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May 30, 2003/Iyar 28 5763, Vol. 55, No. 40
Falash Mura activists demand aliyah
LOOLWA KHAZZOOM
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - "Every day I go to the Ministry of the Interior," says Binkito Baquaia, grasping pictures of her family.
"I have been separated from my mother, father, brother and sisters for six years. I keep trying to find out what is happening with them, when Israel will bring them," she continues. "The Ministry of the Interior staff repeatedly brush me off."
Baquaia is among thousands of Ethiopian immigrants demonstrating against the Interior Ministry this week, demanding that the immigration of the Falash Mura - the majority of whose ancestors converted to Christianity under social and economic pressure - be expedited.
Some 2,000 protesters marched through Jerusalem on May 25, congregating in front of the Interior Ministry for a six-hour demonstration.
"We are demanding the implementation of the government's Feb. 16 decision" to expedite the immigration of the Falash Mura, said Avraham Neguise, director of South Wing to Zion: The Association for the Ingathering and Absorption of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, which is organizing the weeklong protest.
When Israel began carrying out large-scale immigration operations of Ethiopian Jews in the early 1990s, many Falash Mura attempted to join the wave, claiming they were Jewish by ancestry.
The number of Falash Mura continued to grow, leading the Israeli government to believe they were not Jews but just wanted to leave famine-plagued Ethiopia.
In 1998, the government changed its policy, reviewing each Ethiopian immigration request on an individual basis.
The Feb. 16 decision ordered the government to immediately examine the eligibility of an estimated 18,000 waiting to immigrate and bring anyone descended from an Ethiopian Jew on the mother's side.
But Neguise claimed that Interior Minister Avraham Poraz last week reversed the Feb. 16 decision, arguing that Israel does not have enough money to bring the Falash Mura.
Many demonstrators say the real reason for the delay is racism - though Poraz has issued a statement calling such allegations "completely unfounded."
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