In special report, Lindenstrauss advises Knesset State Control C'tee not to ignore issue of remaining 3,000 Falash Mura.
By DAN IZENBERGlindenstrauss 224.88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
There are up to 3,188 Falash Mura in Ethiopia whose eligibility for aliya has not been examined, even though the Jewish Agency has already withdrawn its representatives and the government is on the verge of a formal decision to stop their immigration altogether, the state comptroller said, in a special report published Tuesday.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss was asked to investigate the government's handling of the immigration of Falash Mura to Israel by the Knesset State Control Committee on November 21, 2007, after activists complained that there were at least 8,700 members of the community who were being left behind.
The comptroller also found that the government had passed inconsistent decisions between 2003 and 2005 which contributed to the confusion over how many Falash Mura would be allowed to immigrate to Israel if found eligible.
The brief report includes a historical review of the aliya, including the contents of five cabinet decisions between 2003 and 2005, the legal and halachic aspects of the immigration, public attitudes towards the aliya of the Falash Mura and an analysis of the decisions and the numbers related to the dispute.
According to the report, the first cabinet discussion of the Falash Mura was held in June 1991. The previous month, Israel had airlifted 15,000 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa in Operation Solomon.
The airlift included some Falash Mura, a community of former Ethiopian Jews who had converted to Christianity but who, for the most part, had married among themselves. After Operation Solomon, several thousand Falash Mura were left behind in the Addis Ababa compound.
In 1992, the government decided to bring them to Israel on humanitarian grounds on the basis of family reunification. Five years later, it decided to bring the 4,000 Falash Mura living in the Addis compound at the time and close it.
Before it could do so, however, the empty compound filled up again with more Falash Mura.
In 1999, a task force headed by senior Interior Ministry official David Efrati conducted a census of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia. It compiled three lists, for Addis Ababa, Gondar and the villages around Gondar.
The three lists together added up to 27,596, but this included 1,400 Jews from Kawara province who were brought to Israel soon after the survey was made, because there was no question regarding their eligibility. That left 26,196 Falash Mura.
In 2003, the government resolved that "the descendants of Ethiopian Jews on their mothers' side who wish to return to Judaism will be able to enter Israel under the Law of Entry to Israel in order to officially return to Judaism and reintegrate into the Jewish people."
The procedures for investigating the maternal lineage began at this point, and Falash Mura who passed the test began coming to Israel.
In 2005, the government passed another resolution, which included the following statement: "The survey prepared by the Ministry of Interior has been completed in keeping with the [2003] decision regarding the aliya potential. The list of aliya potential includes 5,021 requests involving 17,188 people."
From then on, the aliya officials in Ethiopia focused solely on this list and the quota referred to in the decision.
However, Lindenstrauss wrote that the government decision from 2003 had not mentioned a list of "aliya potential" and had not put a ceiling on the number of Falash Mura who could come to Israel. These restrictions had appeared "out of the blue" in the 2005 decision, he charged.
Lindenstrauss also examined the conflicting numbers of Falash Mura remaining in Ethiopia in the versions of the government and the Falash Mura aliya activists in Israel and abroad, who had claimed that at least 8,700 Falash Mura had not been evaluated at all.
According to Lindenstrauss, Israeli officials had examined 25,656 applications included in the Efrati list. Of these, they had approved the aliya of 22,892. They found that another 2,191 Falash Mura were included in Efrati's list but that no one in Israel had applied to bring them over - a necessary condition for family reunification.
Another 997 included in the Efrati list had come to register with aliya authorities but were not included in the "potential aliya" list, and no one in Israel had applied for them to come.
According to Lindenstrauss, "it is reasonable to expect that not many of these people will be found eligible for aliya."
Some of them will be hard to find, others have no one in Israel to request their aliya and still others will not meet the eligibility requirements, said Lindenstrauss.
"Nevertheless," he continued, "since some of the Falash Mura included in the Efrati list may indeed be potentially eligible for aliya, and some may pass the requirements for entry to Israel, we are confronted with a question of values - what should be done with them?"
Lindenstrauss wrote that the government must not ignore this issue.
Whatever its decision may be, "the government must discuss the matter quickly and decide whether or not to examine the eligibility of these Falash Mura to immigrate to Israel."
In what may have been an attempt to preempt Lindenstrauss's report, the government announced Sunday that Interior Ministry representatives would continue checking the eligibility for aliya of the some 3,000 Ethiopian Falash Mura who claim eligibility for aliya under the 2003 directive.
"We welcome the government's decision," said a spokesman for the Public Council for Ethiopian Jews, an impromptu committee consisting of former Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar, former Supreme Court justice Menachem Elon, Prof. Irwin Kotler, Ethiopian Rabbi Yosef Adaneh and other prominent figures, which was set up a year ago to lobby the government to continue bringing Jews from Ethiopia.
"However, there are still thousands more Jews in Ethiopia, currently living in appalling conditions, that appear on the initial Efrati list and should be allowed to come to Israel, but who have still not been checked," the spokesman continued.
The Jewish Agency for Israel will continue to facilitate the aliya of those who have been approved and will aid in their absorption here following their arrival.
Ruth Eglash contributed to this report.
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