After 5 Years, Ethiopia Jews Find That Israel Isn’t Land of Milk, Honey

Five years have passed since Ayano Mamo abandoned his farm and began a monthslong odyssey from the forests of Ethiopia to the Holy Land, where “all would be bright and wonderful.”

Now Mamo, like many of Israel’s 16,500 Ethiopian Jewish immigrants, feels disillusioned and alienated in a country where quiet, traditional Africans don’t quite fit in.

Their primitive farming methods are not needed, their lack of sophistication is a cause for condescension, and their skin color is sometimes a target of discrimination.

Even Faith Questioned

Even their Jewish faith has been questioned.

The Ethiopians’ disappointment is all the greater because of their harsh struggle to emigrate and their dramatic arrival from Sudan in the secret “Operation Moses” airlift, for which the United States provided planes and pilots. The operation was overseen by George Bush, then Ronald Reagan’s vice president.

Mamo’s road to Israel was harder than most.

After leaving his village in 1984, he was detained by anti-government Ethiopian rebels for a month. They beat his wife and stole his money.

Walked to Sudan

Let go, the family joined 150 other emigrants in walking to Sudan. It took a month, and without adequate food and water their 2-year-old daughter died, one of 10 who perished en route.

In Sudan, 25 more of the group died of malnutrition and disease, including Mamo’s aunt, uncle and three nephews.

“We had faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, that despite the suffering, He was with us,” Mamo said through an interpreter in his native Amharic at his apartment in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon.

As he walked through the desert, Mamo said, he “thought about the Israel of my dreams. All would be bright and wonderful. Even at night there would be sunshine, after we gathered in from the exile.”

Unemployment High

Five years since the exodus, almost 30% of Ethiopians still live in dormitory-style government housing centers. The National Council for Ethiopian Jews says unemployment among the Ethiopian immigrants above age 35 is about 45%.

Mamo, 54, lives in a small government-supplied apartment with his wife and four of his children. He has no job, partly because he acquired a blood disease from drinking polluted water on the trek to Sudan and cannot do heavy work.

The apartment complex where he lives is filled with almost 2,000 Ethiopian immigrants and is disparagingly called the “Ethiopian Ghetto” by unsympathetic neighbors.

Children Adapt Quickly

Israeli officials say they are making progress in settling the new immigrants. The children have proved able to quickly adapt to the new culture, with more than 400 Ethiopians enrolled in Israeli universities and many others serving in elite army units.

But officials concede that the newest immigrants had more difficulties than any of the Jewish communities that came from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa as part of the in-gathering that began after the creation of Israel as a nation in 1948.

“Most new immigrants spoke French or English and they had some skills,” said Uri Gordon, director of immigration and absorption in the Jewish Agency. “With the Ethiopians, we had to start anew.”

Intensive Hebrew Classes

He said Ethiopian immigrants are given intensive Hebrew classes and provided social workers to help them acclimate.

The three-month “Operation Moses” airlift in 1984 brought more than 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, joining others who managed to flee earlier.

The new Ethiopian immigrants, many villagers who spoke only Amharic, found themselves shunted aside in a society known for its chutzpah, a Hebrew word meaning audacious to the point of rudeness.

“We left our culture and came here where they don’t speak our language or follow our customs, and now we find ourselves in poor jobs and gaining little respect,” said Mesfin Ambau, director of the Jerusalem-based Organization of Ethiopian Immigrants. “There is a lot of pain inside.”

The Ethiopians’ first confrontation in Israel was with the nation’s powerful rabbinate, which ruled that the community, after 2,000 years of isolation from world Jewry, had deviated in its religious practice and needed to undergo symbolic conversions.

‘Nothing Hurt Us More’

“Nothing hurt us more than that,” said Ziv Sahelev, 20, an Ethiopian immigrant who lives in a government absorption center.

The Ethiopians refused any type of conversions, and the rabbinate was forced to seek a compromise that quieted the dispute.

Like more than a third of the Ethiopian community, Sahalev left behind close relatives, in his case his father and three sisters, on the expectation that he would return and bring them to the Promised Land.

But Ethiopia’s Marxist government, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has close relations with radical Arab states, halted the airlift shortly after it was disclosed, and 15,000 Jews remain stranded in Ethiopia.

High Suicide Rate

Rahamim Elazar, director of the National Council for Ethiopian Jews, said Ethiopian youngsters, many separated from their parents, have a suicide rate five times higher than other Israeli teen-agers.

“There are so many who were left behind, and the children feel terribly guilty,” he said.

Sahalev said that since he came to Israel, he has given up hope of returning to Ethiopia to bring out the rest of his family.

“I write to them every week, and after a month or two I get an answer,” he said.

Another problem for the Ethiopians is that they are virtually the only blacks in Israel.

Butt of Jokes

“Sometimes people joke with me and point at me and start saying, ‘Look, he’s black,”’ Sahalev said. “It makes me feel very uncomfortable.”

In Kiryat Chaim, a residential area of small cottages near Haifa in northern Israel, neighbors rose up in protest when the Jewish Agency moved four large Ethiopian families into the area’s only apartment complex in January.

“It’s a quiet area, and people came to me and complained that the Ethiopian children made noise at night, they didn’t throw their garbage away,” said Giora Fischer, district head of Kiryat Chaim.

“In informal ways, they also made it clear to me that they felt their property values were declining.”