Beta Israel

Mizrahi, Mizrahi basically means Middle Eastern, but there are so many different flavors between them.

You have the Ethiopian Jews, the Indian Jews, the Lemba Jews, it's so vast.

The critique of this book and also what people notice when people speak about Jews, surprisingly many people only have the white Ashkenazi Jews in mind.

So what happened there between our very rich beautiful ancient world history and today's world where people when they speak about Jews and or even Israelis it's only the Ashkenazi and all the other I would even say history is basically brushed aside.

You can read it in the testimonies, in the chronological analysis over and over again.

They themselves, because many of these sources, I do, from Ashkenazi sources themselves, they admit they are really, really racist.

Also in Israel, like the blackest people in Israel, I believe, are the Ethiopian Jews.

They face so much racism and not just them, but other people as well.

It happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It happened with the Falashas from Ethiopia.

Now it's happened from France, but it's happening from other countries in Europe and to a degree the United States and Australia.

Jews are returning to Israel because of anti-Semitism.

And they were just like they attacked our village.

You know, Falashas were killed.

There was another place where all of the Thai rice field workers were all slaughtered.

were slaughtered and only a few of them escaped.

My father during World War II was assigned to an intelligence group.

And part of that group were a bunch of Ethiopian Jews, very small group of Jews who considered themselves the only real Jews out there in the world, because they could look at their line and they can follow the line directly from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

And based on that, all through millennia, they were Jewish, to the point where they considered everybody else mumsers.

Mumser, by the way, is a Jewish word for bastard or Yiddish word for bastard, which they considered every white Jew in the world or Hispanic Jew.

Aviv Geffen, a legendary protest singer from the 90s, from the golden age of the peace process.

Idan Reichel, band leader of the Idan Reichel Project, which has different kinds of multicultural influences from different kinds of Jews, including Ethiopian Jews, as well as different kinds of other folks from throughout the world.

This song from 2013 comes from a time after the collapse of the 90s peace process, after the many different traumatic events of the Second Intifada and the 2000s, the rockets from Gaza and many other different events that led to hardship and loss of trust on both sides.

And I think that this song has a couple different very poignant points that connects like a necklace for us.

You know what I'm saying?

But I want to state that from my view, it's never been about Jews versus Muslims or Jews versus Arabs.

And that's the gaslighting they try to get away with.

It's always been about the colonized versus the colonizer.

Diamond guy... super racist.

Um, and he said, uh, he said the idea, this is Herschel talking to Rose, the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea.

It doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia minor, not Englishmen, but Jews, um, How then do I happen to turn to you since this is out of the way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.

Wow.

ancestors, one of my Jewish ancestors.

I was going to say, Ethiopian Jews.

Born out of the shtetls of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Like, been exposed to teff, fermented teff.

Just kidding.

So, I agree with you 100%.

I was going to say Ethiopian Jews are some of my favorite people, Ethiopian Christians.

I've met so many good Ethiopians.