Ethiopian-Israelis

Size, growth and geography

At the end of 2024, 177,600 Israelis were of Ethiopian origin (CBS, reported by JNS, November 2025). The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) counts people born in Ethiopia and Israeli-born children of Ethiopian-born fathers. A growing share were born in Israel.

No town has an Ethiopian-Israeli majority. The highest share is in Kiryat Malachi, 13.9% of residents; the largest numbers are in Netanya (12,900), Beersheba (10,600) and Petah Tikva (10,100), all at the end of 2023 (CBS, 2024). Between 1,680 and 1,812 people a year came from Ethiopia in 2021–23 (same source). More than 7,000 people of Ethiopian Jewish descent were still waiting in Gondar and Addis Ababa in September 2025, many with close family in Israel; some are labeled Beta Israel and others Falash Mura (Shmuel Legesse, Jerusalem Post op-ed, September 2025).

Gaps in schooling and income remain. In 2022/23, 77.7% of Ethiopian-origin 12th-graders were eligible for a matriculation (bagrut) certificate, against 85.6% in Hebrew-language education. In the 2022 household survey, net household income was about 20% below the general population (NIS 14,676 against 18,237 a month) and spending per person about 40% lower (CBS, 2024).

How their towns have voted

Results are reported by place, and no place is mostly Ethiopian-Israeli. The closest evidence is a press analysis of polling stations in Ethiopian-Israeli neighborhoods before and after the 2019 protests over the Tekah shooting (below). It shows how these polling stations voted, not how Ethiopian-Israelis voted.

Share of the vote at polling stations in neighborhoods with large Ethiopian-Israeli populations.

Likud, AprLikud, SepBlue and White, AprBlue and White, Sep

• Kiryat Moshe, Rehovot53%42%13%28%
• Ramat Eliyahu, Rishon LeZion53%43%15%24%
• Weizmann, Kiryat Malachi50%39%6.5%18%
• Shofetim, Kiryat Gat49%38%13%23%
• 0%60%

The numbers: How these polling stations voted: Ethiopian-Israeli neighborhoods, April and September 2019

How these polling stations voted: Ethiopian-Israeli neighborhoods, April and September 2019

Neighborhood	Likud, Apr	Likud, Sep	Blue and White, Apr	Blue and White, Sep
Kiryat Moshe, Rehovot	53%	42%	13%	28%
Ramat Eliyahu, Rishon LeZion	53%	43%	15%	24%
Weizmann, Kiryat Malachi	50%	39%	6.5%	18%
Shofetim, Kiryat Gat	49%	38%	13%	23%

Source: Ynet analysis of polling-station results, 2019-09-18. These stations serve mixed neighborhoods; the results are not the Ethiopian-Israeli vote. Blue and White ran under that name in both elections.

Likud fell 10 to 11 points at each station and Blue and White gained 9 to 15 (Ynet, September 2019). By March 2020 the shift had partly reversed: Blue and White fell to 18.5% at Ramat Eliyahu stations and 20.1% in Rehovot, and a community activist said many people he knew had gone back to Likud (Ynet, March 2020). Kiryat Malachi, the town with the largest Ethiopian-Israeli share, moved the same way.

Each list's share of valid votes cast at Kiryat Malachi's ballot boxes.

How these towns voted: Kiryat Malachi, 2019–2020

Election	Likud	Shas	Blue and White	URWP / Yamina
April 2019Central Elections Committee, locality results (computed), 2019-04-09	45.5%	12.1%	7.4%	13.0% (URWP)
September 2019Central Elections Committee, locality results (computed), 2019-09	40.9%	17.1%	12.0%	7.1% (Yamina)
March 2020Central Elections Committee, locality results (computed), 2020-03	50.9%	19.2%	9.0%	5.9% (Yamina)

Strongest shade: 60%. Source: Central Elections Committee, locality results (computed), April 2019 – March 2020. A whole-town result: about 14% of Kiryat Malachi's residents are of Ethiopian origin (CBS, end 2023). Lists are shown as they ran that year: the Union of Right-Wing Parties (URWP) in April 2019, Yamina in September 2019 and March 2020. Likud's national share in the same files: 26.5%, 25.1% and 29.5%. Double-envelope votes are not included.

See Kiryat Malachi on the vote map: Likud (50.9%), Mar 2020

This page stops at 2020. No station-level analysis was found for 2021 or 2022, and whole-town results say little about a group that is at most a seventh of any town's residents.

What they think on the issues

No survey breaks out Ethiopian-Israelis on the Haredi draft, the courts, the war and the hostages, the West Bank, religion and state, or the economy, in 2026 or earlier. The samples are too small: in the Israel Democracy Institute's 2025 Democracy Index, 0.6% of the 1,205-person Jewish sample gave Ethiopian as their ethnicity, about seven people (IDI, 2025). The income figures above are the nearest measure on the economy. In a 2012 survey of immigrants who arrived from 1979 to 1991, almost all said they felt at home in Israel, and about a third reported personal discrimination at work and in the army (Myers-JDC-Brookdale, 2012, the only such survey found).

Who they are

Policing has been at the center of the community's protests. In 2019 a police officer's warning shot at the ground ricocheted and killed Solomon Tekah, 18. The officer was acquitted by the Haifa Magistrate's Court on April 2, 2024, on grounds of self-defense (Times of Israel, April 2024). "We had a small hope and it was dashed. There is no justice," his mother said. Police internal investigators appealed in May 2024 (Times of Israel, May 2024); no outcome was found.

When the community arrived in the 1980s, the Rabbinate required a symbolic renewal of their Jewish identity by ritual immersion, which no one argued was a conversion; many in the community saw it as humiliating and unnecessary, and the practice ended in 1985 after a month-long strike (Atira Winchester, My Jewish Learning).

Older voters have leaned to Likud; younger voters, focused on how police treat them, have been readier to move (Times of Israel, March 2020).

Usually we vote for Likud because it's the party that brought Ethiopians back to Israel. But in the last election, we voted for Blue and White.

We want a party that will truly represent us. Pnina has come to every one of our protests, so for me that party is Blue and White.

"Pnina" is MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, who said that year: "There are more Ethiopians in prison, more police brutality against us, higher poverty and a higher suicide rate" (Times of Israel, February 2020).