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Ethiopian-Israeli Jews Protest: Bring the Last Jews of Ethiopia Home By Maayan Hoffman
Ethiopian protesters gather outside Interior Minister Aryeh Deri’s home. (The Heart of Israel)
Activists, Ethiopians say it’s time to bring the last Jews of Ethiopia to Israel
Seffi Blilin moved to Israel from Ethiopia nine years ago with her mother, father and four siblings. Her two older, married siblings were considered separate families and could not come over on the same immigration visa.
“We were told it would be a week, maybe a month,” Blilin told Breaking Israel News. “But they never made it here. We have not seen my sisters for nine years. My father died of heartache. My mother cries herself to sleep every night.”
Blilin’s family is Jewish. Two of her younger siblings are serving in combat units in the IDF. But while she continues to pressure the Ministry of Interior to bring her siblings home, there has been little action. She said they tell her that there is not enough money in the budget.
“They are Jews and they should be allowed to make Aliyah,” Blilin said.
On Tuesday, more than 100 activists and family members of the remaining 8,000 Jews in Ethiopia gathered in front of the home of Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, begging him to act to bring these Jews to Israel. The activists are protesting weekly on Tuesdays until a June 18 meeting of the special ministerial committee on the issue of Aliyah from Ethiopia. The fate of the 8,000 remaining Ethiopian Jews waiting to make Aliyah to Israel could be decided at the meeting.
In 2015, Government Decision No. 716 was passed, which calls for the approval of the immigration of 8,000 Jews who are waiting to make Aliyah. However, the government has not implemented the decision.
According to A.Y. Katsof, the Jews of Ethiopia are living in extreme poverty. Katsof is the director of The Heart of Israel, which is running a crowdfunding campaign to bring these Jews back to Israel and resettle them in the Biblical heartland.
Katsof said most Ethiopian Jews eat only one meal a day.
“They live in terrible conditions, in tiny, one-room mud huts with no sanitation,” said Katsof. “If they have food to cook, they prepare it on a coal or wood fire. As many as 100 people share a single bathroom. Nonetheless, they continue to remain hopeful and faithful to Judaism, Jerusalem and God.”
Adina Mekonen, an Ethiopian immigrant who today lives in Petach Tikva, volunteered in Ethiopia last Passover. She said “people are dying of hunger. You would not believe they can make it through the day.
“When I left, they said to me, ‘Don’t forget me,’” she continued. “But they have been forgotten.”
At the protest, dozens of Ethiopians told their stories. Mamush [last name withheld], for example, moved to Israel 10 years ago with her husband and oldest child. Since then, she has been waiting for her mother to be granted permission to move to Israel, too.
“My mother never met my youngest children,” Mamush told Breaking Israel News. “I want my family to be here in Israel. It is so hard to be alone.”
She said, “We are Jews, this is our land and we want to be in Israel.”
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OUR SITES אתרי מבט
More UN Chicanery by Bruce Bawer
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration — which seeks to criminalize criticism of migration — is nothing more or less than a dangerous effort to weaken national borders, to normalize mass migration, to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration, and to bolster the idea that people claiming to be refugees enjoy a panoply of rights in countries where they have never before set foot.
One thing about the agreement, in any event, is irrefutable: almost nobody in the Western world has been clamoring for this. It is, quite simply, a project of the globalist elites. It is a UN power-grab.
Jewish Groups Welcome Chilean Government Decision to Ban Municipal Boycotts of Israel
The waterfront in the Chilean city of Valdivia. Photo: Arvid Puschnig via Wikimedia Commons.
Top Jewish groups have welcomed a Chilean government decision made earlier this week to ban municipalities across the country from boycotting Israel.
The ruling — issued by the Comptroller General of Chile – stemmed from a complaint filed by the Chilean Jewish community over a move of the Valdivia municipality to ban the city from signing contracts with Israel-linked companies.
Lamenting ‘Historic Missed Opportunity,’ Top Israeli Minister Calls for Plan for Mass French-Jewish Aliyah
New immigrants to Israel arrive at Ben-Gurion International Airport, Aug. 17, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Baz Ratner.
A top Israeli minister called on the government on Sunday to craft a “comprehensive plan” to encourage the aliyah of French Jews.
In Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett’s view, there has been a “historic missed opportunity” in recent years to bring more French Jews to Israel as immigrants.
“There are 200,000 French Jews who want to come here, and the state bureaucracies simply aren’t prepared for it,” Bennett, who also serves as education minister and head of the right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi party, claimed at a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “These are ethical people, Zionists, lovers of the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, and it is our moral obligation to help them.”
Israel destroys Hezbollah’s border tunnels but missile threat looms Ben Caspit
Israel has started uncovering and destroying Hezbollah’s attack tunnels under the Lebanese border, but destroying the group’s ambitious precision missile project will be much more difficult.
The Israel Defense Forces placed a camera into Hezbollah’s secret cross-border attack tunnel before sunrise on Dec. 4. They pushed it into the Lebanese side, under the Blue Line that separates the two countries. At dawn, two Hezbollah operatives reached the spot on their morning rounds. In the video disseminated by the IDF on Tuesday evening, one of the operatives is seen approaching the camera with suspicion. He stuck his nose in its direction and started to sniff around until something exploded in his face and he ran back the way he’d comVisibilitye.
Netanyahu raises doubts with operation against Hezbollah tunnels by Shlomi Eldar
The timing of Operation Northern Shield, to destroy Hezbollah tunnels leading from Lebanon into Israel, suggests that considerations other than security were behind the decision to launch it.
An Israeli commando from Yahalom, an engineering unit, takes part in a tunnel-hunting drill near Tel Aviv, March 7, 2012.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to Likud activists on Dec. 2 that was both defensive and combative toward law enforcement authorities. He complained about the supposedly suspicious timing of the police announcement recommending his indictment for taking bribes in Case 4000, coming as it did one day before Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh concluded his term in office.
New Column!
Dr. Mordechai Kedar : The Mole Inside the Hezbollah Tunnel
This week, for the first time, Israel made public its discovery of the tunnel constructed by Hezbollah and reaching into Israel’s sovereign territory. This brought to an end a long period during which a large number of Israelis living in communities adjacent to the Lebanese border reported hearing sounds of digging as well as feeling tremors in the walls of their homes.
Attack tunnels are intended to allow for significant numbers of armed infantry bearing weapons, artillery and supplies, to traverse them within a minimal time span, avoiding Israeli lookouts and thereby gaining the element of surprise.
Caroline Glick : Europe Beats Iran’s War Drums
Last Saturday, Iran’s “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani called Israel “a cancerous tumor” in a speech at the regime’s annual Islamic Unity Conference.
Rouhani’s fellow speakers included deputy Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Both terror bosses called for the destruction of the “cancerous tumor.”
With the predictability of a Swiss clock, the Europeans rushed to condemn Rouhani. The EU in Brussels condemned Rouhani. The German Foreign Ministry condemned Rouhani. And so on and so forth.
We could have done without their statements.
Ben-Dror Yemini : Northern Shield Not Meant to Shield Netanyahu
It was clear that with the onset of Operation Northern Shield—meant to neutralize terror tunnels Hezbollah has constructed along the Israel-Lebanon border—some would call it a public relations stunt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those who believe the timing of the police’s recommendations in Case 4000—announced on the last day of Roni Alsheikh’s tenure as the police commissioner—was reasonable, somehow complain about the timing of the operation.
Earl Cox : From Missiles to Menorah
On Sunday evening, December 2, the people of Sderot, Israel – a town located a mere kilometer from the Gaza border – gathered to light the first candle of the town’s menorah to commemorate the first day of Hanukkah. Jews around the world celebrate this holiday, which marks the time some two millennia ago when the Jews regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Second Temple.
What makes the candle lighting in Sderot worth mentioning is the fact that it is particularly symbolic of how the Jewish spirit looks for ways to turn tragedy into triumph.
Khaled Abu Toameh : Palestinians: No Difference Between Hamas and Fatah
This is obviously a short-lived honeymoon that will end the day after the UN General Assembly vote on the anti-Hamas resolution. The morning after the vote, Abbas will wake up to the realization that Hamas was a strange bedfellow indeed.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s hatred of Hamas is far from secret. But Abbas is now defending Hamas because he despises the Trump administration, which has sponsored a UN draft resolution that condemns Hamas. Pictured: Abbas (right) meets with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on May 30, 2007 in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Abu Askar/PPO via Getty Images)