By Uriel Heilman
Israeli government representatives returned to Ethiopia to assess the eligibility for aliyah of approximately 3,000 Ethiopians who may be entitled to immigrate but had never filed petitions. Advocates had pressed Israel to expand its assessment to a much larger group of Ethiopians—8,700 people in all—but Israel had demurred.
Now, however, a campaign by advocates that stresses the health risks facing the 8,700 Ethiopians, along with the support of Israel’s interior minister, Eliyahu Yishai, may throw open the aliyah gates for all of them.
If that happens, mass Ethiopian immigration to Israel likely would continue through 2017, at a rate of 100 immigrants per month, officials say.
The group at issue is comprised of so-called Falash Mura—Ethiopians who claim links to descendants of Jews who converted to Christianity generations ago, but who now seek to return to Judaism and immigrate to Israel.
A major sign of change came last month when Yishai, who became interior minister when Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office six months ago, sent a letter to a U.S. Jewish aid group saying there were “steps in place” to consider the aliyah eligibility of 5,700 Ethiopians in addition to the 3,000 the ministry already was checking.
The letter, sent to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, urged the JDC to reopen its medical clinic in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar, where the 8,700 people live. The JDC had shuttered the clinic in July after those the Israeli government deemed eligible for aliyah had moved to Israel.
At the same time, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, or NACOEJ, an aid organization and the main advocacy group for Ethiopian aliyah, stepped up efforts portraying the 8,700 aliyah hopefuls in Gondar as at grave medical risk.
NACOEJ took a prominent Israeli physician to Ethiopia to assess the medical condition of the Gondar community, whose members NACOEJ considers Jewish but whose Jewish links remain unverified by Israel. While the assessment did not include any physical exams, the physician, Dr. Arthur Eidelman, told JTA he saw “clear signs of malnutrition in children, particularly under age 6.”
Eidelman, formerly the chief of pediatrics at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, produced a report calling for the reopening of the JDC clinic.
Once the JDC, which says it takes its cues from the Israeli government on Falash Mura-related issues, received Yishai’s letter, it began taking steps to reopen the medical clinic in Gondar, JDC officials said. Now the organization says it needs $250,000 to operate the clinic.
In the meantime, NACOEJ says children are dying of malnutrition.
“Many children in the Jewish community of Gondar, Ethiopia have already become ill or died from hunger this year,” said a fund-raising e-mail NACOEJ sent to its mailing list in mid-September, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
The group has sent similar e-mails throughout the past decade, even when the JDC clinic in Gondar was open. During that time, JDC officials maintained that accounts of children dying of malnutrition were untrue or unverified.
But with the shuttering of JDC’s clinic and the decline in food aid at NACOEJ-sponsored aid centers in Gondar—due to budget cuts from federation sponsors in North America, NACOEJ officials say—the health of the Gondar population has grown more precarious, according to NACOEJ.
The group’s director of operations, Orlee Guttman, told JTA that several children from the community had died in the last year from hunger, malaria and tuberculosis.
NACOEJ does not conduct medical assessments or perform autopsies; Guttman said it relies on parents to determine cause of death.
In response to JTA’s inquiries, NACOEJ disclosed the names of five toddlers it said had died over the past year. Four died of malaria and one, 2-year-old Benyam Derebie Abere, had “hunger” listed as cause of death, according to the organization.
There appears to be little dispute that reopening the JDC clinic in Gondar for the 8,700 aliyah hopefuls would improve their ability to receive considerably better health care. What is in dispute is who they really are and whether they truly are linked to Ethiopian Jews.
Many Israelis believe they are mostly Christian Ethiopians deceptively claiming Jewish links and adopting Jewish observances in a bid to escape Africa’s desperate poverty for the relative comfort of the Jewish state.
“We are creating a hell of a job for ourselves because of political correctness or trying to be nice,” Israel’s previous interior minister, Meir Sheetrit, told The Jerusalem Post in a 2007 interview about the 8,700.
Advocates say the people in Gondar are Jews who have been left behind by Israel.
Ethiopian immigration long has vexed successive Israeli governments. On several occasions, Israel has committed to bringing in a finite number of immigrants that they believed constituted all the remaining Ethiopians eligible for aliyah, only to be told once the number had been reached that thousands more had been left behind.
Israel completed the most recent phase of mass Ethiopian aliyah in the summer of 2008, when the last of some 16,095 immigrants arrived under a 2003 decision by Ariel Sharon’s government to bring those eligible from a 1999 Israeli census of possible Ethiopian olim.
But in September 2008, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked the Interior Ministry to return to Ethiopia to check the eligibility for aliyah of those from the 1999 census who had never filed petitions—a group said to comprise approximately 3,000 people. The Interior Ministry representatives left for Ethiopia this summer and are still there.
Due to the difficulty of proving Jewish lineage among the Falash Mura, those who wish to make aliyah must meet several conditions: They or their spouse must demonstrate Jewish maternal links at some point in their provenance; they must have had a relative in Israel file a petition on their behalf by July 31, 2009; they must be listed on the 1999 census; and they must be among the group in Gondar.
Designed to limit the number of Ethiopians who qualify, the conditions also are more relaxed than those that apply to would-be immigrants from elsewhere in the world, such as the United States or the former Soviet Union. While Americans or Russians would be disqualified for aliyah for being less than “one-quarter” Jewish or if their only Jewish grandparent converted out of the faith, Ethiopians are not disqualified for ancestral conversion to Christianity—as long as they can demonstrate maternal links to a Jew.
Ultimately, the battle over these 5,700 additional people—an Interior Ministry list puts the total number, with the 3,000, at approximately 9,300—is part of a debate that has raged in Israel and among American Jews since the beginning of the aliyah of the Falash Mura over where to draw the line.
The line has changed with nearly every Israeli government. Where, exactly, it is drawn under Benjamin Netanyahu remains to be seen. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
By Aie Zu Guo
In 1984 Brian Stewart of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported Ethiopia’s worst famine of the 20th century putting the blame squarely on the communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Canadian taxpayers took his report at face value. On the contrary he praised the Tigrian People Liberation Front (TPLF) guerrillas of Meles Zenawi for distributing food aid to famine victims. Unfortunately, he never reported to us that TPLF was a Marxist-Leninist group identical to Enver Hoxha of Albania. Then one wonders about Brian’s motive of hiding the true faces of the TPLF. For those who are familiar with Ethiopian politics, then and now, two reasons remain outstanding. First is to discredit the military cum communist government of Ethiopia. Secondly is to help TPLF assume power in Addis Ababa.
In 1991, seven years after the famine, the communist military regime came to its demise. Another communist group called TPLF assumed state power. For Brian mission is accomplished. Soon he became the most favored journalist of Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. His reports are often skewed to appeasing a dictatorial regime in Africa. The journalist’s regular mantras are that Ethiopia’s social, economic and political situation improved under Meles. Since his retirement in early 2009, many Ethiopians assumed that they are free from his claptrap cyber information about their country. Unfortunately, he comes out from his retirement cell in Toronto and feeds the Canadian public and the international community with news about Ethiopia’s rulers and on the famine looming over Ethiopia.
Instead of It is time to stop gibberish reports on famine, we would request Brian tell Canadians on the state of human rights, democracy, and governance in Ethiopia. If he can’t, we have the temerity to tell this reporter about the true nature of the Government of Ethiopia (GoE), and the underlying causes of famine in Ethiopia as follows.
Frequency of famine and its causes:
Under the TPLF rule of Meles, famine occurs every 3 years (in 1993, 1997, 2007, and 2009) against that of once every ten years during the military regime.
The causes of famine are both natural and man made. Ethiopia’s fully rain fed subsistence agriculture is dependent on the vagaries of nature for which even tyrants have no control. But with the right agriculture policy, this could be offset through the introduction of irrigation. If Ethiopia has gained economic and social transformation (as Brian prophecies), the GoE would have contained famine by transforming Ethiopia’s rain-fed agriculture to irrigated agriculture.
Disjointed priorities:
Monthly the GoE pays US$50,000 (US$ 600,000/year) to DLP Piper a US lobbying firm since the 2005 popular election that revealed the emptiness of the communist rule of TPLF. Over the past 5 years the regime has paid DLP US$3 million Dollars. At Birr 3500/Mt4, this money would buy 12,857 MTs of wheat from local markets.
In Ethiopia Agriculture is a crucial activity that contributes to more than 60% of exports, 46.3% of GDP, 80% of foreign exchange revenues, and a massive 80% of employment5. It is a sector dominated by the poor and who are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and famine. Unfortunately the GoE’s priorities are different from people’s immediate needs. TPLF uses donor money to buy guns instead of making butter. Meles invaded Somalia to spend $1 million a day to sustain the invasion all in the name of terrorism.
International Aid:
The Honourable Hugh Segal reported to The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade that bags of Canadian wheat are stored in a warehouse in the city of Mekele, Tigray province to serve TPLF HQs when food aid is needed to starving children in the southern regions of the country. This journalist must remain honest to his profession and the organization he works with and tell us the truth about the GoE.
Population doubled yes it has doubled. Brian need to understand that international (including Canadian) aid to Ethiopia has also doubled. The G8 countries including Russia and China right off Ethiopia’s debt almost one hundred percent. This should have given GoE the momentum to contain famine and invest on food self sufficiency programs.
Governance, democracy and good government:
Lack of good governance and lack of democracy hinder development and food self sufficiency. In today’s Ethiopia a one party dictatorship has been the norm for nearly two decades. Three federal elections were held and won by the incumbent regime with 99.9% vote since 1991. In the 2005 election, the TPLF gunned down at close range 193 peaceful and innocent demonstrators, jailed leaders of the opposition and sent 70,000 to concentration camps to the south of the country. The seasoned journalist did not utter a word to the Canadian public when such gross human tragedy takes place at the door steps of the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa. Yet still, Canada spends millions of Tax payers’ money for human rights, governance, democratization and rule of law. Is it not that ‘Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development7.’ In our view good governance is also one of the important factors of eliminating famine and hunger in Ethiopia and elsewhere for that matter.
The 4th federal election is scheduled for June 2010. Unlike the past, this election is won before people cast their votes. If Brain asks why, we have the audacity of telling him that public media is 100% controlled by TPLF. Private and independent media is paralyzed by draconian press law. Opposition leaders and supporters are harassed and imprisoned. For example Birtukan Midekas, a female opposition leader is imprisoned for life. Human rights are of abysmal failure. We advise Brian to refer to Amnesty International8 and State Department reports.
Let it be known that 4% of the 80 million people are ruling Ethiopia with a tyranny and impunity unparalleled in Ethiopia’s history. Ethiopians die of famine in thousands, but the most lethal one that kills the poor is bad government.
In developmental economic theory democracy, good governance, rule of law and respect of human rights are the fundamental pre-requisites of development, eradicating famine and poverty. These are also important ingredients of political, social and economic stability. Rightly so Pranab concludes that “if we take a suitably broad concept of development to incorporate general well-being of the population at large, including some basic civil and political freedoms, a democracy which ensures these freedoms is, almost by definition, more conducive to development on these counts than a non-democratic regime.”
Social Image:
True Ethiopians hate their nation’s image as perpetual victim of disasters. They are protective of their image and decency. There is high level cultural and traditional sensitivity to be called beggars. During the 1984 famine, mothers carrying their dieing toddlers waited for their cue to receive food ration with at most discipline. In many parts of the world such a situation would end in a stampede or riot. Ethiopians prefer to die of hunger than telling lies and get food rations. It is shocking to see those who are not hungry and wealthy enough to feed themselves continue feeding their audience with false information.
Since Brian and CBC are blinded by their self aggrandizement, Ethiopia appeared to them as a difficult problem for the world to fix. Fixing Meles and his Marxists tyrants is harder than fixing Ethiopia’s famine and underdevelopment. With the right leadership and governance in place, Ethiopia’s famine and poverty can be fixed without fanfare. For the moment the time to fix Ethiopia takes longer than necessary, because some media outlets like CBC are not telling their taxpayers the true causes of famine and underdevelopment in Ethiopia. So long as the truth and the only truth about the causes of famine are not told, Ethiopia’s problems continue to be hard to fix and Ethio-Canadians remain worried about Brian’s reports. In the midst of this worrisome reporting it is important for CBC to remember that of all the ills that kill the poor, none is as lethal as bad government.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
Ethiopia’s regime continues to monopolize telecom services including fixed, mobile, Internet and data communications. This monopolistic control has stifled innovation and retarded expansion.
The
Ethiopia has the second lowest telephone penetration rate in Africa, but it recently surpassed Egypt to become the second most populous nation on the continent after Nigeria. [This is done on purpose by the U.S.-backed regime to keep the people of Ethiopian in the dark age]. However, it is also one of the poorest countries in the world with approximately 80% of the population supporting themselves through subsistence agriculture, which accounts for more than half of the country’s GDP.
Despite the monopoly situation, subscriber growth in the mobile sector has been excellent at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 90% since its inception in 1999 and more than 100% in the past six years. However, demand has been even stronger, and ETC has been unable to satisfy it. Ethiopia’s mobile market penetration is still one of the lowest in the world at little more than 3%. Fixed-line penetration is even lower, and this has also impacted on the development of the Internet sector. Prices of broadband connections are excessive.
Improvements are beginning to develop following massive investments into fixed-wireless and mobile network infrastructure, including third generation mobile technology, as well as a national fibre optic backbone. Ethiopia is investing an unusually large amount, around 10% of its GDP, into information & communication technology (ICT). However, telecommunications revenue has grown only moderately in comparison, at around 16% per annum. It has remained under 2% of GDP, a low figure in regional comparison.
