Eight months after decision to airlift 1,300 from dwindling Jewish community, officials have not processed a single request; reasons cited include lack of air conditioning in Addis Ababa embassy
In October 2016, 63 Ethiopian immigrants touched down at Ben Gurion Airport to the joy and tears of eagerly waiting family members. They were the first Ethiopian Jews to make it to Israel since the government announced an “end” of immigration from Ethiopia over three years earlier, a move that angered Ethiopian Israelis who still had family in Gondar and Addis Ababa.
Amid speeches and flag-waving at Ben Gurion, leaders from the Jewish Agency’s Natan Sharansky to Minister of Immigrant Absorption Sofa Landver applauded the beginning of a new era, which would bring approximately 1,300 Ethiopian Jews to Israel each year, until the 9,000 Jews still living in Ethiopia all arrive in the Jewish state. But now, eight months after that government decision, the several dozen people who arrived on that October flight remain the only Jews to leave Ethiopia.
Despite a high-profile campaign and a much-celebrated agreement, not one member of the Ethiopian Jewish community has had an immigration request processed by the Interior Ministry to date, let alone been granted permission to come to Israel.
October’s immigrants were approved by the Interior Ministry before the moratorium and prevented from coming immediately because there was no budgetary allocation for their absorption. But government promises have not been kept and their arrival has not yet been followed by mass immigration from Ethiopian.
On Monday, 500 members of Israel’s Ethiopian community packed into the Knesset’s auditorium for a “celebratory session” of the Immigration and Absorption Committee marking 25 years since Operation Solomon. But while Landver, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Supreme Court justices and other senior officials lauded the daring operation that airlifted almost 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to the Jewish state, the festivities were marred by the uncertainty over the members of the community who still remain in Ethiopia.
“The celebration and the joy is mixed with a deep sense of pain and worry,” Knesset member Avraham Neguise (Likud) told The Times of Israel after addressing the gathering. Neguise came to Israel from Ethiopia as part of Operation Moses in 1984, the precursor to 1992’s Operation Solomon.
MK Avraham Neguise addressing a special session of the Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee marking 25 years since Operation Solomon, March 6, 2017. (Courtesy)
“In the past 25 years, over 50,000 more Ethiopians have come to Israel and have become and integral part of society. But we need to remember that the aliyah has not ended and there are still Jews that are stuck in Ethiopia and suffering there,” he said. “We cannot accept this discrimination and we will not give up the fight. If the government continues to disregard the community by failing to implement its own decision, we will fight like we have never fought before.”
‘Nothing is being done’
For many of the hundreds of participants at the Knesset ceremony who still have family in Ethiopia, Neguise’s fighting talk was far more than an exercise in protest politics.
Berahoun Kibrout, who came to the Knesset from the southern city of Beersheba, has seven siblings waiting for permission to immigrate to Israel. They have been waiting for 15 years.
“They are in a terrible situation, they are really suffering. It’s a horrible feeling that nothing is being done,” he said. “Our family has been split up. I have a life here but they are stuck there.”
There are approximately 9,000 people still living in Ethiopia who were not allowed to immigrate to Israel because the Interior Ministry determined they were not Jewish. Ethiopian Jews counter that the process to determine their Jewishness was poorly executed and inaccurate, dividing families. At least 80 percent of the Jews in Ethiopia have first-degree relatives living in Israel.
The Jews left behind in Ethiopia are classified as Falashmura, a term for Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity, often under duress, generations ago. Falashmura are not considered eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, which requires at least one Jewish grandparent and disqualifies someone who has converted to another religion, even if the conversion happened a long time ago.
Kibrout said that the 2016 government decision gave his family hope, but it has been bitterly disappointed by the failure to implement the move. “The government is not taking us seriously. They keep telling us stories but nothing is happening,” he said.
Two weeks ago, at a Knesset hearing on Ethiopian immigration, lawmakers heard about factors that have prevented the process from getting underway: protests in parts of Ethiopia, a lack of office space in Addis Ababa, ongoing work on the embassy in the Ethiopian capital, civil action over the salaries for Israeli envoys, and bureaucratic disagreements between government agencies in Jerusalem.
“This is the most ridiculous game of pass the buck I have ever seen in my life,” bellowed Knesset House Committee chair MK David Bitan (Likud) over the complaints of various representatives of government ministries. “I have chaired hundreds of Knesset meetings and I have never seen such an absurd situation.”
Bitan, along with Neguise, helped to secure the government agreement to restart Ethiopian immigration, at least partially, by refusing to vote with the coalition until funding was found for the move. With the coalition at the time encompassing just 61 of the 120 members of Knesset, the two were able to hold the government’s legislative agenda hostage with their own demands. Now that the coalition has been expanded, their political capital is much less valuable.