Johannesburg, South Africa. April 27 2000
Ethiopia's Jews beg Israel to take them in ... but the Israelis are suspicious that Ethiopians are claiming Jewishness to escape the famine
By DAVID GOUGH Addis Ababa
Even at 75 and with a body so worn out
that it requires every ounce of strength just to cross from one side of
the ramshackle hut to the other, Gadamu Kassa still clings to his lifelong
dream.
He and his wife are Jews and when they left their village in north-western
Ethiopia two years ago for the capital, Addis Ababa, their land was taken
and their house burned down, leaving them with nothing but their dream
of a new life in Israel.
Mr Kassa points to the Star of David carved on the door of his hut as proof of his faith, and fingers a photograph of his son who he says now lives in Israel. His wife is baking unleavened bread in preparation for the Passover festival, which celebrates the flight of the Jews from bondage in Egypt.
Now thousands of Ethiopians are pleading with the Israeli government to allow a new exodus of Jews across the Red Sea to the Promised Land.
Israel has been reluctant to recognise the right to citizenship of people such as Mr Kassa because it suspects many Ethiopians of claiming Jewishness to escape economic hardship at home.
Doors close
Earlier this month the Israeli interior minister, Natan Sharansky, who himself emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, went to Addis Ababa to assess their claims. He sympathised with the wretched conditions in which many Ethiopian Jews were living, saying: "I can only compare them with the punishment cells of the Soviet Union in which I spent many years."
But despite Israel's Law of Return, which guarantees citizenship to Jews anywhere in the world, Mr Sharansky said, "we cannot open up the doors for everyone who wants to come in".
As many as 70,000 Ethiopian Jews already live in Israel, most of them airlifted there during Operation Moses in 1984 and again during Operation Solomon in 1991. But more than 20,000 remain in slums in Ethiopia, waiting for their own exodus.
They trace their ancestry back to the fifth century BC, when Jewish traders went down the Nile to its source in western Ethiopia, converting communities. Successive Christian rulers launched pogroms to wipe out the Falashas - as the Ethiopian Jews became known - or force them to convert.
Some converted and adhered to Christianity. Others converted in name only, out of fear, while others stuck to their faith.
In June 1990, just months before Operation Solomon, the Israeli embassy drew a distinction between the Falashas and what they termed the "Falash Mura". Falash Mura had converted to Christianity, they said, and were therefore not eligible for citizenship.
But a decade later tens of thousands of Falash Mura meet every day at compounds in Addis Ababa and the northern Ethiopian town of Gondar run by the North American Conference of Ethiopian Jewry (Nacoej), which supports their claims. Here they practice contemporary Judaism to prove their pedigree.
Schoolchildren learn Hebrew songs and begin the day singing the Israeli national anthem. The wooden posts and bars surrounding the compound are painted in the blue and white of the Israeli flag and on the wall of each classroom is a sign which reads: "Let's Go Home."
More than 65% of those who meet daily at the Beta Israel compound in Addis Ababa have close relatives in Israel. According to Andy Goldman, Nacoej programme director, the Israeli government's refusal to grant them citizenship is "the first time that people with traceable Jewish ancestry are being turned away".
Racist refusal
Mr Goldman says he suspects that racism is behind Israel's refusal to allow the Falash Mura into Israel. He is angry that while Ethiopian Jews are left to fester in poverty forced on them when they left their homes to go to the capital to seek evacuation, Jewish agencies scour the former Soviet Union for the descendants of lapsed Jews, who are then invited to settle in Israel.
"At a time when more than half of the emigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union are non-Jews, it seems ridiculous for Israel to deny entry to Ethiopians of unquestioned Jewish ancestry," said Joseph Feit, a former Nacoej president.
Rabbi Michael Meheret is a Jew of Ethiopian origin who now lives in Israel. He was evacuated from a refugee camp in Sudan in 1984 during Operation Moses.
During 16 years in Israel he has seen a flood of Russian immigrants and wonders why his fellow Ethiopian Jews are not as welcome. "They are white and educated, while we are black and poor. That is the only reason I can give." -- The Guardian.