This week, the Israeli government approved a plan to bring in 2,300 Falasha Jews from Ethiopia, as part of the government's efforts to strengthen the status of the Falashmura, improve their living conditions, and plan to establish their own city.

The plan to establish a city for Falasha is criticized strongly, especially among the Ethiopian community, which suffers from discrimination, racism, and exclusion attempts, despite the extension of the housing loan program for Ethiopians, which ends this year, until 2025, when Ethiopian spouses are granted a bank guarantee of up to 150 thousand dollars. Without Benefits.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, about 85,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, of whom about 20,000 were born in the country, and the community is concentrated in development cities and remote areas with a low socio-economic level.

Before the government approved the plan to bring in the Falasha, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned his Ethiopian counterpart, Abi Ahmed, during which they discussed regional issues and the status of the Falash.

Note that Netanyahu initiated his first term in 1997 with a project to bring in the Falash.

Netanyahu with the Deputy Minister of Internal Security and the Minister of Immigration in his government, and they are of Ethiopian origin (communication sites)

An recruitment plan and


since 1997, 30,000 Falasha have been brought in. The previous government approved Netanyahu to bring in 2000 people living in the waiting camp in the Ethiopian capital, with the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to improve their conditions and their integration.

After the government approved the procurement plan, Netanyahu announced the allocation of 100 million dollars for "reunification" programs for the families of the Falashmura, and 22 million for social, educational and economic activities specifically for them.

The government's approval of this comes under a plan from 2015, in which it included allowing 9,000 Ethiopians to be brought in within 5 years, amid demonstrations by the Falasha that spread across the country and demanded "unification" with expectant families in Addis Ababa.

Falasha children in waiting camps in Ethiopia (communication sites)

Faraya station


and July 2019 constituted a milestone, so the weeks-long demonstrations that erupted in protest against the killing of Solomon Taka, a young man of Ethiopian origin by the bullets of an officer, turned into confrontations that exposed the depth of the social and economic crisis of the Ethiopian community suffering from discrimination.

In an effort to contain the Falasha and absorb the anger, Netanyahu has been luring them into his Likud party, and including candidates from the Falasha on the party’s list for the Knesset, where Gadi Farkan was able to enter parliament on the Likud list, and he holds the position of Deputy Minister of Internal Security and the center of the Falasha Jews file in the government.

The competition for the Ethiopian vote was not limited to the Likud. The Blue and White party included Benina Taymanu Sheta on its parliamentary list, and she was appointed Minister of Immigration and Absorption, who is the first minister of the Ethiopian community in all Israeli governments.

The timing of the approval of the plan to bring in the Falasha comes amid estimates of going to a fourth parliamentary election within the next few months, and these estimates came with the opening of the 23rd winter session this week, and the competition for the Ethiopian vote again.

Demonstrations in Israel calling for the families of Falasha Jews to be reunited and brought in (communication sites)

A turning point


The beginning of the seventies was a turning point in everything related to the interest in the Jews of African descent, and the Falasha in particular, in the midst of the contrasting positions and arguments between senior rabbis and even some political figures who questioned the Judaism of the Falasha and considered its roots to be Christian.

Despite the difference in positions, in the early 1970s, 50 students of Falasha Jews were being brought to the land of "honey and milk" as part of a project for teaching the Torah in Jerusalem to the children of Jewish communities around the world. This was preceded by individual attempts to come to Israel via Sudan.

The recruitment of 50 Falasha boys did not gain approval in Israel, so they returned to Ethiopia after completing their one-year education, without being allowed to resettle, according to what is stipulated in the educational project implemented by the Zionist movement.

But the year 1973 was a pivotal moment when the chief rabbis in Israel, including the Rabbi of the Eastern Community Oudvadia Yusef, issued a fatwa recognizing the Jewishness of the Falasha, noting that the first attempts to return Ethiopian Jews called "the return of Zion" were in the 1950s as part of the young elite with 50 children who came to study and return. To Ethiopia.

Secret campaigns and


following the fatwa, then Prime Minister Menachem Begin requested in 1977 to bring the Jews of Ethiopia to the "Land of Zion." So 30 families from the Ethiopian community were brought in without revealing the details of their bringing, but it is estimated that they were brought by infiltration through Sudan.

By 1984, about 3000-4000 Falasha, mostly from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, had immigrated to Israel.

The following year, the covert operation led by the Mossad in the name of "Moshe Campaign" brought in 8 thousand Falashmura, most of them from Gondar and its environs.

This was followed by the implementation of several limited campaigns to bring in the Falasha, but it is striking that those who planned and accomplished were the American administration, as about 1,200 Jews were evacuated from Sudan in 1985 at the initiative of George Bush, the US Vice President, and about 800 Jews were brought in the “Yehoshua campaign” with the participation of many Activists of American Jews, especially in the field of support and fundraising.

After a long period of separation and disunity between Ethiopian families, in 1991 the Israeli government initiated the process of "reuniting" the families of the Falasha Jews, and launched a special process for this purpose known as the "Shlomo Campaign" under the auspices of Washington and the Jewish community in America, where nearly 15 thousand Falasha immigrated In one day, after which waves and small migration campaigns that were marked by many challenges continued.