Answers to Quora Questions by Yair Davidiy (4 January 2018, 17 Tevet, 5778)
Was Israel implementing a racist eugenics program when it gave black Ethiopian Jews birth control pills without their consent?
Israel brought the Ethiopian Jews to Israel with the help of the USA under President Reagan. This probably saved their lives. The world has changed. In many places there is no longer room left for Jewish minorities. Israel wants the Ethiopian Jews to be here and hopes they will merge with the rest of Israeli society. In one isolated instance, Birth Control medication lasting for a few months was apparently given to a small group of Ethiopian women. Those responsible were under the influence of well-meaning secular liberal elements who would like to remake all Jews in their own image. Just as they use birth control so, they assume, should the Ethiopians. The Ethiopian women were apparently assumed to be agreeable to this. It was intended to help them. It was birth control. It was not sterilization. It was NOT eugenics but rather over zealous social concern. Even now social workers in Israel often recommend that their female charges, who are not Ethiopians but regular Israelis, have abortions when there is no real justification for it. This is an outcome of their secular liberal upbringing and the overall attitude that used to prevail here. It is not correct. Nevertheless despite being malign in practice it is not, in most cases, malicious in intention.