Dysfunctional Israeli Military Censor Permits One Media Outlet to Identify IAF Pilot and Prohibits Another

פאשלה של הצנזורה הצבאית מאפשרת את זיהויו של נווט הקרב הישראלי הראשון ממוצא אתיופי

Recently, the IAF graduated its first Ethiopian pilot (see English story) from the officer training course. Of course, in order to protect these future war criminals from prosecution, it shields their identity in the media. So we only know him as Lt. Y.

You’d think the army would want to trumpet its first Pilot of Color. But apparently the military censor disagrees. Sort of…

Brig. Gen. Ariella Ben Avraham, chief censor, prohibited Yediot from publishing an uncensored picture of the proud family. The resulting picture (see right) makes them look like they’re in a witness protection program. Actually, they’re in a murderer’s protection program. It even censored the names of Y.’s mother and father. It also censored mention of their hometown and name of the  yeshiva where he studied. Of course, there is no provision under any Israeli regulation for such censorship of relatives of officers. But no matter, the censor is as the censor does.

But apparently, Makor Rishon, Sheldon Adelson’s Hebrew language publication didn’t get the message. It published an uncensored photo of the proud mom, told us the family lives in Petah Tikvah, and offered us their full first names, Rachel and Metuko ( though not their family name).  The name of the institution where Y. studied, the Bnai Akiva yeshiva.

Lt. Y. is a model of Israeli assimilation.  After arriving from Ethiopia, she moved to a religious community and enrolled her son in a prominent yeshiva.  In this way, she not only integrated herself into Israeli society, but she ensured a successful path for her son.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of Ethiopian-Israelis do not succeed in this fashion.  Israel remains an inhospitable, racist place for them.  Though Israel will trumpet Lt. Y as a model Israeli success story (if they’d only get the censor to back off a bit!).  Articles about him have been published in the Jerusalem Post, JTA, and the Times of Israel among others.  He is an outlier, the example that does not prove the rule.

If any Israeli sleuths out there can help further unravel the mystery, let me know.

UPDATE: I’ve had a server outage today possibly caused by a DDOS attack hacked by pro-Israel script kiddies disturbed by my violation of an Israeli gag order prohibiting reporting on the identities of three settler youth who murdered a Palestinian mom of 8.  Even though settlers themselves identified the perpetrators on Facebook.  My web host is defending the site and it should remain accessible despite the best efforts of the web warriors to take it down.  There should be several photos accompanying this post.  But there is something preventing their display.  I hope to have this fixed as well soon.