws of the country, not those in which they have been steeped in fundamental Islamism.

And then, decent, law-abiding, human-rights-defending citizens like Mehmet Sahin who make an effort to make the country in which they live a better place for all its people would never have to write words like this: "Within a couple of days, I will move to another city of The Netherlands ... After what happened in the last three weeks, I understood the eternal loneliness and pain of the Jewish population. In the rest of my life, I will tell the whole world that we all must resist this aggression."

Citizenship Distinctions

"Canadian citizenship is predicated on loyalty to this country and I cannot think of a more obvious act of renouncing one's sense of loyalty than going and committing acts of terror.
"Right now, under the current law, we have no power to revoke or deem 'renunciation of citizenship' on the part of a dual-citizen terrorist of this nature although every other western democracy I've studied does have a similar power."
Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney - Canada

Canada The Good. Incapable of imagining that anyone with the intelligence to wish to migrate from countries of oppression to haven in Canada would ever betray the trust of this country's values to align themselves with terrorists, to set out on a voyage of personal jihad. Well, then, in recognition of realities brought home by the reality of Canadian citizens, including those born within Canada to immigrant families sometimes going astray, it is time for new legislation to be brought into law.

Canadian citizens who see fit through either the polarizing draw of double loyalties, or having succumbed to the blandishments of those dedicated to violence in the expression of tribal or religious faith, to travel as mercenaries, combatants, jihadists, guerrillas, mujahadeen, rebels, insurrectionists to countries like Bosnia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Algeria, Lebanon or anywhere else their fervour takes them should lose the privilege of Canadian citizenship.

A Canadian citizens is claimed to be implicated by Bulgaria investigators, where a deadly attack on Israeli civilians took place in that country a year ago. One of the three attackers in a Hezbollah-linked bus bombing held Canadian citizenship. This was an instance where a boy of eight accompanied his parents to settle in Canada, then separation took him to Lebanon at age 12, but he retained Citizenship and travelled on a Canadian passport ten years later.

A month ago, as spill-over of the current conflict in Mali, two Canadians are claimed by Algerian authorities to have taken part in a siege that resulted in the deaths of 37 foreign workers at a giant gas plant installation, and the deaths of an almost equal number of violent insurgents when the Algerian military stormed the plant, rescuing a large number of workers and saving the plant from destruction.

Statistics Canada figures indicate that 863,115 people - representing three percent of the Canadian population - qualify as "citizens of Canada and at least one other country".

It is perhaps past time that dual citizenship not be officially accepted by the Government of Canada. It is not unreasonable to assert that if people see fit to leave their country of origin for good reason, to escape poor living conditions or ethnic, religious, political or social oppression, they should also be prepared to renounce that citizenship in favour of obtaining Canadian citizenship.

Minister Kenney has announced that the federal government is in the process of considering stripping dual citizens of the Canadian component of their citizenship standing should they be involved in crimes such as the attacks in Bulgaria and Algeria.

A private member's bill has been tabled by Devinder Shory to that effect. The deputy director of operations of CSIS has informed a Commons committee that roughly 50 young Canadians are believed to have made their way to Somalia, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, along with Afghanistan's and Pakistan's tribal areas, to join the cause of jihad. This type of activity should result in an automatic revocation of citizenship.

The Canadian government is already sitting on a report that had been undertaken in 2006 after 15,000 Lebanese Canadians, many of whom had chosen to live in Lebanon permanently, were rescued from Beirut at the time of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. That cost came dearly to Canadian taxpayers, at $100-million, though free of charge to the rescued Lebanese-Canadians many of whom turned right around to return to Lebanon, with Israeli troop withdrawal.

The bill currently before Parliament, thanks to Conservative MP Devinder Shory would, if passed, strip dual citizens of Canadian citizenship should they commit an act of war against the Canadian Forces. As has occurred when young Muslim Canadians opt to travel abroad to fight against NATO troops in conflict with Islamists threatening the security of countries who reject fundamentalist Islam.

It is a bill that should be amended, with a wider net, to include those who leave Canada to commit violent acts in the name of a violent ideology. It would of necessity have to be a carefully worded document that is capable of making a distinction between a jihadist call to arms, and one that draws people abroad to aid those battling an ideology similar to Islamism, such as fascism.

The fascistic pre-WWII Spain took socialists from Western countries abroad to defeat an enemy of human rights.That too was a conflict whose end was to have resulted in world domination.  The enemies of liberty and human rights who champion a violent ideology that they propose to impose upon others through intimidation, terror and violence, must discover that the convenience of using Canadian passport holders to advance their cause will not be countenanced by Canada.

We Want

There are no best of all possible worlds. If there were, having the basic fundamentals of existence should satisfy us. It does not. Human nature is such that having achieved the wherewithal of existence we look for more. And more does not satisfy the urge to acquire even more. The more we have, it seems we must continue to agitate for more again. Nothing suffices to satisfy the human appetite to acquire what we feel is required to give us satisfaction; nothing quite does for very long.

We look around us and appraise what others have and if our possessions are not equal to theirs then we perceive ourselves as being deprived. Our local newspaper regularly posts stories of people who have been disadvantaged by society in some way or other. Occasionally the stories do elicit sympathy when people truly do appear to have been short-shrifted by fate or circumstances.

But many more engender a sense of tedious disappointment in perceived human entitlements.

"You don't have privacy. It's the worst thing. You don't have your own bedroom. ...If you want to talk to your friend, all the family (hears) the conversation. The only privacy is in the bathroom."
Zahraa Makki, 24 years of age

In a country like Canada, health care is universally available, subsidized wholly by the taxpayer through government agencies. At the municipal level, low-income people may apply for subsidized housing. There are government welfare agencies whose purpose is to aid people with little to no income. Society wants to ensure that no one is unfortunate enough to 'fall through the cracks', and suffer.

Zahraa's parents, both in their 60s are on disability pensions. They live in a two-bedroom apartment that is subsidized by the municipality. They have applied to the housing registry for a larger apartment, one with three bedrooms. For there are the two parents, Zahraa, and a son, 22 years of age. The young man has one of the bedrooms, and Zahraa must share her parents' bedroom with them.

She has mobility problems and vision loss as a result of having suffered tubercular meningitis in 2006. She needs assistance to be able to perform some routine tasks, and depends on her parents for help in this respect, so it is useful for her to live with them, although she has no income of her own where she can be independent, in any event.

The young woman says she is depressed and she is upset over her lack of privacy. It is awkward to sleep in a room with others; someone may snore loudly and upset the other room's inhabitants. One person may want to put on a night light and read and thus disturb the others. And undressing means alerting others to remain outside while that is being done.

It is most inconvenient. Zahraa uses a walker to help her get around, and a special computer to read to her. She thought of asking the housing registry for a small apartment for herself, but because of her dependence on others to aid her in achieving small tasks, it would be impractical.  Ideally, a three bedroom apartment with two bathrooms would be suitable, she feels.

And one was found, after a long wait. She was excited; it would mean some privacy for her, a three-bedroom apartment, her own bedroom where she could closet herself and do her university homework uninterrupted by others watching television, or talking, interrupting her concentration. "I know I have a roof over my head, but this isn't healthy", she told the interviewer, speaking of the current apartment.

Her father had visited the three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse that had become available for them. He liked it, and accepted it. On his return home he was contacted by the housing authority to inform him that it was discovered the townhouse wouldn't be suitable for them, after all. There was parking for one car only.

Zahraa's father and brother both own vehicles. "That's not fair. I was so happy. Now I'm so upset", she complained. Why the 22-year-old brother cannot be independent at his age and move out on his own, allowing his sister to have the bedroom of her own she so yearns for, is never broached. 

How it is that father and brother both own and drive cars, with the expense involved of doing so, yet still qualify for assisted housing is never mentioned. The family had returned to Lebanon in 1994 and lived there for a few years though the parents came to Canada in the 1970s. The parents' five children were born in Canada. And they returned from Lebanon back to Canada in 1996.

Would they have fared so well in Lebanon, had they remained? Zahraa had contracted her ailment in 1996, which might have meant she became ill while in Lebanon, and that this was the impetus for the family to return to Canada where medical attention is assured and free, rather than the wish to evacuate the country during the Israeli-Hezbollah war.

As Canadian citizens the Government of Canada obliged by ensuring that all Lebanese with Canadian citizenship who wished to, were rescued from the country and returned to Canada, even though they had more or less abandoned living in Canada and were content to return to Lebanon. Many did just that again, after the war-hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah came to an end.

Our Pain, Iran's Gain

The Islamist theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a despicable, criminal administration of an ancient country with an admirable heritage.  Its people and their overall culture, both traditional and intellectual are the equal of any, anywhere in the world.  Their values do not reflect those of their Ayatollahs under whom they remain in tight thrall to fundamentalist Islamism.  As a major sponsor of violent jihadist groups and a virulent espouser of anti-Semitism they present as a danger to the world.

Their sinister operation of nuclear facilities for the clear and obvious purpose of successfully manufacturing nuclear warheads, and their threats of violence against near and far neighbours mark them as the most incendiary and volatile of threats to world peace and stability.  Dissidents, those who fled Iran when the Islamic Revolution took place, have an honoured place abroad in many countries as citizens of countries like Canada.

Iran is glad to be rid of them, as antagonistic to the regime, and troublemakers.  The green revolution that followed on the second 'election' and inauguration of the second term for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was met with violence by the Republican Guard and its civil militia at the behest of the Grand Ayatollah and his ruling council. Incarceration, torture and death is often meted out to political dissidents.

But you cannot always get it right, and Canada has been saddled with one Iranian whose criminal exploits within Canada may delight Iran, but enrages Canadian authorities.  Although Ashkan Forsat was born in Iran in 1978, his family migrated as refugees to Canada when he was ten years of age.  No way to determine at that age the kind of character that was being brought into the country.

But it didn't take long before it became evident what mettle he was made of.

By age nineteen Forsat had a string of crimes to his credit; crimes that included violent armed robbery.  He is a dedicated criminal.  He has landed immigrant status in Canada but not citizenship, a status that allows for his deportation to his country of origin.  And he was indeed taken by Canadian border officials to Tehran in 2004, at age 26, in the expectation that he would be repatriated in his country of birth.

Forsat is still in Canada nine years later, as the criminal charges brought against him continue to steadily mount.  Iran refused him entry; he was returned to Canada in the same plane that he left the country.  At the present time he is in a Quebec prison charged with breaking into a home north of Montreal, and assaulting a woman six weeks after having been released into the custody of a friend.

In 2009 Ashkan Forsat was denied parole, the reasons several, but which included a psychological assessment determining "the risk of reoffending in violent and acquisitive crimes is evaluated as high. [His] potential for being reinserted into society [is] weak."