Groups seek to protect Falashmura aliyah - Haaretz

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Fri., December 28, 2007 Tevet 19, 5768

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Last update - 11:36 27/12/2007

Groups seek to protect Falashmura aliyah

By Anshel Pfeffer

Tags: Aliyah, Ethiopians

Petitioners took action yesterday against the planned return next week of Interior Ministry officials stationed in Ethiopia - a step toward ending mass emigration from the country to Israel.

The petitioners asked the court to defer Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit's decision to recall the officials pending the High Court's decision on a separate petition calling for Israel to issue another 8,000 immigration permits to the Falashmura, Ethiopians who claim Jewish ancestry.

Yesterday's petition was filed by the organization Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry and relatives of would-be immigrants from Ethiopia.

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According to a government decision from 2006, the Jewish Agency is slated to stop its activities on immigration from Ethiopia by June, when the last group of immigrants issued with permits arrives in Israel.

Last week, Sheetrit held a meeting reviewing all the remaining applicants for immigration to Israel. But petitioners say thousands of Falashmura who under the Law of Return have the right to immigrate remain in temporary camps, waiting permission to move here.

To date, some 30,000 Falashmura have immigrated to Israel, where they have undergone strict Jewish conversion. Despite efforts to bring the remaining Falashmura to Israel over the years, their numbers keep growing. At the moment, some 8,000 people claiming Jewish descent and asking to immigrate to Israel still populate camps in Ethiopia's remote Gondar province.

Jewish Agency officials say the process has become rife with corruption and that many non-Jewish Ethiopians have claimed Jewish ties to immigrate to Israel, where they later revert to Christianity.

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