Ethiopia’s first arrivals in the Land of Israel’s Operation Rock

On the opening flight of Israel’s Operation Rock, 316 members of Ethiopia’s Falash Mura community arrived in Israel on Thursday morning along with Aliyah’s minister, Pnina Tamano-Shata. They were greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz, Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog and other dignitaries, all who arrived on Thursday are children or grandchildren of community members who immigrated to Israel many years ago. . Approximately 100 more immigrants from the Falash Mura community will arrive on Friday. The government intends to bring in a total of 2,000 immigrants by the end of January 2021. With the arrival of the new immigrants on Thursday, there are now approximately 7,000 Falash Mura members in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa and Gondar, who were included in the immigration parameters of government resolution 716 of 2015. All members of this community were supposed to have been brought to Israel by the end of 2020, but due to political opposition and bureaucratic problems, only 2,500 have arrived since the resolution. Another 5,340 members of the Falash Mura community have claimed immigration rights since 2010 and are supported by the Ethiopian Jewish leadership in Israel as well as prominent rabbis from the Zionist religious community. A decision will be made on whether they will be deemed eligible for immigration to Israel within the framework of a comprehensive plan for the immigration of all remaining members of the Falash Mura community that Tamano-Shata is developing.