Israeli schoolgirls receives apology from education minister

• Israeli schoolgirls from Ethiopia have received an apology from Israel’s education minister.
• After their teachers made derogatory remarks against them in a WhatsApp group.
• The school’s head and minister of education have condemned the for racist comments.

Israeli schoolgirls from Ethiopia who had their teachers make fun of them in a WhatsApp group while on a field trip have received an apology from Israel’s education minister.

The teachers were chatting in a chat group they named Black School Trip when the girls noticed them doing so.

One of the girls filmed the talk over a teacher’s shoulder, then uploaded it on social media, calling the teachers “a disgrace”.

The event is being investigated, and the involved teachers were suspended.

There are around 150,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent, the first of whom arrived in significant numbers during several highly classified Mossad-led operations in the 1980s.

It has been difficult for Ethiopian Jews to integrate in Israel because of the community’s disproportionately high rates of unemployment, poverty, and prejudice, although things have started to look up in recent years.

A three-day excursion was embarked upon by instructors and students from a religious high school in Netivot, southern Israel, last Monday.

One of the professors’ group chat messages, which included derogatory remarks against the Ethiopian Israeli students, was seen by girls seated behind her.

Without the teacher’s knowledge, one of the students recorded a video of the talk in progress.

A student afterwards sent an email with images of the abusive messages to the perpetrators via social media.

“Good morning to all the ‘educators’ of this school,” she wrote. “It saddens me as a member of the [Ethiopian] community to see the level you sank to today. Instead of being our teachers and setting an example and making us feel like we’re in our safest place, you did the exact opposite.

“Opening a group called ‘Black School Trip’ without even realizing that there were students behind you and mocking your students? I see the photos, and I just don’t believe that they come from our teachers.

“You are a disgrace, I’m ashamed that you’re our teachers and that you’re teaching the future generation.”

The involved teachers have expressed regret and been suspended.

The school’s headmaster issued a statement, speaking of his “shock and devastation to miserable and extremely offensive comments from teachers about Ethiopian students who study in the school”.

“The school management looks at these comments severely. There is no place for racist comments, and we won’t allow them in our school.”

Yoav Kisch, the minister of education in Israel, also criticized the instructors.

“The incident will be dealt with severely with all the tools at our disposal,” he said. “I’m sorry for the distress that was caused for the students. There will be zero tolerance for these sorts of incidents on my watch.”

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