With its coverage of the controversy surrounding Ethiopian women taking contraception shots, Ha’aretz yet again demonstrated its ability to shape – and distort – international media coverage about Israel. Ha’aretz covered an investigation by Israeli journalist Gal Gabai broadcasted on the “Vacuum” television program of Educational Television, and from there the story was carried around the globe. Unfortunately, the story that Gabai pedaled to her Israeli viewers, and which Talila Nesher of Ha’aretz relayed to her local and foreign readers, is riddled with problems.
In the Dec. 8, 2012 documentary, Gal Gabai reports on a “systematic mechanism,” as she puts it, in which Ethiopian women who wanted to immigrate to Israel were required to receive a contraceptive shot called Depo Provera while they were in transit camps in Ethiopia. According to Gabai’s report, someone, it’s not clear who, coerced the women to receive the shot. According to the report, alternative means of birth control were not explained to the women, nor were they told about side effects.
Gabai implies that the 50 percent decrease in the birthrate among Ethiopian immigrants is solely the consequence of the use of Depo Provera and that there is a deliberate plan on the part of health care providers to decrease the number of Ethiopian children being born in Israel. She also implies that the administration of Depo-Provera to Ethiopian Jews is the result of racism toward this community.