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Israel
arrests 9 in Ethiopian
immigrants' demo |
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 ADDIS
ABEBA(August 18,2008) - Israeli
police reportedly arrested nine demonstrators Sunday after they tried
to block a junction on Jerusalem's Begin Highway during a protest
calling for the continued Ethiopian immigration to the country.
Some 5,000 people gathered outside the Prime Minister's Office in
the capital in protest of a recent government declaration that an
August 5, 2008 organized flight from Ethiopia brought an end to the
state-organized campaign that brought some 120,000 immigrants from
the country over the past three decades, according to a report from
Tel Aviv.
The demonstrators were holding pictures of their parents, children
and other relatives whom they are desperately seeking to bring to
Israel, JPOST reported.
"Dozens of the demonstrators broke away from the organized protest
and decided to expand the demonstration to the highway. Police restored
order after making the arrests", it said.
The government has faced harsh criticism from advocates for continued
immigration who said Israel was "abandoning" up to 8,700
Jews.
According to the Public Committee for Ethiopian Jewry, some 8,700
members of the Falash Mura, who converted to Christianity a century
ago and have been undergoing conversions through Israel's Chief Rabbinate
in order to make aliya, were left in Ethiopia and have not yet been
examined for aliya eligibility, the report said.
"Due to their questionable status as Jews, the immigrants were
not airlifted with the Beit Yisrael group of Ethiopian Jews during
Operation Solomon in 1991".
Critics, many within the government, argue that the number of those
calling themselves Falash Mura grows constantly as impoverished non-Jews
seek a better life in Israel.
But advocates for Falash Mura immigration point out that the group
has been recognized as former Jews by Israel's chief rabbis, and that
they undergo an Orthodox conversion upon arriving in Israel.
The Prime Minister's Office stressed that Ethiopian aliya would not
stop, but that the active search for Jews across the east African
country would not continue. Nevertheless, it said that Israel would
still examine every Ethiopian aliya request. "We cannot make
a commitment over a specific number of Falash Mura who will be able
to come, but there will not be an Ethiopian Jew who qualifies for
aliya according to the Law of Return who won't be allowed to immigrate",
the report quoted the PMO as having said in a statement.
Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
on the issue, it added. "I regret hearing that the Jewishness
of our Ethiopian brothers, the Falash Mura, has again been called
into question," he said. "It is a big mitzva to bring them
to Israel as Jews and to rescue them from definite assimilation and
both physical and spiritual danger."
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