Mr Solomon was one of Keren Hanan Aynor’s first scholarship recipients in the ‘90’s, and for many years now has been an active member of the Foundation’s Board.
Mr. Solomon was born in a small village in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. In 1980, at the age of eleven, he immigrated to Israel with his parents and five of his six siblings as part of Operation Brothers. They began their journey on foot. In Israel he studied at the Yemin Orde religious high school. He served in the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander (res).
Mr. Solomon holds a BA in social work from Ben Gurion University in the Negev, and an MA in Educational Administration and Policy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In 1992 he began working in the field of educational counseling. Initially he was an educational counselor at Amit high school in Be’er Sheva. In 1994 he was appointed Advisor on Immigrant Integration for then Minister of Education, Amnon Rubinstein. In 1996 he worked as a counselor and instructor at the Association for the Advancement of Education in Jerusalem. In 1999 Mr. Solomon was appointed Advisor to then Minister of Aliyah and Integration, Yossi Sarid, and after the latter’s retirement, to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a position he held until 2001.
Following these appointments, he worked in management in fields related to education and immigration.
Mr. Solomon served as director of the Shuvu Banim community center for the Ethiopian community in Be’er Sheva. In 2003 he headed hiking clubs for immigrants at the Society for Protection of Nature. That same year he supervised employment of university graduates of the Ethiopian community at the Jewish Agency. In 2005, he served as an Aliyah emissary in Addis Ababa, and between 2007 and 2008 he was the director of the immigrant absorption center in Beersheba. From 2008 to 2012 he headed education and instruction at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda for orphans of the genocide.
Among his public activities, Mr. Solomon volunteered for the Physicians for Human Rights organization, which helps refugee immigrants; he is a member of the ISEF Scholarship Education Foundation; the Almaya Association for the advancement of children and families of Israelis of Ethiopian descent; and Tebeka, which provides legal assistance to Ethiopians in Israel. He has also served as a board member of the Netela Ethiopian Theater Company.
During the 19th elections for Knesset, Mr. Solomon was placed twelfth on the list of the new Yesh Atid party, becoming a Knesset member when the party won 19 seats.
He left politics before the next elections and at the start the 2015 school year, began to direct the Kfar Silver agricultural school near Ashkelon.
On August 3rd, 2021, Foreign Minister Ya’ir Lapid appointed Mr Solomon as Israel’s ambassador to Angola and Mozambique.
Mr. Solomon is truly a success story – an example of perseverance and hard work, he serves as a role model and leader in the Ethiopian community in particular, and Israeli society as a whole.
