Question: if the economic situation in Ethiopia were as good as it is in Israel, would the Falashmura be agitating to move to Israel?
It is generally accepted that unlike Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel), the Falashmura are Christians who, until Israel opened its borders to Ethiopian Jews, never expressed any solidarity with the Jewish people.
See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/falashmura.html for a history of the Falashmura: "Most were now practicing Christians who simply wanted to get out of Ethiopia by any means possible and saw an opportunity to escape by claiming to be Jewish and thereby earning the right to immigrate to Israel. The Israelis were convinced this motivation would encourage tens of thousands, perhaps most of the Ethiopian population to claim Jewish heritage. The Israeli government was simply not going to absorb the entire Ethiopian population." |
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