Demonstrators gathered outside the Knesset on Sunday demanding that the government facilitate the immigration of approximately 10,000 relatives of Israelis of Ethiopian descent, given ongoing violence and strife in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
Protesters said the government has halted immigration from Ethiopia and stopped funding for it, demanding that leaders immediately “reallocate funds to resume immigration and bring to Israel those whose situation continues to deteriorate against the backdrop of the civil war in Ethiopia,” according to a statement from the organization, Power for Aliyah, which assists Ethiopian immigrants.
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The gathering was the latest in a longstanding effort to bring to Israel descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity in the 19th century, often under duress, as well as some of their relatives. The minority has been known as Falash Mura, a term some regard as derogatory.
The community stayed behind in Ethiopia as Israel, in the 1980s and 1990s, extracted those who were widely seen as the main and oldest Jewish presence in Ethiopia, known as Beta Israel. In 1992, Beta Israel Ethiopians living in Israel began lobbying for their converted relatives who had stayed behind to be allowed to immigrate.
Since the 2000s, about 25,000 converted community members, who are not eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return, have immigrated under government decrees, on the condition that they undergo Orthodox conversion to Judaism.
Calls to extract the population intensified when Ethiopia became engulfed in a violent civil war in 2020, killing hundreds of thousands and leading to widespread famine. Despite a peace agreement in November 2022, the country has not recovered.
Following a government decision in 2020, community members whose parents or children live in Israel may immigrate, but only if they are unmarried and have no children.
In 2021, 2,000 community members, many of whom had been waiting for years at transit camps in Gondar and Addis Ababa, were brought to Israel under Operation Tzur Israel, in an effort spearheaded by then-immigration minister Pnina Tamano-Shata, who herself is of Ethiopian descent.
The operation was in essence a family reunification program, allowing the children, spouses, and families of those who had already immigrated to Israel to reunite.
By July 2023, an additional 3,000 immigrants were brought over.
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Many in the current far-right religious coalition have sought to limit immigration to Israel of those not considered Jewish under halacha, or Jewish law.
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