Ethiopian Israelis hold photos of their relatives still in Ethiopia during a protest against the Israeli governments decision to stop the immigration of Ethiopian Jews in Jerusalem. (The Associated Press)

GONDAR, Ethiopia – Sitting in a leaky, flyblown hut, a few dozen Ethiopian villagers are anxiously waiting to be transported to another world.

They have just been given word that their years of waiting are over, and that soon they will make a 2,000-mile journey by land and air with what is probably the last wave of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel.

In doing so, they join generations of Jews who have immigrated to the Promised Land. But they are flying into the teeth of a dilemma that touches the heart of Israel’s founding philosophy.

For people like 48-year-old Abe Damamo, his wife and eight children, wrenching change awaits.

Like most Ethiopians with Jewish roots, they have come from the Gondar region of northern Ethiopia. Their remote village uses donkeys for transportation and has no bathrooms. Damamo has no formal education and speaks no language but his own.

He is moving to an industrialized democracy where he will have to learn Hebrew, master a cell phone, commute to work and find his place in a nation of immigrants from dozens of countries ranging from Argentina to Yemen, Australia to the United States.

But to him, being Jewish is all that matters. “I am so happy to go and live my religion,” he says through a translator.

Not everyone at the Israeli end is happy, however.

In the initial stages of an immigration that began three decades ago, all the Ethiopians immigrating to Israel were recognized outright as Jews. But those now seeking to make the trip are the so-called Falash Mura, whose ancestors converted to Christianity, the main Ethiopian faith, at the end of the 19th century to escape discrimination.

Initially Israel balked at accepting their claim of Jewishness, but relented after American Jews led a campaign for the Falash Mura.

Some 40,000 moved to Israel, a country of 7 million, joining the 80,000 already there. But their presence has touched off a fierce debate in Israel over where to draw the line.

Ethiopians with any hope, however faint, of eligibility for Israeli citizenship have descended on camps in the city of Gondar, scrambling to prove their Jewishness. Men in prayer shawls sway back and forth in makeshift synagogues and children in skullcaps sit on mud floors learning the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish holidays.

But centuries of intermarriage and a lack of documentation have made it extremely difficult to prove who is a Jew, and the group awaiting their flight to Israel last month were supposed to be among the last, because the Israeli government has decided that the influx must stop.

Those lucky enough to meet the criteria for immigration will have to undergo conversion to Orthodox Judaism after arriving in Israel.

Sixty-six-year-old Tegabie Jember Zegeye’s application was rejected long ago, his links to Judaism deemed too remote. But he has been living with his wife and five children in a Gondar camp for 10 years. He wears a skullcap and attends daily prayers and religion classes.

“When I left my village I didn’t think I would be here for 10 days,” he says, adding that he has close relatives in Israel who he feels are a part of him. “How can you split a man into two halves?”

He says he feels Jewish at heart. But when asked about his previous lifestyle, he replies: “I lived like a Christian, like all the Jews.”

Besides cutting to the heart of the age-old debate over who is a Jew, the dispute between the Israeli government and the American Jewish activists who finance the Gondar camps raises uncomfortable questions about a central tenet of Israel’s founding philosophy.

Israel’s Law of Return guarantees citizenship for any Jew in need, and these days the country is especially concerned about boosting its Jewish population to compete with the Arabs. But the Ethiopians have proved the hardest immigrant group to absorb, and the Falash Mura, some critics feel, is pushing the limits.

Like every other immigrant group, Ethiopian-Israelis have made their mark on the human mosaic of Jewish nationhood giving it top-notch soldiers, funky musicians, world-class athletes and two members of parliament. They also have a powerful backer, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party in the ruling coalition, which capitalizes on the Ethiopian vote.

But as a whole they are poor, plagued by crime, violence and substance abuse, feeling shut out of a world very different from rural Africa.

The steep learning curve is evident even before they depart for Israel.

Those approved for immigration are taught what a fridge looks like, how to cook on a stovetop, how to flush a toilet. Nurses teach the women to use female hygiene products. The families are introduced to TVs, and are shown videos of life in their new world. They are warned to mind the “magic stairs” – the escalators – at the Addis Ababa airport.

Before leaving, they undergo extensive medical checkups at an Israeli Embassy compound in Addis Ababa, and their African surnames are replaced with Hebrew ones.

Ori Konforti, the Ethiopia representative of the Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental agency in charge of incoming Jews, calls the transformation a move from “a land where they live like they did in the Bible, to the actual land of the Bible.”

But despite all the preparations, most Ethiopian immigrants over age 35 go straight onto welfare after reaching Israel, according to the Jewish Agency.

That’s no reason for shutting out the Falash Mura, says Mazor Bahyna, an Ethiopian in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

“I think Israel has an obligation to prove that it is not a racist state,” he says. “If everyone was blond-haired and had blue eyes, they would bring them.”

The Israeli government, lacking a universally accepted definition of Jewishness, has long welcomed immigrants whose links to Judaism were questionable, many of them among the hundreds of thousands of people who came from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Ethiopian Jews, once popularly known as the Falasha, began arriving in Israel in the 1970s after a revered rabbi ruled that they were descended from the lost biblical tribe of Dan. Traveling by plane, at times clandestinely, or on foot in desert treks in which many died, their exodus held Israel in thrall.

In 1991, Israel flew out nearly 15,000 Jews as rebels charged into Addis Ababa to overthrow its communist regime.

But then the problems began.

As word of the 1991 operation spread, the Falash Mura also sought to leave. Suddenly Israel was confronted with the possibility of multitudes banging on its doors claiming to be Jewish and daring it to turn them away.

At first the Israeli government turned them down, but a coalition of American Jewish organizations took up their cause. They set up camps in Gondar, providing free schools, shelter and heath clinics – and most important, a ticket out of Ethiopia.

“There is a very strong feeling that a danger to a Jewish community should never be ignored again,” said Barbara Ribakove Gordon, director general of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, the main group advocating Falash Mura immigration. “As far as I’m concerned, they are Jews … they are as much Jews as any other Jew from Ethiopia or New York.”

For the Ethiopians at the center of the controversy, Zionist ideology is secondary to what they see as their most pressing need: reunification with family already in Israel.

Sitotaw Tamir, a 30-year-old father of two, has a gold Star of David dangling from his neck while his wife, like many Ethiopian Christians, has a cross tattooed on her forehead.

Interviewed two days before his departure for Israel, Tamir said he has three sisters and a brother left in Gondar, and “will not feel right” if they don’t join him in Israel.

That’s precisely what Israel fears. “There is no end to reunification,” said the Jewish Agency’s Konforti.

Israel has struggled for years to figure out which Ethiopians should be allowed in. Each time it has attempted to end the immigration by emptying the Gondar camps and airlifting their inhabitants to Israel, thousands more have flooded into the camps, scrambling to prove their Jewishness.

The argument now seems to have come down to numbers: Israel says the last of the Falasha Mura who qualify for immigration arrived in Israel earlier this month, while the American groups say some 8,700 have been left behind.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has upheld the Israeli list, effectively marking an end to the historic chapter.

(Sudan Tribune) KHARTOUM — Sudanese and Kenyan foreign ministers are expected in Asmara within two days for talks with the Eritrean president in abide to convince him to return to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Increasingly disillusioned with the eastern African organisation, Eritrea suspended its IGAD membership in April 2007 in protest to member states refusal to condemn and take actions against Ethiopia for sending troops to Somalia.

Asmara also was opposed to IGAD endorsement of a plan to allow foreign peacekeepers into war-torn Somalia to bring stability there.

Deng Alor and his Kenyan counterpart Moses Wetang’ula will fly on Thursday to discuss with President Isaias Afewerki ways to rejoin the regional body as it was decided in a summit of the IGAD head of states last June in Addis Ababa.

The Eritrean president had accepted to discuss the issue with the delegation, Khartoum announced today. The Sudanese ambassador in Asmara, Salah Mohamed el-Hassan today said this move is aimed to convince Eritrea to lift the suspension of its membership and participate in the next IGAD summit n in Sudan.

Eritrea was one of seven member countries of IGAD, a group created in 1996 from an earlier organization that focused on drought and development. The Member countries of the Djibouti-based organisation include: Kenya; Ethiopia; Djibouti; Uganda; Sudan; and Somalia.

Eritrea also disappointed by a plan adopted by the organisation to mediate a border dispute with its archenemy Ethiopia. Asmara considers that boundary commission had already demarcated the border and its decision is binding to Addis Ababa whereas Ethiopia says there should be more discussion on the issue.

Among IGAD’s most high-profile accomplishments is the holding of Naivasha peace talks in Kenya between northern and southern Sudan that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord, ending more than two decades of civil war in Sudan.

IGAD also facilitated the Somali peace talks in Kenya that resulted in the formation of Somalia’s current transitional federal government, and is endorsing an African-Union peacekeeping operation in Somalia.

EDITOR’S NOTE: He is done. That’s it. He better go back to his London home and hide.

(Press TV) — Somalia’s president rejects an offer by Ethiopia Woyanne to mediate between him and the prime minister, saying he will take the case to the parliament.

The rift between President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein has widened after Hussein sacked Mogadishu mayor Mohamed Dheere, Press TV correspondent reports from Mogadishu.

Dheere was sacked over financial mismanagement and his inability to end the worsening security situation in the capital.

Talking at a press conference inside his palace in Mogadishu after meeting Ethiopian Woyanne officials, the president said that he has rejected the mediation offered by the Ethiopians Woyanne and that he will take the case to the parliament for judgment.

He added that as president he has full authority vested to him to ask the parliament to dismiss Dheere.

Meanwhile, heavy clashes broke out again near Baidoa, 250 kilometers southeast of Mogadishu, between the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) forces and the Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers.

Ethiopian Woyanne troops were in the Yakhbari Weyne town area to protect the rest of those comrades who had survived fighting among a group of 39 soliders.

Violence in Somalia has already claimed the lives of more than 8,000 civilians and driven one million people from their homes since January 2007.

By Francis A. Clifford Cardozo

(Arab Times) — KUWAIT CITY : Starting Aug 11, the Kuwaiti authorities stopped issuing all types of visas to Ethiopian nationals after three Ethiopian maids recently tested HIV positive, says Hashem Majed, the Managing Director of Al-Huqooq International Company. Majed told the Arab Times that the maids were newly recruited and expressed surprise as to how the three maids had cleared the medical tests in their home country. He went on to add that the Kuwait government should not mete out ‘collective punishment’ to all Ethiopians, instead the Kuwait embassy in Ethiopia should get to the bottom of the matter, even as he called on the embassy to check the antecedents of the medical centers in Ethiopia, which cleared the three maids.

Majed noted that the three infected workers have been deported from the country. Sources said that the two of the three maids were housed at the Khaitan Shelter before they were deported. ‘The Kuwaiti embassy should conduct a thorough investigation to ascertain whether any ill-practices were involved in the matter. I believe the ban is temporary in nature,’ he added. Al-Huqooq International Company has been offering legal assistance to distressed workers and has helped in repatriating thousands of stranded workers of various nationalities. Until a few days ago, about 1,000 Ethiopian maids were being recruited on a monthly basis and the ban is likely to create a serious vacuum in the domestic sector, especially after Sri Lanka decided to cut the number of maids to the Middle East over alleged mistreatment, he added.

‘In the run-up to Ramadan, the demand for domestic helpers sees a rise. The government should now make alternate arrangements to overcome the shortage of workers,’ he added. According to Majed, there are some 14,000 Ethiopians in Kuwait, many of whom work in the domestic sector. He added that the recruitment fee for an Ethiopian maid is around KD 380 and the fee is lower compared to Filipino and Indonesia maids whose recruitment fees come to over KD 500 each. He added that the demand for Nepali maids is expected to increase as the recruitment fee (KD 320) is the lowest.

(Middle East Online) TRIPOLI – State-run Libya Oil Holding on Tuesday announced it had bought subsidiaries of Shell in Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

Company president Ali Shamekh said the deal with the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell concerns a total of 240 petrol stations in the three countries. He did not give the value of the deal.

Libya Oil Holding has also struck an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government to build a 140 kilometre (87 mile) pipeline on the Atlantic coast, Shamekh said.

The 300-million-dollar pipeline is due to link the Muanda and Matadi regions in the extreme west of the DRC.

Libya Holding Oil, which runs more than 1,000 petrol stations across Africa, has invested massively in the continent in the past year, also buying subsidiaries of Exxon Mobile in Tunisia and Morocco.

NAIROBI (IRIN) — Drought and recent fighting around the town of Beletweyne, in central Somalia’s Hiiraan region, have aggravated the plight of at least 1,000 Ethiopian refugee families, who were already facing acute food shortages, local sources told IRIN.

Most of these refugees, living in camps for the displaced in Bilis-did and Bulo-korah (on the outskirts of Beletweyne), are Somalis from Ogaden in Ethiopia’s Somali region. They fled in 1977 during the war between Ethiopia and Somalia.

“Most of us fled from Kumisar, Afdub, Rebo, Omar Don and Dhur-dher locations in Kalafe district of the Somali region of Ethiopia,” Kamis Abdi Day, an elder of the two camps, told IRIN. “We were farming communities; some of us fled during the war while others arrived following the drought that hit the region.”

The refugees are also known as the Rer Shabelle, meaning families who live alongside River Shabelle. Before the latest fighting in Beletweyne, they survived by doing manual work in the town and in farms surrounding the camps.

“It seems the international community forgot us when Siad Barre was overthrown,” Day said.

With the recent fighting, Day said, most of the displaced were unable to earn their keep as markets were closed and movement impeded.

“We are now facing starvation and malnutrition,” he said.

Day said the group used to receive international aid during the Barre administration; he was ousted in 1991.

“Things changed with Barre’s removal from office; since then, we have not gotten much help; only ACPO [a local NGO] has supplied us with some food. We could not flee the latest hostility [in Beletweyne] because we are poor people and we don’t know where to go.”

A journalist based in Beletweyne, who requested anonymity, said the refugee situation was deteriorating.

“They have not had much to eat since fighting [between insurgents and [Ethiopian Woyanne-backed] government forces] erupted in the region,” the journalist said.

Despite the presence of local partners of UN agencies, the Ethiopian refugees in Bilis-did and Bulo-korah camps were not receiving any aid, the journalist said.

The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR-Somalia, confirmed that the groups were considered “persons of concern”, although they were not receiving specific assistance from UN relief agencies as refugees, aside from general assistance programmes for vulnerable communities in the area.