Ariel Sharon’s government yesterday approved the immediate airlift of about 20 000 Ethiopians with Jewish roots who have spent years demanding the right to settle in Israel.
The group, known as the Falash Mura, were left behind during the mass evacuation of Ethiopian Jews in 1984 because Israel said they had converted to Christianity.
But the government has relented under pressure from the ultra-orthodox Shas party — which controls Israel’s interior ministry and sets immigration policy — after its spiritual leader ruled that the Falash Mura were forced to convert to stave off persecution. The party compared them to Spanish Jews forced to become Christians to avoid the Inquisition.
Israel secretly airlifted tens of thousands of Jews from Ethiopia in 1984, and a second group seven years later. But it turned away thousands of Falash Mura who tried to board the planes, saying they were not Jewish, or, if they had once been Jews, it was so long ago as to be irrelevant.
But over the past decade, about 18 000 Falash Mura have left their homes across Ethiopia for camps near centres run by activists in the capital Addis Ababa, and the northern city of Gondar. There they have agitated to be allowed into Israel.
Yesterday’s decision was opposed by the housing minister, Natan Sharansky, because some scholars question whether the Falash Mura were ever Jewish or just adopted similar religious rituals.
But Sharon is keen to bolster immigration, which has tailed off towards the end of the exodus of nearly a million Jews from the former Soviet Union. He has said he wants another million immigrants before the end of the decade to offset the growth in the Arab population. – Guardian Unlimited Â