Word: falashas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nimeiri quickly came under intense pressure from Western governments to find a way to help the Falashas on humanitarian grounds. Not wanting to imperil his moderate reputation and close ties to the U.S., Nimeiri last week declared: "I won't help Israel by sending them more people," he announced. "But if they want to go away from here--to Europe, to the U.S., to any place else--I don't care." That obviously opened the door to Falasha rescue operations organized by Western governments, perhaps with the eventual goal of quietly resettling the Falashas in Israel. As a sign...
...major setback to the program is the fact that Falasha refugees in Sudan have blended into the anonymity of the camps and are sharing in the tragic fate of their other occupants. Relief officials estimate that at least 2,000 of them have died since their migration to Sudan began last spring. Nimeiri's offer to allow the evacuation of Falasha refugees to nations other than Israel did not draw any immediate criticism from fellow members of the Arab League. But at least one Arab leader put Israel on notice that it must not permit those who migrate to Israel...
...Khartoum, the Sudanese government denied any role in the airlift. Foreign Minister Hashem Osman called in Arab, African and Asian diplomats to charge that Ethiopia had been "closing its eyes" to the Falasha exodus in return for weapons and money from Israel. Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Goshu Wolde countered with the accusation that Sudan had been bribing "a large number of Ethiopian Jews to flee Ethiopia...
...debate raged, about 7,000 Falashas remained stranded in refugee camps in Sudan. Perhaps as many as 10,000 are still in Ethiopia. Anguished newcomers to the Israeli absorption centers, struggling to regain their health and adapt to the many confusing aspects of their new life, wait for word of those left behind. Last week they publicized their dismay at the disclosure of Operation Moses by praying for their relatives at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and staging a sit-in on the lawn of the Jewish Agency, the quasigovernmental body that oversees immigration. Said Baruch Tanga, a Falasha activist...
...handling of the Falasha issue raised a number of uncomfortable questions. Does outrage at anti-Semitism apply solely to American and European Jews? Why has The New York Times printed only five stories on Ethiopian Jews between 1975 and 1982, as opposed to more than 532 on Soviet Jews? Why does the extermination of thousands of Ethiopian Jews draw such an insignificant fraction of the money and public attention devoted to just one Soviet Jew? Until those questions disappear, a community will continue to be repressed and massacred--and ignored by an outside world that professes to care about human...