Black like me
By Vered Lee • Ha'aretzNoga Zoraish did not celebrate the victory. Three weeks ago, after a legal battle lasting more than three years that ended in the conviction of yeshiva student Itamar Biton for deliberately hitting her
with his car, she stood before the battalions of reporters who awaited her words and delivered her statement: "Justice has been served, the main thing is that the man who ran me over will stop lying and won't be able to be a dayan [religious court judge]." Then she slipped out of the hall, trying to leave the media uproar behind. She turned off her cell phone and quickly made her way to her workplace of the past five years - a mall parking lot in the center of Jerusalem. This is where Biton hit her after she tried to keep him from leaving without paying for parking. As she does every day, she made a point of using a different entrance from the one where he abandoned her on the side of the road, so the trauma would not affect her work performance.
The 31-year-old parking lot cashier's private battle has received extensive coverage, turning into a mirror reflecting the racism and corruption in Israeli society. Supreme Court justices Edmond Levy, Edna Arbel and Yoram Danziger overturned the controversial verdict of Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Drori. He sentenced Biton to community service, ordered him to pay a fine and suspended his driver's license for four years, but in order not to harm his chances of becoming a dayan he did not formally convict him. On appeal the justices convicted him of assault, causing grievous bodily harm and of abandoning an injured person. He was given a suspended sentence. The three-justice panel ruled that Drori had erred in failing to convict Biton despite his confession.The story received broad coverage mainly because of Drori's declaration, in his verdict, that the trial was the "seminal event" in Zoraish's life. As a result of the judicial process, he wrote, the young immigrant from Ethiopia "was finally accepted into Israeli society as an equal." He added that Zoraish realized the "enormous improvement" in her status as a result of the respect she received in his courtroom.
Zoraish still cannot believe it's over. For the pretty young woman who is accustomed to an anonymous life and an unglamorous job, the word "hero" sounds strange and remote. But she is very touched by the public sympathy she has received. When she walks down the street she is met with support and occasional gushing. She is pleasant to all but her quickened pace indicates that she only wants to hide. "If it was up to me I wouldn't give any interviews at all," she says. "I don't like publicity. I like quiet, but many people from the Ethiopian community have called to say: 'You can't keep quiet. MK Shlomo Molla is begging for television time to talk about discrimination against Ethiopians and nobody from the media listens to him, and you - everyone is running after you and begging for you to speak - and you're keeping quiet?' That's why I decided to talk."
Garbage on the hood
On January 1, 2006, at around noon, a young man wearing a skullcap was headed out of the parking lot after his car had been there for two hours. "I asked him to pay 18 shekels for the parking," recalls Zoraish. "He said: 'I don't have any money.' I said: 'Look, you parked here so you knew you'd have to pay.' I was sure he was joking. He said something like: 'I spent a thousand shekels at the supermarket in the mall, but I forgot my wallet so I didn't pay them either and I left the groceries there for now.' 'Good,' I said: 'If you bought a thousand shekels worth of goods you get three hours of free parking. Go upstairs and bring me proof of purchase.'"
"He moved his car, so that it was blocking three exit lanes, and got out," Zoraish continues. I told him to get back in and park at the side. He said: 'Okay,' and did so. Meanwhile, another man in the parking lot called me over. I went, and he said, 'Look, someone's trying to get into your booth.' I rushed over and told him, 'I told you to go upstairs and bring me confirmation of your supermarket purchase.'"
Do you think he hit you with his car because you're Ethiopian?
"I looked him in the eye through the windshield and shouted, crying, through the open window: 'Stop the car, stop the car, I want to get down. Please, please, I'm begging you,' but his face was that of a murderer, of a man who didn't care about anything. To this day I can't forget that look. From that point I don't remember anything because I passed out."
Eyewitnesses later told her that Biton swerved on his way out of the lot in order to throw her off the car, and she fell off near the street. Her head hit the ground, and he sped off. "When I opened my eyes there were about 30 people surrounding me," Zoraish continues. "Everything was blurry, I tried to get up and couldn't. I remember saying I had to get back to work the register because there wasn't anyone else there, but I couldn't move because of the pain. They called an ambulance and took me to Hadassah Hospital. They took x-rays, gave me pills for the headache and the fever and discharged me."
How long did it take for you to get back to being yourself?
"For three weeks I couldn't go back to regular work. I worked half an hour here, an hour there. My salary suffered that month. I earned something like NIS 700 or NIS 900. The ambulance trip turned into a debt of NIS 1,060 and I had to pay it, not the yeshiva student, and I also had to pay for the emergency room, for coming without a proper referral. You find yourself with physical, emotional, economic damage, and you ask yourself: Where is he? Who is that guy? Does he care? Does he think about me? And a religious man too, a yeshiva student, and the knowledge that he's allowed to do that to me because I'm black. Running me over is permitted. I'm nothing. I'm worthless, I'm not a human being. He wouldn't have run over you, certainly not for 18 shekels."
Say you're sorry
Three days after the incident Zoraish asked her employer for the security camera footage and filed a police complaint with the police. Several days later Biton was arrested and charged. On July 12, 2007 Zoraish was summoned to testify in the District Court, and found herself being injured again.
In the 351-page ruling issued about a year later, Judge Drori wrote: "I think that if the complainant were to describe her life in Israel in retrospective, the formative event of her life, when she was finally accepted into Israeli society as an equal among equals, is the hearing I conducted. She began her [testimony] hesitantly, with a feeling that she was inconsequential, and a man with a car (the accused) had behaved towards her, treated her, like a dog. Gradually the plaintiff discovered that a judge was listening to every word, two attorneys addressed her politely and finally even the person who harmed her apologized to her and expressed respect for the Ethiopian community from which she comes. That same man is also willing to offer her monetary compensation for the damage she suffered."
Drori did not convict Biton, in part because it would hurt his chances of becoming a dayan, for which he was a candidate. In Drori's words: "Is there room for considering the damage that will be caused in the future to [a defendant] as a result of his conviction (the ineligibility to be considered for service in a religious court), and for that reason to settle for declaring that the prohibited action was committed, without a conviction?"
And so, even though Biton confessed, Drori did not convict him but sentenced him to 180 hours of community service, ordered him to pay Zoraish NIS 10,000 and suspended his driving license for four years from the date of the incident.
The court transcripts show that you repeatedly attempted to ask Biton what he felt after he hit you, and that he evaded the question.
"Yes, it haunted me. It was important to me to know how he felt. I wanted him to say something, but he didn't. And suddenly Drori said: 'He wants to apologize to you.' For the first time in my life I hear about someone going to court and apologizing to someone, but even then Biton didn't even look me in the eye. So I see the judge instructing him, telling him: 'Look at her. Speak to her,' like an Ethiopian keis [religious leader], like an arbitrator.
Psychological pressure.
"Totally. His entire family is giving me a look of 'Take pity on him.' He said: 'I'll help her with whatever she wants financially, she'll get any sum she wants." The judge said to him: 'She didn't come here for money. She didn't file a civil suit.' Biton said: 'I'm willing to do anything, I apologized from the bottom of my heart. I want to do so especially when I see a person who is a failure or weak in every sense, who earns a minimum wage.' And he and Drori continue to ask me to forgive, while Biton doesn't even look me in the eye. The truth? I didn't want him to look at me, I couldn't look at his eyes.
"I felt that there was no judge. I'm the judge. I have to decide. I stand and see Drori also looking at me pleadingly, and I see in his eyes that he wants me to forgive him. At that point I thought maybe Biton really was asking for forgiveness, I thought he genuinely meant it. There were four minutes of silence. The judge saw that I was stressed, biting my nails, and said: 'Should we take a break? Drink some water and think about it?' That was the message he conveyed, in no uncertain terms. Otherwise, why call a break?"
Zoraish hesitated, fearing she would ruin the trial if she agreed to forgive Biton. Her attorney told her that her forgiving him was unconnected to Drori's ruling.
"I was shaking. When I returned they all had the same look, even more intense, even the judge. I said all kinds of things like: 'There's nobody greater than God, even God forgives.' All I wanted was to flee. I forgave him. They told me to step down, and then his father, the chief rabbi of Hadera, got up to speak. I stayed to listen. And what do I hear? 'How did she dare to stand in front of my son's car.' Drori told him: 'If she were your daughter would you also say that?' and he said: 'If she were my daughter I would have slapped her in the face.' That was enough for me. I left."
Justice Arbel criticized the heavy pressure on Zoraish to accept Biton's request for forgiveness, and said that on neither side was forgiveness freely given.
Only 35 pages
About two weeks after Drori issued his verdict, attorney Eyal Rosovsky, the chairman of the Tebeka Center for Legal Aid and Advocacy for Ethiopian Jews in Israel, published an opinion piece opposing the decision. The director of the organization's legal department, attorney Yael Segal-Machlis, was furious with Drori's actions. "His ruling creates and perpetuates unacceptable norms of inequality and discrimination based on origin, social class, ancestry and affiliation with a religious denomination," she says today. Together with attorney Tali Dajin, she tried to contact Zoraish and to persuade her to file an appeal, but without success. Zoraish went into a depression as a result of Drori's ruling and was screening her phone calls.
"Whenever I saw a call from Tebeka I didn't answer," Zoraish recalls. "I was tired. I saw no point in fighting or filing an appeal, I didn't believe the Supreme Court would overturn the verdict. I didn't even want to read the ruling. I have to earn a living, I work from morning to night, do I have time to read 351 pages? Ethiopian friends kept quoting me 'formative' sentences from Drori's thoughts about me and the [Ethiopian] community and I would get insulted and say: 'It's a shame, I thought he was nice. I didn't think he was a racist.'
It eventually came out that during the first trial senior Shas party officials had come to Biton's aid: Rabbi Reuven Elbaz wrote a character reference praising the defendant's "scholarly achievements, contribution to his friends and assistance to charities"; Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar joined in, and Shas chairman Eli Yishai wrote: "A conviction is liable to interrupt his rabbinical and public future and I believe that this is a punishment that should be avoided, especially since it will harm many people.... I thus recommend adopting the plan to end this judicial process without a conviction, and am convinced that he very much regrets his actions."
In contrast to Drori's 351 pages, the Supreme Court justices needed only 35 pages for their ruling, which was reached speedily.
Are you satisfied with the Supreme Court's decision?
Touching the sky in Jerusalem
This was not the end of Zoraish's battles. She was born a Christian in the village of Welo in southern Ethiopia. Her parents divorced when she was nine; her mother, who died of cancer about 10 years ago, raised her and her four siblings on her own. "I've always felt a strong attraction to Judaism and to Jerusalem," she says, her eyes shining.
At 14 Zoraish fell in love with a 27-year-old Ethiopian soldier she met in the village. "I was romantic and I believed in powerful love, so I ran away with him to another town. It wasn't accepted, and I knew my mother would object, so we fled, but eventually my mother gave in and agreed to let us marry." It was only afterward that she found out that her husband was a Jew. "He kept it secret because in Ethiopia it was considered shameful. But I was excited. I told him: 'I'm prouder now to be your wife, I hope to become Jewish."
In 1993 they immigrated to Israel. "I came here with a longing for Jerusalem and the Holy Land," she says. "But we went to Acre. I cried all day long." The marriage failed. Zoraish will say only that there were "difficulties." They divorced in 1999, and she lost her immigrant's rights to a subsidized apartment. Nor did her dream of converting come true. ("In the Ethiopian community, when a woman begins the conversion process her husband has to start wearing a skullcap and to demonstrate commitment. He refused to cooperate and in effect kept me from coverting."). Zoraish moved to Jerusalem and in 2001 began the conversion process on her own.
"I went to Rehovot twice a week. I missed work, I paid for travel, all in order to become a Jew. Not for the man I was living with - for me." She completed the process, but about six months ago the conversion was annulled. "The rabbinate said my marriage in a civil ceremony in 2001 [to her second husband, an Ethiopian Christian], was cause to invalidate the conversion. They stated that had I married after the conversion everything would have been fine. I consulted an Ethiopian rabbi, who said there were two options - returning to the religious court judges who annulled the conversion and take a test [on Jewish law], or petitioning the High Court of Justice. The truth is that I'm emotionally exhausted and I have no idea what will happen."
Zoraish rents a small room in a modest apartment hotel. "It's temporary," she says, "I hope things will improve soon." A small table holds a Hebrew prayer book, the Book of Psalms and silver candlesticks, her only possessions apart from some clothing.
What has been the response within the community?
"Everyone comes up to me and says: 'Good for you.' There is not a single Ethiopian who doesn't tell me that he experienced something similar. I'm already sad from hearing it, it pains me to hear more stories about racism and discrimination. There is satisfaction in the fact that people identify [with my story], and that empowers them. Not only Ethiopians, by the way; Mizrahim [Jews of North African or Middle Eastern origin] also come up to me and say: 'You're a hero.' But as far as I'm concerned I became involved in it, I didn't choose it."
Do you feel part of Israeli society?
"I'm fighting hard to not feel like a foreigner. When they make me feel like that I resist and don't allow the person standing in my way to do that to me. I'll fight anyone who stands in my way, any Israeli, whether sabra, Moroccan, Ashkenazi, religious. I don't care. I'm not afraid of anyone. I'm proud of my color. I'm proud to be Ethiopian."
[Hat Tip: Joel Katz.]