My blog topic this week will be the fascinating story of the Ethiopian Falashmura Jews. A few days ago, after numerous delays, the Israeli government decided to authorise for the final time the aliyah of about 8,000 Falashmura who are currently living in transfer camps in Ethiopia.

Who are the Falashmura? Some background: In the early 1970s, Ovadia Yoseph, who was then the chief rabbi of Israel, determined that the Ethiopians who call themselves Beita Israel (the House of Israel) and claim to be Jews are indeed Jews and have a right to make aliyah to Israel.

Throughout the 80s and 90s some 80,000 Ethiopian Jews were absorbed in Israel after several heroic operations that rescued them from Ethiopia (the most well-known are Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991).

After most of Beita Israel left Ethiopia, another community called the Falashmura insisted on their right to come to Israel as Jews. The Falashmura were Jews who converted to Christianity, mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They argued that they converted only because they were forced to do so and should not now be discriminated against. The State of Israel decided that some of them were eligible for aliyah, and for about 12 years from the mid-90s about 14,000 Falashmura were brought to Israel.

Following this however, more and more people who claimed to be Falashmura came to the transfer camps and by 2008 there were another 20,000 people demanding to live in Israel. Their status was frozen and a committee in Israel was established. That committee decided that there are about 8,000 people eligible for aliyah and now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided authorise their travel to Israel, and for the last time, end this affair and close the transfer camps.

The following article by Yael Branovsky from YNET describes the decision and the reaction to it.