From: jle@locus.com (John Elghani/10000000)
Subject: JUSTICE/EQUALITY IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE (AFTER ETHIOPIA) 
Keywords: a
Organization: LC
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 08:14:11 GMT

There is DISCRIMINATION in the government of the jewish nation. European Jews 
are first class citizens,  Palestinian Jews 2nd, Yemenese Jews 3rd, black
Jews 4th or 5th,..., Palestinian Christians next, and Palestinian Muslims 
are in worst. UPI reports equality-demanding demonstrations by Black Jews 
(shown below).  Black Jews migrate to Occupied Palestine (Israel) 
targeting equality paradise;  unaware that the government there uses them
to absorb billions of *OUR* AMERICAN MONEY.   I gift my greatest SYMPATHY 
and wishes to all none-first class citizen jewish cousins whom are the
ADDITIONAL VICTIMS of the brutal occupation of Palestine.  -jle 

Here it is:
	JERUSALEM (UPI) -- Hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants demanding
religious equality battled Thursday with police who tried to end their
demonstration in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's office.
	Police arrested at least 28 protesters. Three Ethiopians and six
police officers were injured in the clashes and taken to the hospital.
	The demonstrators, estimated to number 800, called on Rabin to
overrule Israel's chief rabbis and grant their elders religious
authority.
	The Ethiopians are furious that Israel's ultra-orthodox religious
establishment is refusing to recognize Ethiopian religious leaders, or 
``Kessim,'' and won't allow them to perform religious rituals.
	``We want the prime minister to give us equal religious rights,''
said Kes Reuven Menashe, 27, one of the young religious leaders who
arrived in Israel eight years ago. ``In the land of Israel, a democratic
state, we have no rights.''
	The protesters arrived in the morning from around the country and
blocked the street in front of Rabin's office, calling for him to come
out and meet their leaders.
	Although the organizers had received a police permit to hold the
protest, dozens of police and paramilitary border guards stood by
quietly until the permit expired.
	The Ethiopian Jews are believed to have migrated from Egypt or the
Arabian peninsula in the first and second centuries. They were cut off
from the mainstream Sephardi and Ashkenazi branches of Judaism, but held
to the laws of the Old Testament and developed their own rituals and
customs.
	Israel has two chief rabbis, one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi. They
have both ruled that the Kessim cannot perform marriages or divorces and
must study the laws that mainstream Judaism uses before they will grant
recognition.
	``We have Kessim who are 90 years old and the rabbis say they have to
go study for two or four years,'' said Daniel Rata, 32, who arrived in
Israel eight years ago. ``It's embarassing.''
	Ethiopian Jews have been making their way to Israel over the past 20
years. In 1984 more than 7,500 Jews were secretly airlifted through
neighboring Sudan in the U.S.-financed ``Operation Moses.''
	In the dramatic 36-hour ``Operation Solomon'' airlift in May 1991,
14,000 Jews were airlifted to Israel as the government in Addis Abbaba
fell after a prolonged civil war.




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