Padlocking the Promised Land
Israel runs out of room for Ethiopia's Christianized Jews
March/April 1999
Jacqueline White Utne Reader
Last June, when the Israeli government airlifted 58 Christianized
Ethiopian Jews (known as Falash Mura) from a refugee camp in Addis
Ababa to Jerusalem, immigration officials declared it 'the final
load' in a series of Ethiopian evacuation operations stretching
back to 1984. The compound where immigrants had been kept would be
closed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, and future
immigration applications would be handled through normal channels.
RELATED CONTENT
For the modern nomad, home is everywhere and nowhere at all...
Scientists are using flora to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems: discovering and remo...
Land of the Pilgrims? Why Graceland's as good as it gets July August 1997 By Elaine Robbins, Utne R...
The pay lot could be the key to our energy future...
But, as Abraham Rabinovich reports in the American Jewish
magazine Moment (Dec. 1998), somebody forgot to tell the
Falash Mura. Within days, thousands of refugees streamed into Addis
Ababa in hopes of immigrating to Israel. More than 8,000 now await
action by an Israeli government suddenly enmeshed in a bitter
immigration struggle that holds little promise of resolution.
That the Falash Mura are descendants of Jews is undisputed; they
broke away from the Ethiopian Jewish community (or Falasha) and
began converting to Christianity more than a century ago. And under
the Israeli Law of Return, which allows anyone with at least a
single Jewish grandparent to immigrate, these Ethiopians should be
welcomed into the country (indeed, thousands already have been).
But Israeli immigration experts are now contesting the Ethiopians'
Jewish credentials. 'They didn't just identify as Christians, they
lived Christian lives,' says Micha Feldman of the Jewish Agency.
'They went to church and were buried in Christian cemeteries and
lived in a Christian environment.'
Others charge that the Falash Mura are simply economic
opportunists, poised to cash in on distant Jewish roots to escape
from one of the poorest countries in the world. Israeli officials,
who airlifted in more than 20,000 Ethiopians with clear Jewish
credentials during Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in
1991, are wary of setting a precedent that would make the country a
magnet for impoverished immigrants with ambiguous Jewish ancestry.
After finally allowing 5,000 Falash Mura to immigrate during the
past two years, they have decided to draw the line.
But advocates argue that the widespread Christian conversions
among the Falash Mura are understandable given the rampant
persecution of Jews in Ethiopia. In Israel, they would be free to
embrace Judaism once again, as most of the 8,000 to 10,000 Falash
Mura there have done.