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March 30, 2001/Nisan 6, 5761, Vol. 53, No.26
Falash Mura backers reject report
MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The expedited aliyah of Ethiopia's Falash Mura has encouraged more would-be immigrants to crowd into miserable shantytowns around the Israeli Embassy and Consulate there, according to a new report by the United Jewish Communities.
The report of a renewed flow of Falash Mura might seem to vindicate skeptics who warned that a seemingly endless number of Ethiopians eager to move to Israel would replace any allowed to emigrate.
But a leading advocate for the Falash Mura rejects the UJC report as inaccurate. Even before its imminent release, the report is stoking a long-standing controversy over the Falash Mura, a community of roughly 26,000 whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Christianity. Most of the Falash Mura say they have returned to Judaism.
The report is only the latest chapter in a complex saga that has sparked allegations of racism, double standards and foot-dragging on the part of Israeli authorities.
A year ago, Israel's then-prime minister, Ehud Barak, declared his intent to resolve the Falash Mura issue. Barak sent Interior Minister Natan Sharansky to Ethiopia last April to assess the situation and expedite the immigration application process.
Sharansky's visit spurred greater attention to the issue from the UJC, the umbrella group of North American Jewish federations. New Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has reiterated Israel's desire to solve the humanitarian crisis by year's end.
Some 3,000 Falash Mura have emigrated to Israel since January 2000. Up to 100 are making aliyah each week, a figure expected to hold steady through the end of 2001.
Yet the population around social service compounds set up at the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa and the Consulate in Gondar has not diminished, a recent UJC fact-finding mission found.
"No matter how many times you do the math, the numbers are not going down," said Caryn Rosen Adelman, a member of the UJC Overseas Needs Assessment and Distribution Committee who led the mission in February.
Driving the movement of Falash Mura from their remote villages to the compounds appears to be the fear - fueled by their advocates in the United States and Israel, critics say - that they will be left behind if they do not make aliyah quickly.
Also heightening their anxiety may be recent statements by Israeli officials who have suggested that perhaps only one-third of the remaining 23,000 Falash Mura applicants will be accepted.
So far, 4,000 of the 23,000 have been accepted for aliyah, with few applicants rejected, according to the report.
One leading advocate claims that hints of a Falash Mura stampede to the compounds are not just inaccurate, but are intended to discourage American Jewish support for their emigration.
"I don't want to accuse any person or organization, but whoever says that people are flowing to the compounds is not telling the truth, and he knows that he's not telling the truth," said Avraham Neguise, director of the Jerusalem-based South Wing to Zion advocacy group. "This is all an excuse not to help these people."
Israeli officials say they now have been approached by other Ethiopian groups who claim Jewish ancestry and are eager to move to Israel, according to the report.
"This fact lends credence to the observation" that "there is no way of knowing the actual and potential numbers of persons who will seek to make aliyah," the report states.
Falash Mura advocates allege racism, saying that Russians with clear Jewish roots but little interest in Judaism are welcomed as Israeli citizens, along with their non-Jewish relatives.
In contrast, they say, Falash Mura - even those who have become religiously observant after returning to Judaism - are forced to leap through innumerable hoops.
Israeli officials and some analysts counter that nothing will ever satisfy the Falash Mura's advocates, whom they accuse of taking advantage of Israel's generous Law of Return and Law of Entry to improve the welfare of some of the world's poorest people.
At the same time, Israeli officials say they must draw a line somewhere, as Ethiopians - who generally have limited education and come from a culture far different than Israel's - are more costly to absorb than other immigrants.
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