BICOM

A final flight of 450 Ethiopian Jewish immigrants arrived at Ben Gurion Airport yesterday, bringing to a conclusion a thirty year effort to bring Ethiopian Jewry to Israel.

Yesterday’s group comprised the last of 7,864 members of the Falash Mura community who have been brought to Israel during the last three years during what has been called “Operation Wings of Dove.” Around 8,000 Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel during “Operation Moses” in 1984 via Sudan and an additional 14,000 came during “Operation Solomon” in 1992 by air shuttle.

Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency, which oversees the process of immigration and absorption to Israel, commented, “The Ethiopian Jewish community is one of the most ancient in the world, dating back to the days of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba” and that “The community’s children have the yearning for Jerusalem for thousands of years. We’re closing a circle of some three thousand years.”

However, yesterday’s symbolic arrival is not without controversy. The Falash Mura community, which was pressured to convert to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but retained its own specific identity, claims that hundreds or possibly thousands of its members remain in Ethiopia and wish to emigrate to Israel. Although they will be able to apply for immigration individually, the Jewish Agency will no longer operate services in Ethiopia to prepare or organise such a move. Members of the Falash Mura community were planning a protest outside the Prime Minister’s Office yesterday.

Meanwhile, Yesh Atid MK Dov Lipman, who backs the Falash Mura claims, said “I call on the government and the Jewish Agency to keep all services… in place until every single relative… has their appeal heard by the special committee set up by the Interior Committee.”