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Jun. 10, 2021 1:07 PM
Thirty years ago, in May 1991, thousands of Ethiopian Jews came to Israel over the course of two days, in an airlift called Operation Solomon. In general, commemorations of such symbolic moments in the immigration of Ethiopian Jewry are full of yearning, collective sentiment in the spirit of Zionism and the mythos of the ingathering of the exiles and salvation, while provoking nearly no questions.
The purpose of this essay is to shed light on questions that could create discomfort, to deflate the myth. Now is the time to attack the monopoly of the “Israeli melting pot,” on how we understand our lives and shape our Israeliness and how we seek to be present in Israel’s social fabric.