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Jewish World Review Sept. 1, 1998 / 10 Elul, 5758
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| The author was unaware of the African bombings, above, until he was stoped by armed guards. |
Too much pain
SHORTLY AFTER I STEPPED OFF the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Tel
Aviv to Addis Ababa, two powerful car bombs ripped through the American embassies in
neighboring Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 100 people and injuring
more than 1, 000. I didn’t hear about the attack for a while, even though the
clues were there.
Walking past the Israeli embassy compound, where the
legendary airlift of Jews in 1991 was masterminded, I was stopped by two
nervous gun-toting guards who insisted on checking my identification. The
Ethiopian secret police also came by but thankfully didn’t write down my
specific information. Later , the parking lots closest to my hotel were
blocked off and my bags were subjected to an airport-style X-ray.
I am here, in part, because of Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli Prime
Minister during Operation Solomon who decided not to airlift the Falas Mura, those
who did not appear on the evacuation lists of the Jewish Agency but who claimed
Jewish lineage nonetheless. Over the past seven years, however, more than
13,000 Falas Mura have arrived in Israel either under the Law of Return or
under the humanitarian Law of Entry.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Moshe Leon, recently wrote the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, asking them
to stop aiding people in Ethiopia. Israel’s Absorption Ministry and the Jewish
Agency also recently tried to declare the end of the Ethiopian aliya. There
was only one problem: The Ethiopian Jewish in Israel were upset because
they still had family they were trying to bring to Israel. And they claimed that
violence, disease, and hunger have created an emergency situation that the
Jewish relief organizations need to address before more people die.
Only 200 meters from the Israeli embassy lies the Jewish compound
that has served as a community center and school for Falas Mura waiting to come to
Israel. It is nearly empty on this Friday afternoon. Two women wearing
traditional Ethiopian white shawls sit in an open area embroidering
Ethiopian Challah covers. A synagogue painted blue and white faces them. Last year,
the Israeli government approved of a plan to empty the compound on condition
that it be closed when the last Jews on a list of 4,000 are brought to
Israel.
Approximately 200 remain from the original list, but I had heard in
Jerusalem that there are 8,000 others who have recently arrived.
A delegation of 18 men pass through the guarded entrance to the
compound, many of them kissing the colorful mezuza in the doorway. This is the
organizing committee for the 8.000 souls they claim are in Addis Ababa, and
this is the first time they are allowed to meet here, although the community
has recently started to use the compound for Sabbath services. They are
gracious and bow slightly as I meet them. They have a story to tell, and it
is at odds with what the Israeli government has been reporting to the
American Jewish leadership, federations and the press.
A former regional Ethiopian judge, Metukaya Gorpo, is the leader of
the new refugees. He is a 43 year-old Kwara Jew, which means that, unlike the
Falas Mura, his Judaism is not questioned by the Israel government. The
government says it is now processing about 2,500 Kwara Jews for aliya. Mr. Gorpo looks
a lot like the American comedian Sinbad, but he doesn’t smile. The committee,
which is composed of representatives from all the major village areas, has
recently compiled a list of 2,248 heads of households who are now in Addis,
and they have checked to make sure all are Jewish. Nearly all have arrived
in the past three months and insist that no Jewish organization beckoned them
to come to the Ethiopian capital.
"Let me tell you why we have come to Addis Ababa," he says through
an interpreter. "In the northern villages, many of our homes have been burned
down by the gentiles. They tell us to leave to join our families in Israel,
because they want our land. When we resist, they threaten us and then chase
us away with guns.” The judge continues to paint a vivid picture of rapes,
violence, disease, and hunger that has escalated in the past two years since
the Ethiopian government started a land redistribution program. The
authorities, he tells me, are not protecting the Jews. He knows this, he
says, because he is a judge and has seen many cases where members of the
community have been harmed, but the police do nothing.
Up until now his speech has been slow and deliberate. But when he
begins to speak about being denied access to the compound and also to the Adenite
Jewish cemetery, he is angry and so are the members of the committee, who start to
interrupt to emphasize a point or two. Several weeks ago a Joint
Distribution Committee official responsible for Ethiopia, Ami Bergman, and an Ethiopian
member of Knesset, Addisu Meselle, came to Ethiopia. I tried to interview
them prior to my trip to hear their side of the story. Mr. Meselle did not
return repeated phone calls; Mr. Bergman canceled our interview. While they
were here, a 30-year-old woman with five children died of untreated
tuberculosis. She has a sister in Jerusalem, as well as an uncle in Israel
whose identity card reads: Jewish. I attended the mourning ceremony in
Jerusalem the day before my trip here with 50 members of her extended
family.
"There is a death sentence against our people," I was told by the uncle.
"Because Israel does not want us."
For the past seven years the Joint has been responsible for the
burials in the ancient Jewish cemetery. And because the Falas Mura’s Jewishness is
disputed, the Joint wants to keep their corpses out of the Jewish cemetery.
“Throw the bodies wherever you want,” the judge and his committee quote Mr.
Bergman of the Joint as telling a crowd of thousands who had gathered
outside the compound to hear Mr. Messele speak. Seven other bodies that were not on
the Jewish Agency’s list the committee has had to bury around their shacks.
The 30-year-old woman was finally buried in the Adenite Jewish cemetery
after rabbinic authorities in Israel certified that the woman was in fact, Jewish.
The members of the committee told me that Mr. Messele told them to return to
Gondar to be processed in an orderly fashion for aliya like any other
community in the world. When they responded that they would be killed if
they tried to return to their land, he then promised to campaign for their
immediate aliya when he returned to Israel. Id didn’t have the heart to
tell them when Mr. Messele returned to Israel, he gave interviews that were less
than helpful to their goal of coming to Israel and being quickly reunited
with their families.
It is the rainy season here, which means that the reddish mud is
everywhere and is deep. After meeting with the committee, I spent several days hiking
through the mud to meet with people in their rented shacks in the hills
around the Israeli embassy. For the most part, each one-room shanty sleeps five or
more, the floor is the same mud as the outside, and plastic bags are nailed
to the sides of the walls, dry mud. none of the homes I visited had a
bathroom, although two did have lights.
Each person I met told me that no official of the Joint, Jewish Agency or any Israeli office had visited or interviewed them before. None had received food or medical help. I have the “honor” of being the first Westerner to glimpse their horror. I met a young woman wit delicate features, Ayinabis Dessie
Tassew, who says she was attacked with a grenade when an acquaintance found
out she was "Falasha" and she resisted giving him her money. She betrayed
no emotion as she lifted her shirt above her right breast to show me her
extensive scar. I met a 14-year-old girl, Enguday Desto Checole, who said a
Christian man had tried to kidnap her so that his son could have sex with
her, get her pregnant, and then qualify the non-Jewish family for aliya. The
Jews in the area came to the rescue, but the non-Jew burned down the home the
girl shared with her single mother and three siblings.
A common theme to the dozens of stories I chronicled is that these
Falas Mura are considered Jewish by their non-Jewish neighbors, who either want their
land, their money or their daughters. The other theme that emerges under my
questioning is that these people are proud of their Jewish heritage, know
precious little about that heritage, and all have family in Israel. But
they seem eager to learn. A thousand showed up for Sabbath services, which
lasted three hours and ended with Am Yisrael Chai, the Shlomo Carlebach tune that
was the anthem of the Soviet Jewry movement.
I have long forgotten the images from CNN of the embassy bombings.
In their place are pictures of pain and abandonment. A blind 74-year-old man, Bekele
Meleket Workneh, whose hut was burnt down up north, pleading with me to
bring him to Israel. A skinny 8-year-old girl with big eyes approaching me after
Sabbath services and begging for a banana, which I didn’t have. A widowed
mother of five, Muchit Taglo Asnake, age 33, waiting stoically in line for
hours to tell me her story. "I have nowhere else to go," she says. "But
Israel."
I am relieved to be leaving to go up north, the scene of many of
the crimes. There is too much Jewish pin in Addis Ababa. Perhaps that is
the real reason the Jewish relief organizations want
9/02/98:
Guns,
Torture,
Jews, and
Lies
By Yosef I. Abramowitz
New JWR contributor Yosef I. Abramowitz is editor of Jewish Family & Life, ( www.jewishfamily.com.)
