Ethiopia's Lost Jews -
By Abdul Mohammed
April 01, 2013
..Israel subsequently cut secret deals with the Mengistu regime, supplying
it with weapons such as cluster bombs (which were used to bombard Massawa
after it was captured by the EPLF), in exchange for allowing the Falasha to
leave....
<
http://africanarguments.org/2013/03/28/ethiopia%e2%80%99s-lost-jews-by-abdu
l-mohammed/abdul_mohammed_140x140/> The coercive eviction of Ethiopia's Beta
Israel community was an act of societal vandalism, whose stated
justifications of hunger and religious discrimination are false. The
treatment of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel has been at best shabby and at
worst-as we now learn-outright scandalous. It is now time for both Ethiopia
and Israel to apologize to the Beta Israel for how they have been treated
and offer them the right to return to their Ethiopian homeland, with
suitable compensation and guarantees on their personal and collective
rights.
For millennia, Jewish communities were an integral part of Ethiopia's social
and cultural fabric. Over many hundreds of years, the three Abrahamic
religions emerged in the fertile crescent, the Arabian peninsular and the
Ethiopian highlands. The people of the Book coexisted and established a rich
tapestry of culture and faith: they were part of the core of the historic
highland society. Ethiopians have every reason to be proud of our Jewish
heritage.
Historians cannot agree on the origins of the Ethiopian Jewish communities,
who called themselves Beta Israel and who were widely known as Falasha to
other Ethiopians. Some claim that they were a lost tribe of Israel who
migrated in the centuries before Christ. Others argue that there were
numerous proto-Hebraic religions on both sides of the Red Sea, and some of
their communities of followers embraced Judaism in historic times. Another
explanation is that when Ethiopians adopted Christianity and started reading
the Bible, they needed to find Jews who could fill that important role in
the Holy Book, and so insisted that their Agaw neighbours, practitioners of
these same Hebraic religions, were in fact Jews. Such stories of origin are
all unproven, and none have any bearing on the devotion with which the Beta
Israel practiced their faith.
There is no doubt that our Falasha communities were subject to
discrimination, excluded from political office and often denied the right to
own land. They suffered poverty and marginalization. However, their
collective rights were respected and for the great majority of our history
they worshipped undisturbed. And indeed there were many other minority
peoples who suffered comparable or greater discrimination from the dominant
highland peoples, including the pastoral nomads, Agaw groups such as the
Qemant of northern Gondar, and the peoples of the western and southern
frontiers who were historically subjected to enslavement.
One of the great achievements of the last forty years has been the decisive
abolition of feudal and racial hierarchies in Ethiopia: we are all Ethiopian
citizens, equal before the law. It is true that social attitudes can take
longer to change, but the many formerly marginalized peoples are now
respected by the constitution, and indeed given special rights for the
protection of their languages, cultures and faiths. Had the Beta Israel
remained at home, there is absolutely no question that they would enjoy
protection under the constitution and all the rights extended to other
minority nationalities and ethnic and religious groups. Their genuine
grievances would have been redressed through the country's post-1991
democratic renewal.
Historical accident dictated otherwise. In the 1980s, American Jewish groups
searching for "lost tribes" discovered the Falasha. In a series of
military-style operations, Ethiopia's Jews were surgically extracted from
their ancestral lands. In the mid-1980s, in the clandestine Operation Moses,
Jews were encouraged to flee secretly to Sudan, from whence they were
airlifted to Israel. The CIA and the Israeli secret service paid millions of
dollars to the Sudanese security services to facilitate this operation,
which collapsed following the overthrow of the Nimeiri government in 1985.
Israel subsequently cut secret deals with the Mengistu regime, supplying it
with weapons such as cluster bombs (which were used to bombard Massawa after
it was captured by the EPLF), in exchange for allowing the Falasha to leave.
Knowing just how useful were these Jewish hostages, Mengistu carefully
maintained the exodus as a slow trickle, extorting arms in return. As the
EPRDF closed in on Addis Ababa, thousands of Falashas congregated in Addis
Ababa, and a central component of the American diplomacy that encouraged
Mengistu to flee and recognized the Transitional Government headed by the
EPRDF, was the melodramatic flight of these people to Israel on board
airliners with their seats ripped out so as to accommodate larger numbers of
passengers. A few hundred remained behind and the EPRDF quietly let them
depart over the following months.
None of these movements were without suffering. During the famine of 1984,
the Falasha lived in one of the few well-watered areas of the northern
highlands, where the impact of the hunger was muted. But the trek to Sudan
and the life in the Sudanese camps was a terrible experience and many died.
Later on the conditions of the Jews encamped around the Israeli embassy in
makeshift shacks was deplorable, and their rushed flights to Israel were
surely traumatic experiences.
Israeli attitudes towards the Ethiopian Jews were at best mixed. There was
fierce debate at the outset as to whether they truly constituted Jews or
needed formally to undergo conversion to qualify. They were subjected to
racist attitudes by many Israelis, especially those newly arriving from the
former Soviet Union and eastern bloc countries. Many Falasha joined the
army, where they earned a reputation for fierceness. It is sad to see how
many young Ethiopian Jews have become brutalized in this manner.
Now we have learned, from investigations carried out by Israeli human rights
activists, that racist treatment was far more disturbing than everyday
discrimination. Beginning from the time when Falasha women were given
medical examinations in Sudanese refugee camps, they were administered the
contraceptive drug Depo Provera without consent. This practice continued
after arrival in Israel. Ethiopian Beta Israel women, for whom childbearing
is the mot fundamental right and also a priceless element of their
self-value and social standing, were being forcibly prevented from bearing
children. Members of the community had long suspected that something was
wrong, as their birthrate was too low. We now know it was deliberate: an
officially orchestrated programme to prevent births and keep their numbers
low.
Parallels from modern history such as Australian programmes of preventing
Aboriginal women from bearing children spring to mind. Lawyers will peruse
instruments of international law to see which conventions prohibit
systematically preventing births among ethnic or racially defined groups. It
is particularly shocking that Israeli Jews, a nation which does not need to
be taught about the evils of such practices, are inflicting such violations
on one of their own communities.
The Israeli government, without doubt, owes the Falasha community a formal
apology and compensation. There should be an official inquiry and those
found to be responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
If Israeli domestic law is not up to the task, there are international
courts available.
The Ethiopian state also owes the Beta Israel and apology. While the most
egregious excesses were committed by the previous government of Mengistu
Haile Mariam, the current EPRDF government has preferred to close its eyes
to the issue. And irrespective of which government perpetrated the
violations, the state has a responsibility to its current and former
citizens. Ethiopia may not be in a position to offer financial compensation
to the Beta Israel, but it can offer them citizenship, and the status of a
specially protected minority under the Federal Constitution.
The Ethiopian Beta Israel should be welcomed home. Those who wish to remain
in Israel are of course perfectly entitled to do so. But those who wish to
resume Ethiopian citizenship, or to acquire dual nationality, should be able
to do so. Ethiopia should seek a way to restore to them some of their former
villages and synagogues, and should commission legal experts to explore the
best way of ensuring that their individual and collective rights are fully
protected under the constitution.
The extraction of the Falasha from Ethiopia remains a dark chapter in our
history which we should not forget. As a nation we are poorer, deprived of
their cultural and historical legacy. As a nation we are shamed by the
cynical way in which our leaders exploited them for money and weapons. Most
importantly, the Ethiopian Jews have become victims of this relocation, at
best unwitting, at worst coerced. It is not surprising that people who have
undergone such an uprooting are traumatized and prone to become social
casualties. The revelation that the Israeli state has systematically
violated their rights in the most sinister manner, betraying the trust that
the Beta Israel put in that government as their protector, is a signal that
this historic wrong needs to be righted. The Israeli government has the
most immediate obligations to restore the Falashas' rights.
The Ethiopian government also has its responsibilities to shoulder. As part
of Ethiopia's renaissance, the government should break its silence, should
speak out on behalf of its own children in an adopted land, and should
extend to them the right and opportunity of return.
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Received on Mon Apr 01 2013 - 20:42:20 EDT
