Israel gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent

[No Elephants]

Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.

The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs. According a report in Haaretz, suspicions were first raised by an investigative journalist, Gal Gabbay, who interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically.

One of the Ethiopian women who was interviewed is quoted as saying: “They told us they are inoculations. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.” It is alleged that some of the women were forced or coerced to take the drug while in transit camps in Ethiopia.

<snip>

Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has been questioned by some rabbis. Last year, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the health portfolio, warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state”.

Haaretz published an extract from a letter sent by the Ministry of Health to units administering the drug. Doctors were told “not to renew prescriptions for Depo Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment”.

Some think the Ethopian Jews (If they are Jews) result from the visit by Africa's Queen of Sheba to Israel's King Solomon described in the Old Testament. Her realm is believed to have been located in Ethopia and Yemen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba

[formercia]

1. Bibi better be careful

He may find he has no genetic connection to Palestine, as would most people in Israel. These Stern Gang descendants think they're special for some reason.

[No Elephants]

2. Forced birth control is nothing like forced sterilization.

People who were forced to undergo knew they were being sterilized.

Then again, the birth control shots are not permanent. But, if you don't know what the shots are....

Gee, I wonder who was ordering those shots.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the health portfolio......

I seem to have a distant memory of reading a story about rabbis going to Ethopia and checked out the Ethopians before the first group was allowed to immigrate into Israel. Also, how they would not eat at the McDonald's in Israel to which they were taken because they did not know what a Big Mac was and therefore were not sure it was kosher.

I am far from certain about this, though. It's just a vague memory from maybe the 1980s or thereabouts.

I do clearly remember talking to an observant and scholarly American Jew about the Ethiopian immigrants at about that time and his reaction was "God always has His remnant." (I have a better memory for things I hear people say than for things I read or see. Maybe that's because of my poor vision?)

[formercia]

4. As long as you know your Mother

If they can trace their Ancestry to the Queen of Sheba, I don't see what the problem is...No wait, It couldn't be because they are dark-skinned? Who would have guessed, racism in Israel.

[No Elephants]

5. Don't know about the Queen, but they can trace their ancestry to their own moms.

No one even seems to know for sure that that her kingdom (?) included Ethopia and Yemen, though that is a best guess.

No one seems to know for sure that the Queen became a Jew when she visited Solomon.


However, it is not as though there is only one way to practice Judaism or that only Orthodox Jews have a right of return.


All that aside, even if you assume that they are somehow a threat to the Jewish identity of Israel, how on earth are they a thread to the democracy of Israel? Have they been attempting to overthrow the current government of Israel and establish a monarchy or a dictatorship?

[Enthusiast]

3. Real nice......nt