Behind the Headlines Report on Falashas Welcomed

A noted writer and researcher on the Jews of Ethiopia (Falashas) has welcomed the report by a group of Israeli social workers that the condition of the Falashas has generally improved.

But the expert, Louis Rapoport, author of “The Lost Jews — The Last of the Ethiopian Falashas” (Stein and Day), told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group’s report could not purport to be a comprehensive picture, since it covered less than one half of the Falasha community in Ethiopia.

The group, which recently returned from Ethiopia, held a press conference in Jerusalem last Thursday organized by the World Jewish Congress-Israel Bureau which was instrumental in arranging their visit to Ethiopia. (See full report in the Bulletin, January 21.)

SAYS REPORT IS ‘GOOD NEWS’

The four-member group had not visited the nearly inaccessible Tigre regions nor the Semian mountains, but had toured only the Gondar region where less than half of Ethiopia’s 20,000-25,000 Falashas live. Rapoport, however, termed the group’s report “very good news … A very positive development.” He told the JTA that the report seemed to show that the Ethiopian authorities had reacted to public protests abroad generated by somber reports of the Falashas’ condition during recent years.

Rapoport had himself visited Ethiopia in the 1970’s and, apart from his book, has written and researched extensively into the condition of the community. His book was one of the documents that caused a heightened awareness of the existence and difficulties of the Falashas, especially within the American Jewish community.

Many recent reports about the Falashas were bleak, especially about the estimated 10,000 Ethiopian Jews living in the Gondar region. They focussed on the cruel activities of the governor of the area, a Major Malacca who apparently wielded his powers viciously and with scant reference to the central government in Addis Ababa. The WJC group’s report seemed to show, Rapoport said that this governor had been somehow restrained or else replaced.

Rapoport readily accepted the group’s central finding — which the group’s members have repeatedly stressed in media interviews — that the Ethiopian government does not discriminate against the Falashas. Rather, the Falasha villagers are treated in much the same way as the rest of Ethiopia’s largely rural populace — including as regards land-allocation under the agrarian reform.

ADDS NOTE OF CAUTION

However, Rapoport pointed out, the Falashas did face considerable hostility from their neighbors. He doubted if an easing of government restrictions which had apparently taken place recently would have affected this basic antipathy from which the Falashas had suffered severely in the past.

The easing of government restrictions was noted by the WJC group — particularly the reopening during the last year of Falasha synagogues which had been closed by order of the authorities.

The group was sent to Ethiopia under WJC auspices following a Reuter news agency report filed from Nairobi recently which contained, in effect, an invitation from the Ethiopian authorities to Israel to come and see Falasha conditions first-hand.

Rapoport pointed out, though, that the group had not visited the remote Tigre region, which is held in part by dissident factions involved in ongoing insurrection against the central government. Nor had the four Israelis visited the Semian mountains, ancient homeland of the Falashas where several thousand of the tribe are believed still to live. (The journey to this area requires many gruelling days on mule-back.)

“You cannot get the overall picture by looking only at half of the tribe,” Rapoport cautioned. “It is in Tigre that there is real poverty — which is the real enemy of the Falashas.”

CITES POSSIBLE EARLIER EXAGGERATION

Rapoport noted that earlier somber reports, including chilling stories of atrocities, had focussed — like the report of the WJC group — on the more readily accessible Gondar area. He acknowledged that some of the horror reports may have been exaggerated but he insisted that widespread cases of arrest, torture and other forms of repression were authenticated.

If the WJC group’s report failed to reflect the prejudice and hostility of surrounding villages towards the Falashas, Rapoport said, then it was exaggerating the situation by making it seem more favorable than it in fact was.

Such exaggeration could harm the credibility of Jewish and other groups involved in pro-Falasha activities, Rapoport noted, by undermining the validity of their earlier depictions of Falasha conditions in the Gondar region.

He pointed out that the Israel government itself had carefully refrained over the years from making far-reaching statements about the Falashas’ plight. The strongest and most somber statements — which are most starkly contradicted by the WJC group’s report — came from non-government bodies, in Israel and in the United States.

POSSIBLE HARBINGER OF CHANGE

Rapoport noted that reports of improvement in the lot of the Falashas “lag behind” these somber statements. This could help to explain the wide discrepancy between what the WJC group said they saw and the situation reflected in recent reports by other interested groups.

Rapoport felt the Ethiopians’ invitation and the visit of the WJC group of Israelis could be significant as perhaps a harbinger of an opening towards the West on the part of the Addis Ababa regime, or at any rate a desire to blunt the thrust of international criticism relating to the Falashas.