“The family is interested in keeping a low profile, and sent an unequivocal message not to turn their son into part of the social struggle of the Ethiopians. As it is, things have gotten out hand,” a source close to the Mengistu family, whose son Avera is allegedly held in the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor. In recent months, this source has helped the family in their efforts to work with government agencies to bring about the release of Avera, an Ethiopian-Israeli youth who has a mental disability and who crossed the border into Gaza of his own accord 10 months ago.

The story of his disappearance has been kept from the public, and has even been hidden from the restrained ministerial forum — the diplomatic-security Cabinet — by means of a comprehensive gag order.

Since the lifting of the gag order July 9 at the media's request, politicians and journalists have described Mengistu’s Ethiopian background as the main reason that the state kept his disappearance a secret. Reasoned op-ed columns explained why the color of the youth’s skin was what caused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to do enough to secure his freedom. In the print version of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, for example, Mengistu was called “The Invisible Captive” in a huge headline. Eitan Haber, an analyst at the paper, said that “if he were called Rabinowitz [of European origin],” the story would have been different.

The proximity between the publication of Mengistu’s disappearance and the justified protest of the Ethiopian community against the establishment, which broke out about two months ago in Tel Aviv, made the association between these two stories too easy, even inevitable. Ethiopian-Israeli activists have been protesting against long-standing neglect and discrimination by the authorities. Some of them tried to use the Mengistu case as proof of this neglect by the establishment.