Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (APA) Thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) still continue their demand to be repatriated to Israel-their promised land-to unite with their relatives already there.
There are still a good number of Falashas camping outside the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital waiting to hear if there is good news from the Israeli government about their fate of uniting with their families in Israel.
In August 2008, Israel announced that it has finalized its program of taking more Ethiopian Falashas from Ethiopia. However, there are still thousands of Falashas who continue to ask the Israeli government to unite them with their relatives in Israel.
Falashas means “outsider” in Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, which is also mainly spoken by the Falashas.
Bitew Mola, head of the Bete Israel Association told APA that there are still around 8,000 Ethiopian Falashas who are waiting to travel to Israel to unite with their relatives in Israel.
“As you know, our families and Ethiopian Falasha associations in Israel continue to ask the Israeli government to look again its decision to stop the resettlement of Falashas in Israel. We are Ethiopian Jews who have the right to travel to Israel,” said Mola, who himself is waiting to unite with his two sisters in Israel.
Zeleke Bihonegn, 26, also told APA that he is still waiting to unite with his father who travelled there some three years ago.
“My father was able to travel to Israel three years ago, but I am still unable to finalize my process and unite with him, which is a must. But the Israeli government is not treating us as they treat the American Jews,” said Bihonegn.
According to available information, Israel is home to more than 120,000 Jews of Ethiopian origin, who trace their roots to the biblical King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.
Many Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel in airlifts during the 1984 famine and the end of Ethiopia’s civil war in 1991, as well as during the past few years.
Many of the Falashas still left in Ethiopia are waiting for their final fate to unite with their relatives in Israel.
There are several of their elders who cannot read or write, but they still hope to go to live in Israel and die there.
Many Falashas in Israel are supporting their families financially and psychologically here in Ethiopia, with the hope of one day taking them to Israel.
The Falashas, who claim to have been converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, are eager to migrate to revive their Jewish roots in Israel, which the Falashas claim to be their “promised land”.
Some of the Falashas are here in Addis Ababa after travelling some 700 and 800 kilometres from Gondor in northern Ethiopia, which is the place the Falashas lived.
“We are living here in a camp and some in rented houses. There are elders aged 60 and 70 waiting to hear from us about their future,” said Mola.
According to information about the Falashas, Ethiopia’s “Falasha Mura” began to practice Judaism in the last decade after converting to Christianity in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
According to Israeli policy, Ethiopian Jews can immigrate to Israel if they have immediate relatives there.
However, getting genuine evidence from them is said to be a difficult job for the Israeli government, which is one of the reasons they had to halt the program in Ethiopia.
In 2007, Israel had criticised many Bete Israel (Home of Israel) local associations here in Ethiopia, and charities supporting the camps, saying they raised false hopes for thousands of Ethiopians — many of whom have no connection with the Falashas.
This is PART 2 of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day.
Like a lot of Americans, Barack Obama says his favorite movie is “The Godfather.” John McCain says his all-time favorite is “Viva Zapata!”, a little-remembered, highly romanticized 1952 Marlon Brando biopic. The hero of the movie is Emiliano Zapata, the leader of a (briefly) successful peasant revolt in Mexico in the early 1900s. McCain loves the idea of a budget-class, guerrilla-style war against the corrupt establishment. He never got over being nostalgic about his 2000 insurgency against George W. Bush and the Republican Party leaders who had settled on George H.W. Bush’s eldest son as heir apparent.
Though himself the scion of a kind of warrior royalty—his father and grandfather had been admirals, and his mother came from a wealthy family—McCain was leery of the overprivileged (and hated being called a
“scion”). He would eventually come to embrace the younger Bush at the 2000 Republican convention, awkwardly hugging a rather startled-looking Bush around the midsection, as high as McCain’s war-damaged arms could go. Privately, he told one of his closest aides that he strongly disliked Bush (the word the aide used was “detests”).
At the time of the 2000 campaign, McCain had pictured himself as Luke Skywalker, going up against the Death Star. Rumbling along with his aides and a gaggle of mostly friendly reporters in a bus called the Straight Talk Express, he had relished the team spirit—the unit cohesion, in the language of his military past—and the teasing back-and-forth. Not long after the 2000 election, he had spoken of the heady time with a NEWSWEEK reporter over a standard-issue McCain breakfast (glazed doughnuts, coffee) in his Senate office. He was sitting at one end of his couch, the purplish melanoma scar down the left side of his face veiled in shadow. “Yeah, we were a band of brothers,” he said, his voice low, his eyes shining.
The 2000 race had been a glorious adventure, a heroic Lost Cause. But the fact was that McCain had lost. In politics, insurgencies produce memories, not victories. Or so believed John Weaver, McCain’s longtime close aide and the man who had first persuaded McCain to start thinking about a presidential run back in 1997. In numerous conversations throughout 2005 and 2006, Weaver, along with other McCain friends and advisers, gently underscored this reality. In their view, Republican nominating politics usually adhered to a rule, attributed variously to Napoleon and Frederick the Great, among others, that God favors big battalions. The key to securing the GOP nomination was to lock up the big money early, round up the best organizers, secure the shiniest endorsements and win the label “inevitable.” That’s how George W. Bush had beaten McCain and everyone else in 2000, and that’s what John McCain needed to do for 2008.
McCain went along, grudgingly. He signed off in the fall of 2006 as his campaign rented sleek, corporate-looking offices in the Crystal City section of Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The crystal palace quickly filled with veterans of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, many of whom had never before met McCain. For campaign boss, McCain shoved aside Rick Davis, his campaign manager from 2000, and appointed Terry Nelson, the political director for Bush-Cheney 2004. Boyish and soft-spoken, Nelson was an organization man. His approach was essentially Shock and Awe. By his own admission, he was not the sort of man you would hire for an insurgent-model candidacy of the kind McCain had run in 2000; his relevant experience was more appropriate to crushing that kind of campaign.
McCain was never comfortable playing the front runner. His comment when he first walked through headquarters was “It’s awfully big.” McCain was ill suited to be the establishment’s man. He was suspect to the true believers on the right, the Rush Limbaugh “dittoheads” who regarded him as a RINO (Republican in Name Only). While the Republican right wanted to build a wall and keep out all the immigrants, McCain was trying to forge a compromise—with Ted Kennedy, no less. The party stalwarts had reason to be doubtful about McCain, who could be salty in his private denunciations. To a couple of his closest advisers he grumbled, “What the f––– would I want to lead this party for?”
The McCain campaign was supposed to be a lavish money machine; the draft budget was for more than $110 million. But the money did not come in. Most campaigns can expect 80 to 85 percent of donors to honor their pledges. In the McCain campaign, fewer than half did. “They come, they eat our food, they drink our liquor, they get their pictures taken,” said McCain’s aide Mark Salter. “But they don’t send a check.” Most candidates don’t like doing the “ask,” begging strangers for dollars. McCain virtually stopped making calls, and his chief money raiser, Carla Eudy, stopped asking him to do it. The […continued on page 2]
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Journalists are hereby informed that the next Ordinary Sessions of the decision-making organs of the African Union will take place in Addis Ababa, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
The AU Summit will hold according to the following schedule:
The 17th Ordinary Session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC): 26-27 January 2009;
The 14th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council (EC): 29- 30 January 2009; and
The 12th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government: 1-3rd February 2009.
The theme of the 12th Ordinary Session of the African Union Summit of Heads of State and Government is: “Infrastructure Development in Africa”.
Detailed programmes of the Ordinary Sessions and any other side or parallel meetings as well as the process for the accreditation of journalists will be communicated to all the media representatives later.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Two Ethiopian opposition parties, the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) and Oromo People’s Congress (OPC), said in a joint statement that the National Information Security Service (NISS) and the Federal Police have no right to engage in a defamatory campaign against them by implicating them in subversive activities.
The two parties refuted the joint statement given by the NISS and the Federal Police on November 22 accusing then of supporting the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).
The joint statement says that both parties are legally registered parties with many elected members of parliament. They said that their means of achieving their political goals is only through a peaceful and legal way.
The parties questioned whether the two institutions have the right to engage in an act of defamation against parties which respect the constitutional order and strive towards building a democratic order. They said that these two national institutions should stay out of party politics.
The OFDM and OPC also accused Ethiopian television of airing the NISS and Federal Police joint statement without considering the legal ramifications since it violates provisions in the political parties’ proclamation as well as the constitution which protects people from defamation.
In the joint statement, the two parties said that if a party is guilty of having members who have deserted the country, it is another party that should have bore the blame. The statement lists six people including Yonathan Dibisa who were senior members of the ruling party who later defected to Eritrea.
They accused the ruling party of lavishly taking care of former OLF members who were “known” to have committed serious crimes.
Recently, OFDM Secretary-General Bekele Jirata was arrested by the Federal Police on charges of recruiting and harboring terrorists.
The Federal Police Crime Investigation Unit told the Federal First Instance Court on Monday that it has confiscated 7,000 pages of documents that prove that the accused has been recruiting and training terrorists and requested a fourteen-day extension to wrap up its investigation.
Bekele, on his part, said that he is the Secretary-General of a legally registered party and has not taken part in any kind of subversive activities, and asked the court to grant him bail.
Police claims that it has obtained documents which prove the link between the accused and the OLF.
Police also said that the documents show that the suspects have organized themselves under an organization called “Hawi Bilisuma”, and contributed 50,000 birr to the OLF.
Police requested the court to deny the suspects their right to bail since they could destroy evidence that implicates them of complicity in a terror crime.
But the attorneys representing the accused argued that although the Federal Police has already been granted twice a 14-day investigation period, it had not made progress and asked the court to reject its request for an additional period and grant their clients bail.
They said that their clients have been prevented from meeting with family members. Some of the suspects even claimed that they have been tortured.
The Federal First Instance Court ordered the prison authorities to allow suspects to meet with their family members as it is their constitutional right.
The court also ordered investigation into the claim by the accused of being tortured. It also ordered the Federal Police to wrap up its investigation within seven days instead of the fourteen days it had requested.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Income from Ethiopia’s flower exports will more than double to $150 million this year, but future expansion may be hit by the global financial crisis, the head of a private industry body [that is affiliated with the ruling party] said on Monday.
“People’s priority in a global crisis is not to buy flowers. Their priority is to provide food,” Tsegaye Abebe, chairman of the Ethiopian Horticulture Association, told Reuters.
Abebe said Ethiopia’s fast-expanding sector, which hopes to rival neighbouring Kenya’s larger flower industry, was on track to produce between 800 million and 900 million stems for export this year worth $150 million.
That compares to 365 million stems worth $64 million in 2007. But plans to double exports again in 2009 would be affected by the crisis, which was forcing flower prices down in Ethiopia’s main European export markets, Abebe said.
Some of Ethiopia’s 106 producers, including local and foreign investors, had already begun diversifying into vegetables and fruits, he said. But Ethiopian flowers remained popular abroad because they were organic, Abebe said.
“We do not use pesticide. Our farmers are using integrated pest-control management without recourse to chemicals,” he said.
Offering tax breaks to attract investment, Ethiopia hopes flower exports will overtake coffee and be worth $1 billion in five years time. Flowers are now grown around the country, with farms employing about 60,000 people, mainly women.
Kenya earned about $1 billion from horticulture in 2007. Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are also developing flower industries.
(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; editing by James Jukwey)
Sana’a, Yemen – At least 18 Somalis and Ethiopians drowned off Yemen on Monday, and 73 were still missing after smugglers forced them to jump overboard from two boats, rescuers said.
They told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the smugglers ordered 236 migrants to swim ashore when the boats approached the end of their trip off the southern Yemeni town of Ahwar, around 220 kilometres east of the southern port city of Aden.
Thirteen bodies were recovered and buried by teams of a local humanitarian organization, and five bodies were buried by fishermen, they said.
About 145 people were rescued, according to officials at a refugee reception centre in Ahwar.
A breakdown of the dead or survivors was not immediately available. The two boats transferred the migrants from Bosasso in northern Somalia.
Many African migrants, mostly from strife-torn Somalia, try to reach Yemen, which they see as a gateway to the oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Hundreds of people perish every year in the perilous exodus that takes thousands of desperate Somalis and Ethiopians to Yemen in small boats run by smugglers operating from Somali ports.
More than 33,000 people, the vast majority of them Somalis, have fled across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen this year. At least 230 people have been confirmed dead and an estimated 365 went missing as result of crossings gone wrong, often as a result of smugglers forcing the migrants overboard.
Last year, more than 113,000 people, mostly Somalis, arrived on Yemeni coasts, and more than 1,400 deaths were registered.
