Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews have been evacuated by air to Israel, and thousands are waiting for their turn
Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews are undergoing air evacuations to Israel, and thousands are still waiting for their turn in a long list.
This comes weeks after Israel announced plans to do so, after failing to fulfill pledges to absorb this community.
The new immigrants have close ties to Ethiopian Jews who were brought to Israel decades ago in a series of clandestine operations.
However, questions about their eligibility to obtain the right to citizenship in Israel and then stability cast a shadow over the process.
The issue has gained great momentum in recent weeks, with the escalation of fighting between the Ethiopian government and local forces in the northern Tigray region, and fears that violence will reach the city of Gondar, where most of the Jewish community live in temporary waiting camps.
Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Alternative Prime Minister Benny Gantz, welcomed the arrival of 316 Ethiopian Jews at Ben Gurion Airport.
Netanyahu said in a statement: "Sarah, my wife and I, greeted them with tears in our eyes when we saw the immigrants, our Ethiopian Jewish brothers, leave the plane and set foot on Earth, the Land of Israel."
"You have waited for a long time for the dream to materialize, and today it is," Netanyahu added.
Israeli Immigration Minister Benina Tamanu-Shata attended the arrival of Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia on Thursday, which he called Operation Rock of Israel.
It is reported that Bennina is primarily an Ethiopian immigrant who was brought to Israel on a secret airlift in 1984.
The number of Ethiopian Jews is about eight thousand people, who have been waiting for years for a decision to allow them to immigrate to and reside in Israel.
What is the The Falasha community
The Falasha community is descended from Jews who had converted to Christianity - under duress in many cases - in the nineteenth century, but in recent decades they have regained their religious identity and started practicing the Jewish rituals in their normal lives.
Israeli laws do not give flash mura the direct right to automatically obtain citizenship once they reach its lands, as is the case with most of the world's Jews.
The Falashmura Jews do not even enjoy the same rights as their Ethiopian counterparts who had preceded them in the evacuation to Israel, known as the "Beta Israel."
According to Jewish law, Falasha Jews do not fulfill the criteria for obtaining Israeli citizenship due to doubts about the Jewishness of their ancestors.
The issue had been raised for years before the government pledged in 2015 to transfer all children of the Falashmura community by the end of 2020.
Although 16,600 Falasha Jews have applied for immigration to Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Interior said this week that only 2,000 of those who meet the conditions have been brought to Israel.
Israel allows the Flash Mora's immigration applications to be examined individually, according to each case.
The slowdown in the process led activists to accuse the government of failing to fulfill its pledges.
More than 100 people are expected to attend on Friday. The government says about 1,700 will follow them by the end of January 2021.
The Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel for the first time from refugee camps in Sudan, through a series of covert operations in the early eighties of the last century carried out by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad on the orders of the then Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The year 1991 witnessed more of those operations, as many people were transported by air from Ethiopia to Israel.
Despite the improvement in their conditions in recent years, the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel faces obstacles. It suffers disproportionately high levels of unemployment and poverty, as well as discrimination.
BBC
