Free Republic

Last Wednesday, two jetliners flew 450 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. They were the last to arrive under an official program designed to bring to Israel all remaining Ethiopian Jews who are eligible for citizenship. At the Tel Aviv airport just before the planes landed, everyone seemed excited. Relatives of people arriving from Ethiopia cheered when the plane doors opened. Achenef Chekole arrived with his wife, two sons and two daughters. Family and friends who had already immigrated to Israel greeted them with hugs. Israel has a whole government department in charge of absorbing immigrants. Its minister, Sofa Landver, welcomed the...

JERUSALEM, January 31, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) - After a series of back and forth accusations and denials among government agencies, the Israeli Health Ministry has for the first time acknowledged that it has been injecting Ethiopian immigrants who are religiously Jewish with the dangerous contraceptive Depo-Provera without their consent. The allegation that the women were coerced into accepting the shot was denied at first by both the Joint Distribution Committee, which runs the clinics at the transit camps, and by the Health Ministry. The practice has been said to be going on for years. Ethiopian Jews accounted for 57 percent of...

Netzanet Fredeh is constantly required by her surroundings to bear the title "an Israeli of Ethiopian origin." But she bears this title with pride. As commander of the Immigration and Integration Branch of the Israel Defense Forces' Education Corps, she works to advance the lot of Ethiopian soldiers - an advancement that she herself epitomizes. She recently returned from a trip to the United States with the chief of staff and other senior officers, on which she told her life story to a crowd of Jewish donors. She described her childhood in Ethiopia and the long journey she endured to...

Two US congressmen have written to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urging him to increase the rate of absorption of Ethiopians and criticizing the government for bringing only 300 each month. Despite Sharon's assurances in the summer of 2003 that the immigration was being accelerated, the letter said, "We have been distressed, however, to learn that the pace of immigration from Ethiopia has averaged only 300 each month in spite of the dire poverty faced by the Ethiopian Jewish community." The letter was sent on December 17 by New York Democrats Jerrold Nadler and Charles Rangel. Between 15,000 and 25,000 Falush...

MEVASERET ZION, Israel - Yeshambel Kassel Alazebech, an Ethiopian farmer, claims to be a descendant of Jews who converted to Christianity. Now after returning to Judaism, he has come to Israel to claim his birthright. In recent days, Cabinet ministers have voiced opposition to a government decision last year to lift immigration restrictions on the community of 20,000 Ethiopians, known as the Falash Mura, saying it would cost too much in Israel's weakened economy, battered by more than three years of fighting with the Palestinians. Also, veteran Ethiopian Jewish immigrants have cautioned the government against taking in their countrymen, contending...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Israel said Thursday it would start moving the last remaining Ethiopian Jews to Israel next week, completing the resettlement of a community that traces its roots to the bible's King Solomon and Queen of Sheba. But the Ethiopian government warned it would not permit the departures this time to take the form of the mass airlifts of the Ethiopian Jews, or Falasha Mura, staged by Israel during times of crisis in Ethiopia in 1984 and 1991. "We would like to bring all Falashas to Israel beginning next week. We believe they should live in Israel,"...