TORONTO — Rick Hodes’s, left, first contract with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint) was to last only six weeks. That was more than 20 years ago but the American-born doctor is still at his post, ministering to the sick and frail in Ethiopia.
For years, Hodes’ patient base consisted of Beta Israel and in more recent times, the Falash Mora, descendents of Beta Israel who converted to Christianity generations ago.
The Beta Israel have left Ethiopia, mostly for Israel, and the Jewish state has cut off the Falash Mora immigration.
Nevertheless, the Joint, which closed its clinic in Addis Ababa serving the Falash Mora, will continue to operate in Ethiopia, though it will shift its focus to the wider population, Hodes said.
Hodes was in Toronto last week to meet select groups of UJA supporters and Birthright alumni, update them on the Falash Mora immigration and raise money to support the Joint’s works. He also visited Jewish communities in Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, Memphis, Tenn., Houston, Tex. and Cleveland, Ohio.
Hodes said he’ll continue to minister to the sick and frail in Ethiopia despite the Joint’s shift in emphasis. The Joint still operates a clinic for the Falash Mora in Gondar, in northern Ethiopia, where the Beta Israel lived for centuries. The Joint clinic there is staffed by a local doctor and nurses and provides medical services for a few thousand Falash Mora. “It’s not clear whether all will end up in Israel or not,” said Hodes, who travels to Gondar every few weeks.
In the meantime, Hodes will focus on providing medical services to Ethiopians of all religions – whether Christian or Muslim. While that has been part of Hodes’ mandate for years, with the end of aliyah, it has become the predominant part of his practice.
“The Joint is staying in Ethiopia and working in the non-sectarian development field, as am I,” he said.
Among its projects, the Joint sends Israeli doctors to Ethiopia to teach and brings Ethiopian doctors to Israel for training. It builds schools, educates girls and digs wells.
Hodes works part of the week in the Mother Teresa Mission in Addis Ababa, focusing on spinal conditions, cancer and heart disease. He recently arranged for eight Ethiopian youngsters to travel to Ghana for spinal surgery.
Hodes said “I need at least $250,000 per year just to maintain things as they are.” The Joint, which is funded by Jewish communities around the world, only supports the office and staff in Ethiopia. Hodes is looking for other sources of funds to operate the medical scholarships, the Ghanian operations and other activities.
“We’re funding this from outside the [Jewish] federation system,” he said. Federation supporters would have to designate funds specifically for the Joint’s Ethiopian projects. North American Jewish federations provide the Joint with its core budget, though federation funds do not go to the agency’s non-sectarian programs.
That makes Hodes a part-time fund raiser, applying for grants, soliciting assistance from contacts abroad and by efforts like last week’s meet and greet.
“A lot of Jews are interested in helping more than just the Jewish community,” he said. “A lot are not interested in helping Jews but would help Africans.”
The upside from that approach is that “it can actually bring them into the community and into the Jewish system.”
Jennifer Kraft, director of community relations for the Joint, noted that even in its earliest work in Gondar in the early 1980s, the organization provided benefits not just to Jews but to the wider Ethiopian community. That raised the level of trust from the Ethiopian government, allowed the Joint to become entrenched in local society and helped a wide variety of people.
“The Joint builds bridges, performs mitzvot, fosters good will and helps rescue the Jewish community…Rick Hodes is the epitome of mitzvot,” she said.
For more information on the Joint, please go to their website
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopia The Woyanne regime on Tuesday warned of an “imminent” terrorist attack and urged its citizens to be vigilant but did not elaborate on the nature of the risk.
“There is proven evidence that a plot to undertake a terrorist attack in Ethiopia exists at this very moment,” the National Anti-terrorism Taskforce warned in a statement received by AFP here.
“We urge the public to remain vigilant and cooperate with security officials in foiling this imminent attack,” it added.
A series of bomb blasts have rocked the Ethiopian capital this year with authorities blaming neighbouring Eritrea, along with secessionist groups such as the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front.
In September, a bomb explosion inside a bar in Addis Ababa killed four people and injured 24 others, and in May, a bomb went off on a minibus near the foreign ministry, killing six people, including a US national.
Three people were also killed and 18 wounded in bomb blasts that simultaneously ripped through petrol stations in the capital earlier this year.
Relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa have been frosty since they fought a devastating 1998-2000 border war that claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides. The dispute is yet to be resolved.
The purported terrorist threat came as Ethiopia’s main opposition party expressed concern over shrinking political freedom following the arrest of another opposition party’s leader.
New York – CPJ calls on Ethiopian authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into Friday’s beating of newspaper editor Amare Aregawi.
Aregawi, managing editor of the English- and Amharic-language newspaper Reporter, was released on Monday from a hospital in the capital, Addis Ababa, according to local journalists.
Journalists who visited Aregawi in the hospital told CPJ that he was badly injured when three men attacked him as he was walking near his office around 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Eyewitnesses told CPJ that the men approached Aregawi from behind, striking the editor in the head with a stone and repeatedly hitting him until he fell unconscious. The assailants jumped into a waiting car, driven by another man, but were impeded by a traffic jam, the witnesses said. Two men were apprehended at the scene, a third man was detained on Saturday, and a fourth remains at large.
Police have not publicly disclosed details of the arrests. Ethiopian federal police spokesman Demsash Hailu told CPJ that the Addis Ababa Police Commission was overseeing the investigation.
Reporter staffers, including Aregawi and editor Aseged Teffera, have received anonymous threats in recent weeks in connection with a series of investigative reports alleging that people close to Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi had mismanaged his investments, local journalists said.
“We condemn the barbaric beating of Amare Aregawi,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “The Ethiopian police must do everything in their power to ensure the masterminds behind this brutal assault are also charged.”
It was the second time this year that Aregawi, one of Ethiopia’s best-known journalists, has faced reprisals over his paper’s critical coverage of influential business interests in the country. Aregawi was detained for 6 days without charge over a story reporting a labor dispute at a government-run brewery in northern Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – Some 7,000 Ethiopian pilgrims will travel to Saudi Arabia for the 2008 Haji, Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Council said on Monday.
The council said that it has begun proving services for the largest number ever of pilgrims by introducing better working procedures to avoid congestion. Last year, around 5,000 pilgrims traveled to Saudi Arabia.
The council has established committees in Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia.
The council said the selection of the pilgrims would be carried out through all Islamic Affairs Offices. Pilgrims would get passport services from the Ethiopian Immigration and Civic Affairs offices in Mekelle, Bahirdar, Dessie, and Diredawa as well as in Addis Ababa.
Currently, the council is giving its services to 700 pilgrims per day.
The council has also opened 11 offices in Saudi Arabia to provide services to the pilgrims.
The deadline for the registration for the pilgrimage is November 15, 2008. The first batch of the pilgrims will leave Ethiopia on the 18 November.
About 40 percent of Ethiopia’s estimated population of 80 million is Muslim. Ethiopia is also home for Al-Negashi, the first mosque in Africa.
This is the second part of the article that explains why The Reporter editor Amare Aregawi was attacked in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week.
The article gives detailed background information and analysis, as well as possible motives. The person with the strongest motive to attack Ato Amare, it seems, is Sheik Ato Mohammed Al Amoudi, a billionaire businessmen who is a self-proclaimed member of the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne).
EDITOR’S NOTE: Companies owned by Woyanne (the ruling party in Ethiopia) want to export meet — bought below market prices from poor farmers — to Egypt while over 6 million people in the country have nothing to eat.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Ethiopian Woyanne Foreign Ministry is into hard lobbying in Egypt to revive its lucrative exports of meat and live cattle, which were halted in early 2006.
According to the Ethiopian Woyanne Embassy in Egypt, Ethiopia the Woyanne regime is currently “exerting efforts to improve the trade relations between the two countries.” Ambassador Ibrahim Idris in particular is pushing Cairo authorities to lift a ban on meat and livestock imports from Ethiopia.
Ambassador Idris is arguing that trade relations needed to be “fair” and points to the “significant volume of commodities” being imported from Egypt to Ethiopia, while Egyptian imports from Ethiopia currently are minimal. “The embassy is working hard to address the negative balanced trade relations between the two nations,” the Ambassador said.
He then made special reference to the meat and cattle trade, saying that “the embassy is making efforts to facilitate the recommencement of livestock and meat products export to Egypt.” Ethiopia’s livestock and meat exports to Egypt were ceased in early 2006 “due to various reasons,” the ambassador said. In fact, the highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was found in Ethiopian cattle already on the Egyptian market in January 2006, causing Cairo authorities to immediately stop all imports. Ethiopia Woyanne now claims to have the animal disease outbreak under control.
The ban came only a few years after Ethiopia’s large meat and cattle export companies had gained entry to the Egyptian market, in fierce competition with cattle from Sudan. Ethiopian meat and live cattle was already sold at large scale in several Middle East countries, and was marketed as both cheap and healthy on the Egyptian market.
The cattle industry is one of the Ethiopian economy’s quickest growing export industries and turning into one of the country’s leading foreign currency earners. The industry had particular high expectations in the large Egyptian meat market, where consumers and authorities cried out for more and cheaper meat.
The ban therefore came as a great setback for Ethiopian exporters. Shortly before the ban, arrangements had been made for the development of a meat package industry in Ethiopia to ease exports to Egypt. After the ban, Addis Ababa authorities have focused on programmes to improve animal health, hygiene standards and meat quality to avoid further interruptions in the lucrative trade. Now, they hold, they are ready to return to the Egyptian market.
