Ethiopian Jews face 'holocaust'

GONDAR CITY, Ethiopia -- With a "holocaust" sweeping through isolated areas of northern Ethiopia, David Rudolph, the director of Gateways Beyond, a relief organization based out of Gaithersburg, MD., believes there are some 25,000 Ethiopian Jews still stranded in this Horn of Africa nation.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, however, while finally admitting they still hope to aid some 15,000 destitute Ethiopians, who want to emigrate to Israel, would neither confirm nor deny the Falashas (a derogatory term, meaning "stranger in a strange land" or "homeless ones"), were being targeted in "pogroms."

According to New York's Jewish Week, the committee's director of communications, Amir Shaviv, was quoted as saying, "We have no reason to doubt -- or believe -- the reports (concerning the pogroms)."

Earlier, Rudolph, a Messianic Jew (a Believer in Jesus), stated that numerous homes had been burned due to their Jewish connections and put the figure of those still stranded at 25,000.

Abraham Neguise, an Israel-based Ethiopian Jewish advocate for the Falashas, recently met with the Joint and numerous Jewish leaders in the U.S., seeking food, blankets and other aid.

Rudolph, 58, became involved in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews from the Gondar region of the devastated country in 1991.

However, Israel, now 50 years old and housing 5 million Jewish residents sees itself as a post-Zionist nation and views more immigrants as a strain on its social and economic infrastructure. To date Israel has taken in more than 700,000 olim (immigrants) from the former Soviet Union and 50,000 from Ethiopia.

Nearly 24,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from Ethiopia to Israel during two massive rescues in 1984 and in 1991; however, thousands have been left behind. Some 6,700 were taken "home" in the 1984 Operation Moses and more than 17,000 in the 1991 Operation Solomon.

With the rebels, comprising of troops from Eritrea and the northern province of Tigre, about to enter the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam having fled to Zimbabwe in '91, some 17,000 Falashas, also known as "homeless ones," were taken from the area near the Israeli embassy compound and flown to Israel's Ben Gurion airport.

Seven years later, on June 25, 1998, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Addis Ababa compound had been closed and the last airlift had been completed. However, the PM's office failed to recognize the thousands in isolated villages, particularly near Gondar City and Lake Tana.

Rudolph returns to this area next month (November) to explore the possibility of establishing a medical clinic and a "pipeline" to funnel financial help, food and clothing.

In the spring of 1998, Rudolph witnessed a miracle.

As Abi and other Gondar street urchins milled around the visitors, begging for tips in their efforts to show them the best views of Ethiopia's Lake Tana, one of the Gateways Beyond team said: "I'm from heaven." Abi was quick to point out: "I'm a Falasha."

From that brief exchange came a miraculous result in the midst of countless horror stories of a holocaust involving the Ethiopian Jews, who had been stranded in the war-ravished nation for some 3,000 years or about the time of King Solomon of Israel.

Abi, the 14-year-old, seventh-grade student, who wants to become a medical doctor, was taken to meet Rudolph and his wife, Emma.

It was then they heard about Abi's plight. Six days later, the youngster accepted Jesus as his Messiah; received the Holy Spirit; and was given an airplane ticket to fly to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport in search of his mother.

"We learned that he was the only Falasha near Nile's Falls on Lake Tana," related Rudolph. "His parents disappeared and he was abused. In 1991, he received a letter from his mother, telling him that she and his father had been airlifted from Addis Ababa to Israel as part of Operation Solomon. They couldn't afford to bring him to The Land."

However, after apparently working at menial jobs, his father earned enough to take a boat to the Red Sea port of Asab and from there crossed through Eritrea to the Lake Tana area. He never made it, for he was killed in the civil war crossfire between Ethiopian and Eritrean troops. Abi hasn't heard from his mother and doesn't know if she's alive or dead.

"After we saw the boy's condition, he was given a shower and brought new clothes," said Rudolph. "We kept him for six days and during this time he was dramatically born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. He was also water baptized."

Abi wants to finish schooling and a Pentecostal pastor of some 500 in the Gondar area has been given the plane ticket until Abi can leave for Israel. The pastor, who's also a Falasha, is "one of the key people for us in Gondar," explained Rudolph.

Before heading to Gondar City, the father of eight plans to conduct a national conference in Addis Ababa later this month, in which Messianic rabbis and medical people will discuss the current situation.

Ethiopian Jews have been maltreated for centuries for their Jewish practices such as keeping the High Holy Days, menstruation houses and the reading of the Torah. However, because they have been persecuted -- beaten by thugs from the state church, Ethiopian Orthodox, and their tukuls (homes) burned down, there's a "Holocaust," explained Rudolph. He added that diseases such as TB (tuberculosis) was rampant.

When he first arrived in the spring of 1991 with a friend, Rudolph slipped into the Gondar region after three attempts.

"Through divine intervention we flew from Addis to Gondar City and were able to visit five villages by four-wheel drive," he explained. What he saw was devastating.

On a primitive road, there was a "rag-tag group of emancipated people," huddled together, guarded by militia men, he said. They were being taken by rickety buses and vans from Tigre province and shipped to Addis where they would have a lengthy wait before being airlifted to Israel.

Some Falashas have been forcibly converted to the state religion, a miniscule number have been born-again, while the remaining stay true to their type of Judaism. However, what has been consistent has been "persecution."

In 1991, Rudolph and his friend were able to distribute "thousands of pounds" to Christian nationals, who kept a register in Gondar City with the Jewish Agency office, who wanted to make aliyah. Some wouldn't go through the process while others camped outside the Israeli embassy in Addis for years.

Earning only about the national annual wage of $100 Birr, most Falashas barely survive, living off the land and making pottery while facing physical attacks from their neighbors, and the Israeli government has made no concerted effort to bring them to The Land.

Of course, besides Rudolph and his team from Gateways Beyond, there are other sympathizers to the Falashas' plight, including the woman in charge of the Jewish Agency in Gondar, although she's certainly delayed by the "process." One Ethiopian Jewish patriarch waited for seven years in Gondar and his aliyah documents came one week after he had died.

For more information concerning Gateways Beyond, write P.O. Box 1131, Colonial Heights, Va., 23834. E-mail: gatewaysbeyond@juno.com or phone (301) 208-7235.

Mr. Kaye Corbett can be reached at: editor@junction.net.