Hi Folks,
Thanks again to Linda Woolf for doing a highly professional, scholarly,
responsible job of setting the record straight on this issue.
I hope her efforts will help some of us appreciate the value of acquiring
a well-informed knowledge base before we utter pronouncements or biased
questions about an issue.
My fear is that others will ignore Linda's fine example of 'doing our
homework' and will continue to spread misinformation and will continue to
pose poorly conceived questions. Such thoughtless behavior does a major
disservice to teachers, to students, to psychologists, and to all of us.
Peace,
Hank
=======================================================================
Hank Goldstein, Ph.D. | PHONE: (319) 588-6305
Department of Psychology | FAX: (319) 588-6789
Clarke College | EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dubuque, IA 52001 |
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"You can always spot a well-informed person; her/his views are the
same as yours."
Ilka Chase [paraphrased]
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On Mon, 21 Jun 1999, Linda M. Woolf wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> Michael Sylvester wrote:
>
> > This issue came up while discussing prejudice in Social Psychology.
> > Even though Israel allowed for the Black Jews to relocate to Israel from
> > Ethiopia,there was a story that the blood donated by the black jews
> > were put in a separate blood banks and were discarded because Israel
> > did not want to mix the Ethiopian blood with those of the other
> > immigrants.
> > Could this be viewed as a form of ethnic cleasing?
>
> I'll address the vile suggestion of "ethnic cleansing" in just a second. I
> unfortunately feel I must raise again the issue of what appears to be an
> anti-Semitic thread periodically underlying Michael Sylvester's posts. I
> raised this last October in response to several of Michael's posts and I
> raise it again. I do not believe that racism, sexism, homophobia,
> anti-Semitism, etc. have a place on a professional (or any other discussion
> list). To argue that Israeli's are responsible for ethnic cleansing in the
> light of Holocaust is repugnant.
>
> Now to clear up some misinformation that appears in Michael's post.
>
> 1. Israel did not simply "allow" the Ethiopian Jews to relocate to Israel.
> In fact, they rescued these members of the Jewish community from Ethiopia
> in two major airlift operations. In 1984-85, negotiations were made to
> airlift the Jewish community of Ethiopia to Israel (via Sudan) during the
> Civil War. Operation Moses managed to airlift 10,000 of the Jews before
> media leaks caused the Sudanese government to withdraw its support. This
> stranded 15,000 remaining Jews in Ethiopia. On May 23-25, 1991, as the
> Ethiopian government was on the verge of collapse, the Israeli government
> organized Operation Solomon which rescued most of the 15,000 remaining
> Jews. - 14,163 including 7 born in transit. Upon arrival, they received
> free housing, medical attention, hebrew training, and other services.
> Since 1948, 50,700 Ethiopian Jews have emigrated to Israel. Over 80% of
> the Ethiopian Jews were under the age of 18 at the time of their arrival in
> Israel.
>
> 2. Israel maintains the "Law of Return". This means that Israel has an
> open door policy for any Jew to emigrate to Israel; one can make "aliyah".
> This law has been in effect since the creation of the State of Israel. In
> 1996, 82% of the Jews emigrating to Israel were from the former Soviet
> Union.
>
> 3. The issue of the blood supply did get raised several years back. This
> was not an issue of racism but concern over the HIV status of the blood
> supply due to the high rate of infection in Ethiopia. As part of the
> screening for blood donation in the U.S., one is asked if they have
> traveled outside of the United States. Thus, simply traveling to parts of
> Africa/Asia may result in your exclusion.
>
> 4. To equate safe blood supply efforts with genocide (ethnic cleansing) is
> abhorrent at best. One hopes that Michael did not deal with this topic in
> such an irresponsible fashion in class.
>
> B'Shalom,
>
> linda
>
>
> --
> linda m. woolf, ph.d.
> associate professor - psychology
> webster university
>
> main webpage: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/
> Holocaust and genocide studies pages:
> http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/holocaust.html
> womens' pages: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/women.html
> gerontology pages: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gero.html
>
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
