How Mossad Brings Jews to Zion

American Thinker.com ^ | May 17, 2019 | Harold Goldmeier

[Kaslin]

Some of my international university students just returned from Ethiopia. The trip is optional for gap year students learning about the Jewish people. There is a backstory to the Ethiopian Jews returning home to Zion that is more exciting and fraught with Israel's good intentions that continues decades later.

Their travel guide was one of my Ethiopian Jewish former students who is now a serial entrepreneur living back in Ethiopia. "It's not like anything in any country I've seen before," one young woman from South Africa told our class in Middle East politics. The students joined Ethiopians still living there in prayer with tallis and tefillin. The women dress modestly. They eat kosher, observe the Shabbat, and study Jewish texts with visiting rabbis, she told the class. Controversy rages in Israel whether these remaining practicing Jews have any claim to Jewish lineage. Yet Israel is bringing them home to Zion because nobody gets left behind.

"Why don't they bring the rest of [the Ethiopians] to Israel?" asks another incredulous student. "There's only a handful left, and they told us their relatives are already here. It's really wrong what Israel is doing." Right or wrong, this student and other observers give short shrift to the nuances and definitions of "who is a Jew."

Rachel Sylvetsky, editor at Aurutz Sheva, on the other hand, has firsthand experience in this field. She explains the situation to me like this:

There is a vast difference between the Ethiopian Bete Israel who walked through Sudan in the first aliya, one of whom I hired as the first Ethiopian oleh rabbi in the Israeli educational system, and the later falashmura who converted to Christianity decades ago for economic reasons.

[gaijin]

“Operation Moses” —Englightening and gripping story.

I wonder if they’d be quite so welcoming if 3,300 invaders openly strolled into Israel every single night.

[golux]

The sad little secret is that with a few exceptions, Ethiopian Jews have not, even after generations, adopted the Israeli modus vivendi.

[gaijin]

Yup..!

I believe it.

[EinNYC]

My neighbor is one of those Ethiopian Jews who walked with her family through Sudan, to Egypt, and then to Israel. One of her 5 sisters was murdered by Ethiopians for being Jewish. Thereafter, her father tattooed crosses on their foreheads to make people think they were not Jewish. All but one of the sisters had the tattoo removed when they reached Israel. One chose to keep it as a remembrance.