The big news of the day today has so far been the discovery of an amutah, a non-governmental organization (aka NGO), that operates a number of ganim, nursery schools and kindergartens, in which 62 out of the 68 children registered are Ethiopian children.

The ganim are located in Bet Shemesh, and the amutah is one that was founded by Moshe Abutbol, now the mayor of Bet Shemesh. When Abutbol became mayor, he transferred ownership to his wife. As well, his daughter works in these ganim as a teacher.

The "story" is that these ganim offer their services for free - they charge no tuition. They receive their money from donations and government subsidies (even though they are not under the auspices of the Ministry of Education). They bus kids in from a variety of neighborhoods, and seem to target the Ethiopian community. Yediot Acharonot discovered this and broke the news on the front page of the newspaper today, calling it discrimination (and it has since been argued about on the radio stations).

After the story broke, people from within the Ethiopian community expressed anger that they have been taken advantage of, they've been discriminated against, they have been sent to an "Ethiopian ghetto", all under the guise of an educational initiative.

Abutbol responded rejecting the claims of discrimination and racism. Abutbol explained that just like in an aquarium there are big fish and small fish, and one must remove the small fish from the aquarium so the bigger fish wont eat them. You then raise those small fish elsewhere, and then re-integrate them back into the aquarium. This is the same, Abutbol says, as by doing this the children of these ganim come to first grade ready and prepared properly, after we help them and deal with them with a personal and holistic approach.
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While Abutbol's response seems stupid and racist in its own right, I don't see why this is much of a story. Abutbol's ganim, or I should says Mrs. Abutbol's ganim, offer free gan, no tuition. They don't as far as I know, limit that offer to only Ethiopian kids. They also don't say these gans are only for Ethiopian kids.

The Ethiopian parents that choose to send their kids to these gans, chose to do so of their own free will. They chose to take advantage of the free tuition, rather than pay for a different private gan, or to send to a regular gan run by the state/city. Other people had the same choice, and most chose not to send their kids to these ganim.

As well, the ganim, as far as I know, did not limit registration only to Ethiopian kids. At least, I have not seen that claim made. So the registration was open to the general public, and free tuition was offered to all.

The possibility that remains open, I think, is that the amutah only advertised in places where only the Ethiopians would likely see it and not others. That is possible, though, again, I have not heard that claim being made.

What do you think? Is this discrimination in a way I did not consider?

I don't see any discrimination here, just because it was Ethiopians that chose to take advantage of the free tuition offer.