Confusion remains as officials discuss issue of Falash Mura

Recently published state comptroller's opinion leaves question of Ethiopian aliah candidates unanswered.

By DAN IZENBERG
falash mura 88 (photo credit: )
falash mura 88
(photo credit: )
A recently published opinion by the state comptroller on the government's handling of Falash Mura aliya left unanswered the question of how many people waiting in Ethiopia were potential candidates, State Control Committee chairman Michael Eitan said Tuesday. "What troubles me is why we can't agree on the facts," he said at a meeting convened to discuss the September 23 report. "Let's count the Falash Mura and find out what we're talking about." Earlier in the meeting, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said it was impossible to know how many Falash Mura remained in Ethiopia and could be eligible for aliya because there were so many different counts. "There is one count with five lists and another with three," he said. "There is a list that is outdated and one that isn't." In his report, which was based on a survey carried out by David Efrati and Rabbi Menahem Waldman in 1999, Lindenstrauss estimated that there were at least 3,188 Falash Mura still in Ethiopia whose eligibility for aliya had not been examined. He stressed that the figure could be higher, but it was impossible to know for certain. Activists seeking to bring the rest of the Falash Mura community to Israel insist that there are 8,000 in Ethiopia. They claim all the names appear on one of the three lists compiled by Efrati and Waldman. This list includes the names of Falash Mura families living in villages near Gondar. The other two include lists of names from Addis Ababa and Gondar. According to activists, including Avraham Ngosa, head of the South Wing to Zion organization, the Interior Ministry officials who processed the applications for aliya in Ethiopia ignored the list of villagers altogether. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that according to the Efrati-Waldman survey, the three lists together included 26,196 Falash Mura. Six years later, after many Falash Mura had immigrated to Israel, the government passed a resolution that there were 17,188 Falash Mura remaining in Ethiopia with "aliya potential" and that once their eligibility was determined and those found eligible were brought to Israel, the Ethiopian aliya project would end. During Tuesday's meeting, Uri Konforti, who returned last month from four years as the Jewish Agency representative in Ethiopia, said he had checked each name on the Efrati-Waldman list to see who had come to Israel, whose application had been rejected and who remained in Ethiopia. He found that there were 2,100 Falash Mura in Ethiopia and surmised they had not been examined because no one had applied for them to come via family reunification. Still, it is not clear whether Konforti's examination included Falash Mura from the original list who had died or children who had been born into existing or new families in the 10 years since the original list was compiled.