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Israeli Jews Deman Limits on Ethiopian Immigrants to Israel

Thread ID: 12028 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-01-25

Valley Forge [OP]

2004-01-25 18:27 | User Profile

More evidence -- as if any were needed -- that Jews have no equal when it comes to hypocrisy. While Jews have been promoting Third World immigration to the United States, Canada, Europe, Austrialia, and New Zealand for years, they sing a different tune in their own backyard.

NEWSWEEK: Critics Charge U.S.-Based Group With 'Manufacturing' Ethiopian Jews to Bolster Israel's Orthodox Population Sunday January 25, 11:34 am ET

NEW YORK, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- An angry debate has ignited in Israel over the efforts of a U.S.-based group to bring thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Critics charge that the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), in an effort to spread Orthodox Judaism and beef up Israel's Jewish population, is "manufacturing Jews" -- luring Ethiopian Christians out of their villages, inflating the numbers of those it claims have Jewish ancestry and trading food and the promise of exodus for religious conversion, Newsweek International reports in its latest issue.(Photo: [url]http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040125/NYSU004[/url] )

There are currently 24,000 Falash Mura-Ethiopian Christians who claim Jewish ancestry-living in NACOEJ compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar in northern Ethiopia. NACOEJ feeds, educates and provides free health care to the Falash Mura, and indoctrinates them in Orthodox Jewish rituals. Israeli officials, and some leaders of the Ethiopian Jewish community, charge that NACOEJ aggressively recruits Falash Mura in rural Ethiopia. Unemployment is rife among those who move into the compounds. According to many Israeli officials, barely 40 percent of the Ethiopians in the Addis Abba compound have Jewish roots.

NACOEJ insists that all the Ethiopians in the compounds are Jews, and the group has found an alliance with some powerful sectors of Israeli society. Amid fears that Muslims may soon outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories, some Likud Party leaders and religious right wingers see resettling the Falash Mura as one way of guaranteeing the strength of the Jewish population, reports Jerusalem Bureau Chief Joshua Hammer in the February 2 issue of Newsweek International (on newsstands Monday, Jan. 26).

Early this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom announced that he would speed up the resettlement of the Falash Mura. But Shalom's promise provoked a backlash from lawmakers who question the authenticity of the Falash Mura's claims, and who argue that Israel can't afford the speedy resettlement of thousands of destitute Ethiopians. **Tzipi Livne, Israel's minister of Immigrant Absorption, estimates that 10,000 of the 24,000 in the compounds will qualify for immigration and believes strict limits must be drawn. "You could have a chain of family members demanding to come in," she says. "Where does it end?" **

[url]http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040125/nysu014_1.html[/url]

Sertorius

2004-01-26 03:01 | User Profile

Interesting article. I wonder if the person who wrote this below covers this aspect of Israeli life.

And Solomon Ezra, the first Ethiopian-born officer in the Israeli air force, who was instrumental in the dramatic and dangerous airlift of 14,324 Ethiopian Jews in a hush-hush project that the world came to know as Operation Solomon.

[url]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=12023[/url]