Will a new plan to complete Falash Mura aliyah face obstacles? – analysis

So many plans and promises have been made on this issue that have not been fulfilled that the minister’s announcement has been met instead with skepticism that this could yet be another false dawn.

By JEREMY SHARON
Members of the Falash Mura Jewish Ethiopian community attend a prayer service at the HaTikvah Synagogue in Gondar, northern Ethiopia, September 30, 2016 (photo credit: REUTERS/TIKSA NEGERI)
Members of the Falash Mura Jewish Ethiopian community attend a prayer service at the HaTikvah Synagogue in Gondar, northern Ethiopia, September 30, 2016
(photo credit: REUTERS/TIKSA NEGERI)
The efforts to bring the remainder of the Ethiopian Falash Mura community, descendants of Jews, to Israel has been long and tortuous and encumbered by numerous difficulties, not least political.
So comments by Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata on Thursday that she will soon present her comprehensive plan to bring all remaining members of the community who are eligible for immigration to Israel should have been a cause for optimism.
Yet since so many plans and promises have been made on this issue that have not been fulfilled, her announcement has been met with skepticism.
In 2015, a government resolution was passed to bring approximately 9,000 remaining members of the community to Israel, but only some 2,000 have arrived since then.
The exact reasons for the failure to implement the resolution remain unclear. But what is certain is that there exists ideological opposition to prevent it, including in some haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and hard-line religious-Zionist circles.
One prominent opponent is Beersheba Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri, a member of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate and brother of Interior Minister Arye Deri, who has ultimate authority over immigration of the Falash Mura.
In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 9, Yehuda Deri wrote that the Falash Mura “are not Jews” and that the late, former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef had not included them in his decision determining the Beta Israel community of Ethiopia to be Jewish.
Netanyahu should not bring a further 400 members of the community to Israel, as he promised before the election, he wrote.
Following Yehuda Deri’s letter, Arye Deri was interviewed on Army Radio on February 11 and agreed with his brother that those who remain are not Jewish. He has not publicly opposed the immigration of at least some of those who have family members in Israel on the basis of family reunification laws.
During the course of Falash Mura aliyah in the 1990s and 2000s, numerous families were split up when some of their members were eligible for immigration and some were not.

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Activists have continued to campaign for those of patrilineal descent to be able to rejoin their families, which includes adult children separated from their parents.
Opponents have argued that this could lead to perpetual cycles of new claims for immigration. Activists have insisted that this would be impossible.
Activists for the immigration of the remainder of the Falash Mura have been reluctant to point fingers at who they believe to be responsible for the failure to complete the 2015 government resolution.
But they are running out of patience with the current political leadership, especially after a slew of promises by Netanyahu before the election to bring those who remain in Ethiopia to Israel, and have threatened to restart communal protests against him after these broken political promises.
Failure to implement the coming new plan would surely be the nail in the coffin in the faith of those members of the Ethiopian community who wish to be reunited with their children, parents, brothers and sisters.


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