The Ethiopian government is not prepared to approve a large-scale emigration to Israel of the Falash Mora, a sect whose ancestors were Jews who converted to Christianity.
Israel’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Haim Divon, conveyed the Ethiopian government’s position on the issue to the Israeli Cabinet, which is reviewing a ministerial committee’s recommendation to allow the Falash Mora to immigrate to Israel as individuals, but not as Jews under the Law of Return.
Ethiopian Jewish groups in Israel have generally attacked the recommendation as not going far enough to bring the entire Falash Mora community to Israel.
Many Ethiopian Jews in Israel have relatives among the Falash Mora who remain in Africa. The group is variously estimated to number between 20,000 and 40,000.
Some 4,000 Falash Mora are now waiting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, hoping to emigrate and settle in Israel. Thousands more live in rural areas.
Ethiopian immigrant groups here, who have staged demonstrations against the recommendation, demand that the entire sect be recognized as Jews. Under the Law of Return, any Jew has an automatic right of immigration to Israel.
Immigrant Absorption Minister Yair Tsaban has said that a large part of the Falash Mora would end up coming to Israel anyway under guidelines that set family reunification, rather than the Law of Return, as the basis for granting the right of immigration.
Even under the Law of Return, some of the Falash Mora would be eligible to immigrate if they have Jewish parents or grandparents, or if they have decided to return to Judaism.
Yet the entire operation would be contingent upon cooperation by the Ethiopian government, and Divon’s report to the Cabinet said that Addis Ababa would only permit emigration on a one-by-one basis.
The mass airlifts organized by Israel in the past were one-time exceptions, Divon explained.
Tsaban and Interior Minister Arye Deri have rejected accusations that Israel has applied a looser standard toward immigrants from the former Soviet Union than from Ethiopia on the question of who is a Jew qualifying under the Law of Return.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Arnon Mantver, director-general of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration and Absorption Department, said the comparison with the former Soviet Union is not fair.
“In the USSR, there was not an entire group of people who had converted from Judaism to Christianity, but rather individual cases of spouses of Jews,” Mantver said.
The Jewish Agency official also rejected speculation that Israel wants to restrict the number of immigrants from Ethiopia because of problems absorbing those who have already come.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
