By Bizualem Beza
Since time immemorial, Ethiopians had not been given a single chance of electing their governents. Given the long history of the nation as a cradle of civilization and the origin of mankind, it could have been exemplified as a symbol of democracy not only in Africa but also through out the world. However, even today, as the current reality shows on the ground, those who rule the nation by force are unable to learn about Democracy from others. As of today, Ethiopia is a long long way from establishing the rudimentary elements of democratic governance. As it had been the case in the remote and near past, monarchical power transition, and in recent times and nowadays, military dictatorship were/are a common practice to seize power. I believe this common practice must be changed and other alternatives should find thier way.
I believe now is the right time for all peace loving Ethiopians to declare a new era of democracy in the upcoming millennium whereby:
*The forces of peace will prevail over the forces of tyranny/evil/
*Unwavering committment for replacing TPLF’s tyrannical rule by the people’s will
*Democracy and the rule of law will prevail over anarchy.
*Hope and Development will prevail over despair
*Equality will prevail over partiality
*Accountability will prevail over impunity
*Tolerance will prevail over arrogance
*Peacefull solution in settling disagreements will prevail over the use of lethal means
*Peace and love will prevail over hatred among the different nations and nationalities
*Unity will prevail over disunity
*Compassion will prevail over animosity
*Belongingness will prevail over division
*committment for building a democratic society will prevail over hesitation and self-interest
*committment for fighting poverty,disease and illiteracy.
*Long term vision will prevail over short sighted one.
*Trust will prevail over mistrust
*Modern way of thinking will prevail over backward looking
For these to happen, the lasting and the best medicine lies within the people itself.
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – While other Israeli spies spent the early 1980s stalking Arab foes through Europe, Gad Shimron was deep in Africa on a secret mission to save lives.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews had fled the Eritrean conflict to neighboring Sudan, only to be stranded in teeming camps. Shimron, then a young Mossad operative, was sent to the Muslim state to find a way of spiriting the refugees away to Israel.
The resulting mission, codenamed Brothers, became a modern Zionist legend. For Shimron, it was a high-wire mix of the humanitarian and the hazardous about which, a generation on, he has written a book with rare acquiescence from Israel’s censors.
“The feeling is that Sudan was one of our finest hours, the enlistment of an entire defense establishment for a truly altruistic purpose,” Shimron, now 57, told Reuters in an interview promoting the English edition of “Mossad Exodus.”
“We’re the only Westernized country to have brought out Africans in order to liberate, rather than enslave them.”
Other groups of Africans have been invited to leave their countries in emergencies, but this migration aimed to resettle the Ethiopian Jews in their ancestral homeland.
Tens of thousands moved to Israel in Brothers and other, less clandestine operations. Their community in Israel now numbers 100,000, its integration at times hampered by state bureaucracy and allegations of racist discrimination.
But when Shimron and a small Mossad team flew to Khartoum in 1981, posing as entrepreneurs from a Swiss travel firm, they had the blessing of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin — himself a Polish refugee from the Nazi Holocaust.
The Mossad had bought a defunct resort up the coast from Port Sudan, which Shimron and his comrades renovated and staffed with locals. It was a front, yet proved to be surprisingly successful, drawing foreign scuba divers and sport fishermen.
“Most Mossad operations lose money, but we found ourselves making a small profit. We had to come up with all sorts of excuses to get away for our real work — parties in Khartoum, stocking up on provisions, that sort of thing,” Shimron said.
From 1982 to 1984 the Israelis, receiving radio instructions from Tel Aviv, shuttled between the resort and inland areas where they had located 8,000 Ethiopian Jews.
Traveling by night over potholed roads 440 km (260 miles) long, ever conscious of the fact that they were in a country deeply hostile to the Jewish state, the Mossad men took hundreds of refugees to a beach rendezvous where they were collected by Israeli naval commandos and ferried to their new national home.
TRUST
“I still remember how they looked in the back of those trucks — emaciated, dressed in rags, the old and the infants among them clinging to others for support. But they gazed at us with complete trust and they never complained,” Shimron said.
There were many problems. Shimron’s partner was arrested by Sudanese security forces, escaping from their compound through a window. On another occasion, one of Shimron’s trucks — empty at the time — was pulled over by police. Shimron discovered to his dismay that the truck’s previous user had run a checkpoint.
“Luckily, the cop in question had a very macho imagination, and claimed to have shot up the truck when it refused to stop. I pointed out the lack of bullet holes in the vehicle and he had to let me go,” Shimron said.
Such mishaps, and the halting pace of the sea evacuations, persuaded Israel to try something more dramatic. Top Khartoum officials were bribed to look the other way as Israeli cargo planes flew to desert bases, picking up the remaining refugees.
Israel was later to bring in another 22,000 Ethiopian Jews in airlifts known as Operation Moses and Operation Solomon.
Assimilating the new arrivals from Africa has not been without setbacks. Some complained of being abandoned to a life on the poor fringe of Israeli society. The discovery of a Health Ministry policy of dumping blood donated by Ethiopian immigrants — for fear of contamination, officials said — sparked riots.
Yet thousands of Ethiopians, many hard put to prove their Jewish descent under the stringent standards set by the Orthodox rabbinate, still await permission to move to Israel. Israeli authorities say that by the end of 2008, all those who are eligible will have made the move.
“The Ethiopians I have stayed in touch with have no regrets about ‘coming to Zion’, despite the difficulties,” Shimron said.
By JANET KELLEY and CINDY STAUFFER
Lancaster New Era
Lancaster, Pa – The plan was to pick a house, push the homeowner inside and help themselves to the “merchandise” inside, 16-year-old Emru Kebede (a native of Ethiopia) testified this morning.
On the night of May 2, when they approached Ray Diener’s home in West Donegal Township, Kebede said, they knocked and asked Diener if they could borrow his phone.
Their car had broken down, they told him.
When Diener agreed, handing his phone to Lorenzo Schrijver, Kebede recalled, Abraham Sanchez Jr. “rushes up and points the gun in the face of the man and says, ‘Don’t move! Don’t move!'”
The homeowner started to argue and struggle, Kebede recalled, telling the Sanchez, “‘Come on, don’t do this.”‘
The gun went off. Kebede said he and Robert Baker ran.
“I looked back and heard Lorenzo say, ‘Shoot him again! Shoot him again!’ I heard two more shots,” Kebede said. “…. I heard a woman scream.”
As the four got in the car and drove away, Kebede testified, “Lorenzo said, ‘At least we got his cell phone.”‘
Diener, 65, described as a well-liked and well-respected person, lay dead on the doorstep of his own home, with his wife, Barbara, hovering over him, screaming for help.
The testimony was heard this morning in a preliminary hearing before District Judge Jayne Duncan for the young men charged with criminal homicide, robbery and criminal conspiracy.
When the testimony concluded, all four were ordered to stand trial.
Kebede, of 715 Pink Alley, Mount Joy, who has been charged as an adult, testified this morning against the others: Sanchez, 18, and Schrijver, 21 both of Mount Gretna Road, Elizabethtown, and Baker, 20, of 337 Cedar Lane, Mount Joy.
All four are being held in Lancaster County Prison without bail.
At first, Kebede told Sanchez’s attorney, Anthony E. Stefanski of Philadelphia, he gave police a different version of the events, because he was scared.
But then, Kebede said he told police the truth because his attorney, Chris Patterson, told him police wanted him to cooperate.
Baker is represented by defense attorney Doug Conrad and Schrijver is represented by defense attorney Chris Lyden.
Assistant District Attorney K. Kenneth Brown prompted Kebede this morning with questions about the sequence of events that night.
Kebede testified in a quiet, flat voice, describing how the foursome had met up around 8 p.m. on May 2.
Sanchez and Schrijver had picked him up in their car, Kedebe said, asking him if he “wanted to get into something…. I took that to mean breaking and entering.”
Prosecutors said the group would commit crimes to get money to buy drugs.
Kebede said he agreed and, after stopping to get something to eat, they went to Baker’s house, found gloves and pulled a box of bullets out from under his bed, before heading out to drive around and find a victim.
They first looked at another house, Kebede said, but Sanchez decided against it because there appeared to be children inside.
When they drove along the 1000 block of West Ridge Road, around 10:45 p.m., they saw only one man, Diener, and decided his house would be the target.
After the shooting, Kebede said, they drove out into the country, stopping at one point so they could bury the gun.
Some of Diener’s family members sat in the front row of the spectator section this morning, crying and holding hands as they listened to the graphic testimony.
Northwest Regional Police Officer Harry Cleland also testified this morning about receiving the initial call to the home.
When he pulled up to the house, Cleland said, he saw “a person laying on the ground, face-down, with another person hovering over him, crying, ‘Help me! Help me! Please, help me!'”
Cleland said he rolled the man over and saw the bullet wound in his chest and thigh, and believed he was already dead.
Earlier that evening, Diener had gone to watch a Conestoga Valley High School baseball game. On the way home, he had stopped to close up his business, Crystal Pure Water, at 1644 S. Market St., Elizabethtown.
His wife, Barbara, later told police she was asleep when her husband came home, but was awakened by yelling.
She ran to the front door, pulled it open and found her husband slumped on the front doorstep.
She heard a voice say, “There’s the wife.”
Looking up, she saw two men standing 10 to 20 feet away.
She got only a quick glimpse of them before she slammed the door and ran to call for help.
For weeks police struggled to find who had done it and why such a well-liked, well-respected man had been shot.
Rewards were posted by the Diener family and friends, as well as the local Lancaster County Crime Stoppers.
Finally, after three weeks, a tip to the Crime Stoppers led police to the four young men.
Diener had been a star pitcher while a student at Elizabethtown College and went on to play professional baseball for three years.
When he and his wife returned to Lancaster County to work and raise their family, which included three children and five grandchildren, his attention turned to other matters.
In addition to his business and work in their church, he enjoyed organizing his own sporting events with friends and family members.
Diener was involved in various charity work, including the Water for the World program at Messiah College and Habitat for Humanity
By JULIUS A. KARASH
The Kansas City Star
Downtown health care is slated to get a boost come October.
That’s when Research Medical Center plans to open a new doctors’ office in the 10 Main Center building at 920 Main St.
The new practice will be called “Downtown Physicians: A Service of Research Medical Center.”
“Just like grocery stores and clothing shops, a doctor’s office lends a sense of community to a place,” Mayor Mark Funkhouser said in a release.
“I’m grateful to Research Medical Center for its plans to locate this practice downtown and the role that might play in helping to rebuild the fabric of the neighborhood.”
The practice will operate at least from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday initially. Plans are being made for early morning, late afternoon and Saturday hours, with more specifics to be announced later. Patients will be able to make same-day appointments or be seen without an appointment.
The practice will be staffed by physicians Girma Assefa and Melvin McFarlin.
Dr Girma Assefa earned his medical degree from Jimma University in Jimma, Ethiopia, and McFarlin received his medical degree from the Finch University of Health Sciences in Chicago. Both completed their residencies with the Research Family Medicine Residency program.
“Downtown Physicians will be a great benefit to the people who live and work there,” Kevin Hicks, president and chief executive of Research Medical Center, said in a statement.
Research Medical Center, located at 2316 E. Meyer Blvd., is part of HCA Midwest.
For more information
Call 816-737-1037 or go to www.downtownphysicians .ehcmd.com.
To reach Julius A. Karash, call 816-234-4918 or send e-mail to [email protected].
