Ethiopian-Israeli Republican Jewish mother of seven set to challenge George Santos for congressional seat [Note by Tom Gross]

Posted By on January 22nd, 2023

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As calls intensify for the disgraced Republican George Santos to resign from the US Congress, Mazi Melesa Pilip an Ethiopian-Israeli Shabbat-observant 43-year-old Jewish mother of seven, has emerged as a prime candidate to replace him, according to Politico.

Pilip was airlifted to Israel as a child as part of the Operation Solomon rescue of refugee Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

She served in the paratroop division of the Israel Defense Forces (one of her greatest achievements, she says) and then took a first degree at the University of Haifa followed by a degree in diplomacy and security at Tel Aviv University.

She met her husband, an American medical student at the Technion in Haifa, while she was at the University of Haifa. She later accompanied him to finish his medical studies back in New York, where they married.

She says that one of the reasons that motivated her to enter politics was witnessing the antisemitic abuse directed towards her children in the Great Neck Public Schools system, including comments from other kids such as “I wish Hitler would kill you all.”

Santos is being pressed to step down because of the multiple lies he told while running, including untruths about his education, job experience, charitable giving and family background.

Many Nassau County Republicans said they were especially offended by his claim he descended from Holocaust survivors.

Max Miller, a freshman Republican from Ohio, said it was a disgrace that Santos sought to “benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people.”

Pilip said her husband, who was born in Ukraine, and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, was especially offended by Santos’s Holocaust lies.

Tom Gross adds:

It should come as little surprise to people who closely follow Israeli politics, as opposed to those who believe all they read in the international liberal media, that Israeli Ethiopians are disproportionately conservative and supporters of the Likud and other rightwing parties in Israel.

The same is the case for those Ethiopian-Israelis who have moved to the United States, just as has often been the case for Sephardi Israelis and former Soviet Israelis. Part of the reason is that their families have lived under socialistic regimes, but it is also because many feel condescend to by the Ashkenazi elites that are perceived to control Israeli institutions such as the media and Supreme Court.
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