Israel’s Ethiopian community was enraged this week after media reports that the country’s blood banks had for years been accepting their donations, but disposing the blood for fear that it was contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“We are blood brothers with the Israelis but our blood is thrown in the garbage because we are black,” said Adiso Masala, the head of an Ethiopian immigrants organization.
He also called the policy “pure racism.”
The head of the country’s central blood bank, Amnon Ben-David, confirmed that the bank had destroyed nearly all the blood from Ethiopian donors, even though no tests on the donations were performed.
Health Minister Ephraim Sneh said the rate of HIV among Ethiopians was 50 times higher than in the general population.
But Masala said of the 60,000 Ethiopians in Israel, some 300 were infected with HIV.
The controversy was sparked by an article that appeared in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv.
The Jewish state secretly airlifted tens of thousands of black Jews from Ethiopia from 1984 to 1985 as well as in 1991.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
