The Israeli government plans to airlift some 3,000 Jews from Kwara, Ethiopia, to the Jewish state within eight months, said Israel’s former ambassador to Ethiopia, Avi Granot.
But in a recent visit to San Francisco, Granot confirmed some of the worse fears of Jewish activists working on behalf of the Ethiopians: Most of the estimated 15,000 Falash Mura “are not going to be taken” to Israel and are “destroying their chances for survival” by living in squalid areas of Addis Ababa.
While the status of the Kwara Jews is not under dispute, the Jewishness of the Falash Mura is open to question. The Israeli government considers them Christians.
However, the Falash Mura themselves and some aid groups say they are Jews. Some say they are crypto-Jew, descended from families who converted to Christianity under duress.
The Falash Mura began descending on the Ethiopian capital by the thousands after Israel accepted nearly 3,000 of them following the 1991 Operation Solomon airlifts. Granot said that transfer occurred not because the Falash Mura were actually Jews, but because it fulfilled a “humanitarian and moral obligation.” Now he considers the act a mistake for the Jewish state.
“We failed to take a stand when we should have. We failed to tell them they are not eligible” to come to Israel, he said during a lunchtime talk last month at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
Granot served as ambassador to Ethiopia from 1995 to 1998 and currently acts as minister of interreligious and public affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
A short, animated figure, Granot spoke in flourishes, with bursts of shouting tempered by whispered parenthetical remarks.
Discussing the Jews of Kwara, a region near the Sudan border, and in nearby Gondar, Granot explained that conditions are harsh and dismal. Health and food supplies are constantly low. Making matters worse, a steady stream of Ethiopians hopeful of immigrating to Israel has been descending from the mountains, clogging already unhealthy towns.
Yet, Granot admitted, Israel’s government has been slow in processing Ethiopian Jews. Approximately 100 received approval in February to make aliyah. Several hundred arrived each month last year.
To make the eighth-month deadline, Israel must intensify its immigration program with funds for more staff, Granot said. Its operations in Gondar and Addis Ababa are strained.
Meanwhile, Jews awaiting permission to enter Israel are starving and dying, Granot acknowledged.
“People die. Every day they die. The death rate among the Jewish community in Ethiopia is lower than for others there, but that’s not relevant,” he said. “The Jews have not died as a result of [Israel’s] bureaucracy.”
If the situation is horrendous for Jews in Kwara, conditions are much worse for the thousands of Falash Mura who are staked out in shoddy encampments in front of Israel’s embassy in Addis Ababa, Granot said.
Most have sold their farms and left their villages, only to find “no jobs, no anything” in the capital, Granot said.
“Some travel 1,000 kilometers [620 miles] to get to Addis Ababa. Then they say they can’t go back because they live 1,000 kilometers away. Why do people come for no purpose? People have been telling them to come to Addis Ababa because Israel will take them. That’s a very sad and cynical promise.”
If any of the Falash Mura are indeed “legitimate Jews,” Granot said, they should stay in their villages. Israel has a team of roving officials who can locate and authenticate Jews in isolated villages.
Yet, Granot said, determining who is a Jew is rife with problems.
Israel receives thousands of applications each year. Ethiopians have no personal history documentation or passports. They have no surnames — just a first name and their father’s name as a second name. Few know their year of birth. The entire conversation has to be mediated by a translator.
“They cannot prove they are Jewish. The onus is on us to disprove it,” Granot said. Israel’s immigration officials have the final say on who makes it.
That remark led many in the audience to groan, as they had several times earlier.
It’s Israel’s policy to reunite families that have at least one member already in the Jewish state. Otherwise, the only way to reach Israel is through the Law of Return, which requires at least one grandparent to be Jewish. Israel every day deports many Africans who come as pilgrims to Jerusalem and try to stay, Granot said.
The Israeli minister said his country’s immigration policy is fair but has been exploited repeatedly by Ethiopians.
One loophole in the policy involves non-Jewish parents giving one of their children to an Ethiopian Jew. They then ask the Jew to declare the child as a member of their family when they travel to Israel. After arrival in the Jewish state, the child declares himself not part of the family he came with. He then demands that his real parents be transferred to Israel.
The total number of Jews still left in Ethiopia is a mystery — and will forever remain so, according to Granot. No figure “is legitimate because no one knows,” he said. “There could have been 300,000 Jews. It’s just guesswork. Falash Mura aren’t even a community; they are just a concept.”