Israel Debates Ethiopia Airlift for Former Jews

Having concluded what officials here called the largest airlift operation since the U.S. evacuation of Saigon, Israeli officials on Monday began debating a second operation to rescue thousands of Ethiopians trapped in Addis Ababa who gave up their Jewish faith and converted to Christianity.

Leaders of the nearly 35,000 Ethiopian Jews now in Israel are pushing Israeli authorities to launch a second airlift for at least 3,000 former Jews waiting in Addis Ababa and perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 others scattered throughout the country.

An additional 2,000 Jews who have not converted are still trapped in Ethiopia in rebel-controlled territory, and Ethiopian rebel leaders have given assurances that they will not be harmed. Israeli leaders have pledged to seek their removal to Israel.

A second rescue operation, following a massive weekend airlift that brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Tel Aviv in 33 hours, would be complicated by the fact that the airport at Addis Ababa is now closed.

Also, Israeli officials say Christian converts do not qualify for transfer to Israel under the nation’s law of return, which permits Jews from around the world to obtain Israeli citizenship. Waiving the provisions of the law could open a floodgate of immigration demands from Ethiopia and elsewhere in the world, the officials say.

However, some of the Ethiopians brought in on the weekend airlift carried stories of tearful Christian converts being prevented from boarding the planes. Leaders of the Ethiopian community here said many of the converts remaining in Addis Ababa have had relatives in Israel since an earlier airlift of Ethiopians in 1984.

“There are their children here who are serving in the army. There are children here who got married with Jews in Israel. Each one has families here in Israel. They’re our blood and flesh. You can’t say they can’t bring them here,” said Rahamin Elazar, an activist in Jerusalem’s Ethiopian community.

Most of the converts never began observing Christian practices but simply moved away from Jewish villages in the face of discrimination or potential reprisals, said Elazar, adding that Jews in Ethiopia were thought to have the buda, or “evil eye.”

“They are Jewish, and they did not go to believe in Christianity. Because of different reasons and circumstances, they preferred to pretend (to be) Christians and survive, rather than having problems,” he said.

Israel’s chief rabbi and its chief Sephardic rabbi have both urged allowing the converts to come to Israel so long as they undergo a ritual reconversion to Judaism upon their return.

“A Jew who sins is still a Jew, and therefore we must save them,” chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “. . . I would recommend bringing them to Israel and to individually check each case, and see how the person converted.”

But Yehuda Weinraub, spokesman for Israel’s Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental authority that handles Jewish immigration to Israel, said it is a matter of civil, not religious, law.

“The Law of Return says a person can come to Israel if he’s Jewish or the spouse of a Jew or the son, daughter or grandson of a Jew, and if the person has not converted,” Weinraub said. “This is not necessarily a religious law; this is a civil law passed by the Knesset, so the definitions may not necessarily conform with what religious law would say.”

Those Ethiopians excluded from the airlift were left out because either they did not appear on the extensive computer lists of Jews maintained by the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa or because spiritual leaders of the Jewish community in Ethiopia did not identify them as Jews, he said. “Unless the government makes a decision otherwise, they will remain.”

Most of the 2,500 to 3,000 converts living in Addis Ababa over the last year were known to Israeli authorities and received assistance not from the Israelis but from international aid organizations, he said.

In the last-minute rush to get the dramatic airlift under way, some exceptions were apparently made.

The military commander of the airlift, Maj. Gen. Amnon Shahak, said five converts were on the tarmac at Addis Ababa tearfully begging to be allowed to join the others. “I didn’t want the operation to end on such a tragic note, and so I gave the order to put them on the plane,” he said.

But Adna Almo, an Israeli resident since 1985 who was among a group of Ethiopians who demonstrated in front of the Knesset on behalf of the converts, said her parents were Christian converts she had been told were bound to join her in Israel.

“I looked for them in a number of places, but I was told that they were pulled off the plane,” she said. Her brother was one of the those finally allowed to board the plane through Shahak’s intervention.

Asher Naim, Israel’s ambassador to Ethiopia, told Israel Army Radio that the issue is a complicated one that will likely have to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to the 2,000 Jews believed trapped in northern villages behind rebel lines, there are a total of 110 Jews who missed the airlift and are living now on the embassy grounds in the Ethiopian capital, Naim said.

Leaders of Gush Emunim, advocates of a “greater Israel” that encompasses the occupied West Bank, and members of the West Bank Settlers Council are urging the government to allow the converts to immigrate.

The settlers group is also insisting that new Ethiopian immigrants be allowed to settle in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, if they desire. U.S. officials have sought commitment from Israeli authorities that new immigrants will not be settled in the territories, and Arab leaders have raised alarms about the airlift because of fears that the massive immigration could force new Jewish settlements in the occupied lands.

Government officials have made no commitments yet about how they will deal with the converts question. At a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said their status will be “checked” before any decisions are made, and Uri Lubrani, Shamir’s envoy to Ethiopia and the architect of the airlift, said there are “second thoughts” now about how to handle the converts.

“I believe it’s good that this will be considered,” he said, though he added that the number of people involved is likely to reach “many tens of thousands.”

An estimated 20,000 Ethiopian Jews were in Israel before the airlift, dubbed “Operation Solomon,” which brought in an additional 14,087, two-thirds of them under the age of 18.

At 40 crowded absorption centers in hotels, guest houses and mobile-home parks throughout the country, Israeli officials were beginning the process of registering the immigrants as Israeli citizens and enrolling them in Hebrew-language classes. A special, extended Israel broadcast in the Ethiopians’ native language, Amheric, devoted two hours a night to reading the names of the newcomers to facilitate family reunions.

More than 1,000 Israelis over the weekend visited the largest absorption center at a hotel on the outskirts of the Jerusalem, dropping off an estimated 6 tons of clothing and shoes and, at some points, dancing in celebration in the hotel lobby. Families, in some cases separated for several years, held tearful reunions.

Throughout the country there was an air of festivity and congratulations about an operation described by Israeli officials as the largest, quickest evacuation since the American airlift from Saigon in 1975.

“The lesson . . . to be learned from the operation that the entire world should remember (is) that Jews remain Jews, even after years of being cut off, and the state of Israel, their homeland, will not abandon Jews in despair wherever they may be,” the newspaper Maariv said in an editorial.