An Ethiopian Jew Warns Against ‘outside Intervention’ in the Efforts to Rescue the Falashas

An Ethiopian Jew who emigrated to Israel more than 25 years ago and is now intimately involved with helping new olim from Ethiopia adjust to their new environment in Israel warned against “outside intervention” in the efforts to rescue the Falashas. He did not elaborate further on what he meant by “outside intervention.”

Matityahu Elias, employed by the Jewish Agency’s immigration and absorption department, said Israel’s effort to rescue Ethiopian Jews has been successful and despite “intense difficulties,” Falashas were leaving their country and reaching Israel.

The 38-year-old Elias is in the United States to begin an eight-city tour to meet with local Jewish leaders and other interested parties who have been involved in Ethiopian Jewry. The tour, sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America, will seek to dispel the mixed signals and misconceptions that have surrounded Israel’s rescue efforts, according to Ivan Novick, chairman of the Board of the ZOA.

Elias came to Israel in 1956 where he completed high school in Kfar Batya and later graduated from an ORT school. He fought in the 1967 Six-Day War as well as in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. While in the Israel Defense Force, he met his wife, a sabra, who both now live in Kibbutz Netzer Sereni with their three children.

Speaking to reporters at a news conference yesterday at the national headquarters of the ZOA, Elias praised the work of “responsible and professional” groups in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews. “We will never be satisfied until all of Ethiopia’s 20,000 Jews have reached Israel,” he said, although he warned that “any other intervention endangers the Falashas.”

MAJORITY LIVE IN ABJECT POVERTY

Since the fall of the government of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and the subsequent Marxist takeover, Elias said the government’s land reform program has enabled a handful of Jews to own some farms, although a great majority remain tenant farmers, living in object poverty. He said, however, that the land reform program has not helped many Jews whose land ownership is opposed strongly by Coptic Christians.

‘A GREAT HUNGER FOR LEARNING’

The absorption process in Israel is not easy for Falashas when they arrive, Elias said. He said the few thousand that are now in Israel in 15 absorption centers “have a great hunger for learning. They come with little or nothing but a burning desire to learn. They have never seen a telephone, never ridden in an elevator, never used a sink or flushed a toilet, never turned on an electric light. Truly, they have lived under primitive conditions,” Elias said.

Elias serves as a translator, ombudsman and guide He said the current government in Ethiopia is “not anti-Falasha but anti-religious.” Ethiopian government policy permits religious instruction only at home and Jewish religious schools that formerly taught Hebrew and the traditions of Jewish people have been closed, he said.