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One hundred more Ethiopian Jews are expected to arrive on Friday as part of Israel’s Operation Rock. This will bring the total number to 2,000 by the end of January 2021.
Hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel on Thursday, as the government took a step towards fulfilling its commitment to reunite hundreds of families divided between the two countries.
Some 316 people landed aboard the Ethiopian Airlines flight, and many waved flags or stopped to kiss the ground. Many wore traditional Ethiopian robes and many women held babies in their arms.
Although the families are of Jewish descent and many are practicing Jews, Israel does not consider them Jewish under religious law. Instead, they were allowed to enter the country under a family unification program that requires special approval from the government.
A large delegation of Israeli officials welcomed the group, and Pnina Tamano-Shata, the Ethiopian-born prime minister of the cabinet, traveled to Ethiopia to join them on the flight.
“My wife Sara and I were standing there with tears in our eyes,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahusaid said at a welcoming ceremony. “This is the essence of our Jewish history, the essence of Zionist history.”
Netanyahu does not implement the 2015 agreement
Community activists have accused the government of delaying implementing a 2015 decision to bring all remaining Ethiopians of Jewish lineage to Israel within five years. Netanyahu’s Likud party repeated that promise ahead of national elections earlier this year.
The Struggle for Ethiopian Aliyah, an activist group promoting family unification, estimates that some 7,000 Ethiopian Jews remain in Ethiopia, some of whom have been waiting for years to join their families.
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“Once again, the government headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided to impose quotas on the immigration of Jews from Ethiopia,” said Muket Fenta, an activist who has been fighting for more than a decade to bring his aunt to Israel.
“The government is celebrating a few hundred immigrants from Ethiopia, while thousands were supposed to be here and they are still left behind while their fate is in doubt,” he said.
What is Israel’s relationship with Ethiopian Jews?
The Falash Mura ethnic group has lived in isolation in the Ethiopian highlands around the historic city of Gondar in the north for more than 2,500 years.
Little is known about its origins, but it is believed to date back to the biblical King Solomon. Forced to convert to Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries, they adhered to its Jewish rites and later returned to Judaism.
Israel originally declared that its 30-year Israeli resettlement campaign for Ethiopian Jews would end in the fall of 2013. However, in late 2015 it gave the green light to the immigration of the remaining Falash Mura. Around 120,000 Jews of Ethiopian descent live in Israel today.
month / rt (AP, KNA)
