Proving them wrong

Famous journalist Danny Adino Abebe starts mentoring program.

By RUTH EGLASH
Abebe 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Abebe 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Danny Adino Abebe clearly remembers the day he knew he wanted to be a journalist. “I was in 11th grade, and an army officer spoke to us about joining the army,” recalls Abebe, who is one of only a handful of Ethiopian-born journalists working in the mainstream Israeli media. “I asked him if I could join Army Radio, and he said maybe, but only as a driver and probably never as a mainstream soldier.”
This discouraging attitude toward him simply because he was an Ethiopian immigrant just made the young Abebe even more determined to succeed. When he was assigned to be a reporter and producer at what is probably the most popular radio station in the country, the 38 year old knew he had proven everyone wrong.
Proving people wrong, even those from his own community, has now become a favorite pastime of Abebe’s; in recent months, he has been working hard to set up and secure funding for a mass media initiative that aims to challenge a wide range of popular misconceptions about Ethiopian Jews here. He even hopes the endeavor will encourage his own community to look inward and change its negative self-image.
“I’m very critical of my community,” confesses the dread-locked Abebe.
“I see the type of Ethiopians that are presented to international donors, and in order to raise money here, they always have to show a poor, miserable Ethiopian immigrant who does not speak Hebrew and is disconnected from Israeli society.
“I want to change that,” he says with confidence, highlighting that there is already a large number of Ethiopians who have become doctors and lawyers or achieved professional successes in other fields. “I know that not everyone has it in them to succeed, and I know there are always going to be those who failed, but I want to take the strongest youths from my community and give them the proper training and opportunities so that they can use the power of the media to change the overall image of the Ethiopian community in Israeli society,” states Abebe.
Called Communicate your Space, the program – which already has support from the Journalist’s Association in Jerusalem, Channel 2 and Army Radio – aims to find the most talented young Ethiopians from 11th and 12th grade and provide them with mentors from the mainstream media so that one day they, too, can become movers and shakers in the mass communications field.
“My goal is also to change the selfimage of young Ethiopians,” says Abebe. “For the past 30 years, the Ethiopians have been told they are poor souls, but it’s like a child who has been told all his life that he would amount to nothing, only to discover that he is, in fact, a genius.”
According to Abebe, “We are considered a ticking time bomb in society, with the authorities sending our children to special schools and considering all of them ‘at risk.”
He continues, “I want these young people to become integrated in Israeli society. They are Israeliborn sabras, and they deserve to be part of the mainstream, and they can help their community better from the outside than from inside.”
He highlights, though, that there is still a lot of pressure from the community to continue working inside it.
“Most of what I write is not about my community, and I feel that as a person I can give a lot to Israeli society in general, while at the same time I can use my position to help my community,” he says, adding, “I want to make it very clear that just because someone is Ethiopian, does not mean they should be writing or covering the community.”
BORN IN the Jewish village of Walaka in Ethiopia, Abebe made aliya with his family as part of Operation Moses in 1984. Only nine years old then, he says his was a classic journey, similar to many Ethiopian Jews who arrived in Israel during the 1980s.
“I grew up in a place where there were no buildings at all, and suddenly we arrived in Israel and they took us to an apartment on the seventh floor of a building in Arad,” he remembers, laughing.
Abebe, who could be described today as an average secular Israeli, recalls how he was sent to a religious boarding school, taught to pray and wore tzitzit and a kippa consistently until he joined the army at 18.
“I was supposed to have become a rabbi,” jokes the father of two, who managed to surprise everyone by first securing his IDF service at Army Radio and later becoming a reporter at Yediot Aharonot.
“I always read many books and I love writing and reading,” says Abebe. “I write in a very unique style that has kept the newspaper happy for more than 10 years.”
Abebe’s hopes are riding on the next generation, especially if he can get Communicate Your Space up and running. Aiming to start in the fall, Abebe says he has secured some funding from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
But Abebe estimates that he still needs to raise NIS 400,000.
“Most of the people I have asked for help have said I need to find the sad stories, because that is the only way to fundraise for my community,” he observes.
“But I refuse to do that,” he continues. “I think it’s time to invest in those who want to succeed and are able to succeed.
“In a few years from now, I want to see a different image of the Ethiopian community. I want to see young Ethiopians working in the media and not being shown as the sad community.”