Israel's Ethiopian diplomat; muslim consul-- is this what they mean by apartheid?
Ishmael Khaldi, who began life as a nomad, is first Muslim envoy to rise through ranks
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Ishmael Khaldi, who will be Israel's first Bedouin diplom...
Jerusalem -- Ishmael Khaldi lived in a Bedouin tent until he was 8 years old, walked 4 miles round trip to school each day and still goes home on weekends to what he calls the "Middle Ages" to tend to flocks of sheep.
But next Saturday, Khaldi will leave his tiny village of Khawalid -- population 450 -- in the northern Galilee region and fly to San Francisco to become Israel's first Bedouin diplomat and the nation's first Muslim to rise through the ranks of the Israeli foreign service. Of the more than 1 million Israeli Arabs, only 170,000 are Bedouins, many of whom were once nomadic desert dwellers. In recent years, Arab radicals in the Israeli parliament and Islamic movements who deplore the existence of the Jewish state have dominated Israeli-Arab relations, and the 6-year-long Palestinian intifada has stretched their allegiance to Israel to a breaking point.
But Khaldi, while conceding that the situation of Arabs in Israel "is not perfect," is an unrepentant Israeli who says he is not betraying his Arab "brothers" by becoming the new Israeli consul to San Francisco.
"Many of us are proud to describe ourselves as Israelis. Everyone who lives here is an Israeli," Khaldi told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview on the eve of his departure for San Francisco. "Israel is in a clash with the Arab world, with our fellow Muslim brothers, with the Palestinians. It's a big challenge. But I am sure that Israel's enemies are not Arab culture, nor Arab heritage, nor the Muslim religion. It's a political situation."
Khaldi, 35, is no newcomer to the United States or the Bay Area. He arrived in the United States after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 and was soon in demand as a speaker at college campuses. "I'm a Bedouin and we are nomads, so I felt at home traveling coast to coast on a Greyhound bus. Twice," he said.
During his stay in the United States, Khaldi said he was shocked to discover that American students were unaware of Israel's large Arab minority and the fact they have the right to vote, elect members to parliament, and become judges, professors and senior army officers.
Khaldi said his family's ties with its Jewish neighbors go back to the days of the early Zionist pioneers from Eastern Europe who settled in the Galilee region in the 1920s.
"From the late 1920s until 1948 when the state was established, the first pioneers came and lived mainly in the north, building kibbutzim," or collective farms, Khaldi said. "The people who came were very sophisticated. They were mainly Yiddish speakers. ... Local Bedouins established very close relations with them, even though they were two different cultures and two different worlds with almost nothing in common. It's something that not many people know.
"My grandmother, who passed away only last year, spoke Yiddish. She was a shepherdess, she never went to school, but she had human contact almost every day with the people from (the next-door kibbutz) Kfar Hamaccabi. She worked with them while they were planting orchards."
Khaldi was born into a family of six brothers and five sisters. Each day after school, they tended to the family's sheep, goats and cows. Because the village only got running water and electricity five years ago, Khaldi did his homework hunched over a gas lamp. Such privations might have alienated the young man, but by the time he entered a prestigious Arab high school in Haifa at age 14, two of his brothers already were serving in the Israeli army.
"Of course, there is a lot of frustration, and we are facing a lot of problems. But to make it into hatred and a grudge? We must go one step forward."
Khaldi said there is still a long way to go before the Bedouin minority achieves full equality in Israeli society, but he noted that more Bedouins are graduating from high school, entering universities and getting better jobs than ever before.
"You can look at the differences and say: 'The government treats us as second- or third-class citizens,' or it can be a challenge. It's our challenge to use the differences and try to understand and combine the best of both worlds. The way is long. It's not easy," he said.
Khaldi first encountered anti-Zionist radicalism in high school, he said, and didn't like it. Once during a memorial day for Israel's fallen soldiers, Khaldi and two classmates stood at attention to mark two minutes of silent tribute. The gesture provoked derision and insults from fellow Arab students. "There was a clash with the rest of the Arab kids. They were not respectful," he said.
In following years, Khaldi was turned down twice for an Israeli Foreign Ministry training course before finally being accepted. Meanwhile, he acquired a bachelor's degree in political science from Haifa University and a master's degree in international relations from Tel Aviv University. He has served as a border police officer in Jerusalem and as an official in the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Khaldi also has begun a project called "Hike and Learn with Bedouins in the Galilee" that has brought thousands of young Jews to Khawalid to learn about Bedouin culture and history. He said these encounters inspired him to become a diplomat.
But even after an intensive six-month Foreign Ministry diplomatic training course, he says he still looks to village traditions for guidance.
"I come from a culture where negotiations are the best way to understanding," he said. "The tribes used to live and compete with each other and fight and kill each other, but at the end of the day they would have to make sulha (a peace pact). This is the way. ... At the end of the road, you need to find a common ground, you need to find a solution. Something that will satisfy both sides."
Khaldi is well aware that he will be treated with suspicion by Israeli critics but believes his story presents a true picture of modern Israel.
"I am always torn," he said. "I am torn between modernity and tradition. I am torn between two totally different worlds. I am Israeli above everything."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/24/MNG0KMJ5GP1.DTL
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Ethiopian diplomat gives Israel a new look
By Laura Wiessen
March 30, 2008
As a baby, diplomat Beylanesh Zevadia's first word was neither "mama" nor "papa." It was "Jerusalem."
"That's how our parents directed us," the Ethiopian-born Zevadia explains. "[As children] our play was to go to Jerusalem. It was the center of our lives, that someday we could go there."
And, at the age of 16 Zevadia did go there, becoming, just nine years later, the first Israeli-Ethiopian member of Israel's diplomatic corps.
Geographically, at least, Beylanesh grew up far from the stones of Jerusalem. She was born in the Gondar region of Ethiopia, where her late father was the Chief Rabbi of the Ethiopian Jewish community. Beylanesh, the youngest of eight siblings, grew up in a rural village without modern conveniences such as running water or electricity. The Zevadia's village, Ambover, was, however, the center of Jewish life in the region and home to a Jewish elementary school where the young girl learned Torah and Jewish studies from teachers such as her father and brother.
"I was very lucky that I was born to a family that knows what an education means," she says.
Education, Jewish observance and Israel were the pillars of her family life, so it was little surprise when, in 1984, after finishing high school, it was time for Beylanesh to go to Israel.
She left home with mixed feelings. "On the one hand I wanted to go because it was Israel," Zevadia remembers, "but on the other hand, to leave my family...I missed them so much."
She wasn't the first in her family to leave Ethiopia for Israel - her oldest brother Joseph had gone to Israel in 1957 and returned to teach Jewish studies in Gondar, an occupation that landed him in jail for a time. Another brother, David, made aliyah in 1973. It was David who helped Beylanesh obtain a visa from the Swedish Embassy to allow her immigration.
"Culture shock, of course," is how Zevadia describes her first weeks and months in her new home. "To find my way wasn't easy. It was new. Especially when you talk about Ethiopian immigrants, we're from... a mostly rural, mostly undeveloped area. And to come to Israel which is a mostly developed country, and the language, the culture shock. It's not easy to assimilate in a short time."
Like so many other young new immigrants Zevadia, a native Amharic speaker took a crash course in Hebrew at Ulpan Etzion. And then, with Operation Moses, the Israeli government's airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in late 1984 and 1985, Zevadia went to work for the Jewish Agency, helping smooth the way for the new immigrants whose difficult journeys had left them disoriented and exhausted.
From the Jewish Agency to Hebrew University for a BA in International Relations, then a Master's Degree in Anthropology and African Studies. And then, in 1993, Zevadia joined Israel's Foreign Ministry, becoming, at age 25, the first Ethiopian in the Israeli Diplomatic Service.
"When I finished [university], diplomacy seemed very interesting to me," explains Zevadia. "Because I would be representing the country I love, I could go around and speak on behalf of Israel, representing Israel wherever I go."
Zevadia brings more than just her intelligence, humor and passion to her work in the diplomatic service. She also brings a new image of what it means to be Israeli to many of the people she meets. Today, the Israeli Deputy Consul General in Houston, Texas, Zevadia travels the Southwest region speaking on behalf of Israel.
"Most people, when they invite an Israeli diplomat, expect to see an Ashkenazi Jew or a Sephardi Jew and here I am, an Ethiopian representing Israel. It's something unique we can contribute to the country."
"When I talk to people I say here I am. You may think something different of Israeli diplomats, but here I am. Or if they ask me negative things about Israel - I have an answer. I am the answer. I can tell you my story. I am educated in Israel, I represent Israel and I was born in Ethiopia. That's what I say."
Today, there is a second Ethiopian-Israeli diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, a junior diplomat who joined the diplomatic service 13 years after Zevadia, and is now stationed in South Africa.
While she acknowledges that there may be some prejudice against Ethiopians in Israel, Zevadia says she's never experienced it at the state or municipal level. And she strongly believes that Ethiopian-Israelis must take advantage of government programs, especially educational programs, intended to help career advancement. "Education is the key," she says from experience. "There are opportunities and we have to use them and we have to push ourselves."
Zevadia's diplomatic career brought her to the United States for the first time as a cadet in 1995, when she spent four months at the Israeli Mission to the UN. She describes it as a very good experience despite the fact that, in her words: "it was not easy to be an Israeli diplomat in that environment."
She returned to the US in 1996 as the Israeli Consul to the Midwest, based in Chicago, where she served until 2002.
Today, living in Texas, Zevadia is often mistaken for African-American or Caribbean. And she's happy to explain her background to whoever is interested.
She, her husband and six-year-old daughter Lee, are enjoying living in Houston. "It's a very nice community, it's very pro-Israel, even among non-Jews. There are things here and there criticizing Israel, but most of the time it's pro-Israel. So I feel very lucky to be here," says Zevadia.
Even after nearly three years in Texas, Zevadia is still struck by its scale. "The highways are very big, the houses are very big. But there are no cowboys!" she jokes.
One thing Zevadia says she doesn't like is the hot, humid weather. But otherwise, she enjoys the city she will call home until 2009 or 2010. And she continues to love her work.
"I most enjoy speaking about Israel, because most of the time people don't understand what Israel is. In most people's eyes, Israel is only the conflict. It's not true. It's a very diverse culture, very diverse society, and a very developed economy.
"I always say, wherever I go, and wherever I speak, I'm black and Jewish and a woman. Three minority identities. That's who I am, I represent Israel very proudly, and that's the message."
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