Israel secretly brought in dozens of Tigrayans, then discovered most weren't Jewish & not in danger [Haaretz]
Posted: 07 Nov 2021, 17:28
Nov. 7, 2021
Israel Secretly Brought in Dozens of Ethiopians From War-torn Tigray, Then Discovered Most Weren't Jewish
Most of the 61 Ethiopians who were brought to Israel on a secret operation had no Jewish roots, and their lives hadn’t exactly been in danger, either. Israel's population authority deemed the event a 'conspiracy'
Ethiopian citizens at an immigration center in Beit Alfa, Israel, in August.Credit: Gil Eliahu
When Israel carried out a secret operation earlier this year, it was certain it was bringing 61 Ethiopian Jews whose lives were in immediate danger to live safely in Israel. But then questions started popping up: Who were they? What country did they come from? And why did the Population and Immigration Authority claim there was a “conspiracy” at play?
When the special flight landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport, there was great excitement among the handful of people who were in on the secret of its arrival. In a daring secret operation, 61 people of Jewish ancestry had been smuggled out of a bloody conflict zone in Ethiopia, which is currently embroiled in civil war.
But soon afterward, some significant doubts arose that threatened to turn the operation into a major scandal. When the immigration authority began looking into the matter, it discovered that most of the 61 had arrived at the request of a single Israeli who actually just wanted to bring his ex-wife and employees to Israel.
Moreover, most of them had no Jewish roots, and their lives hadn’t exactly been in danger. Now, the authority is deeming this operation, which endangered human lives and Israel’s diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, a “conspiracy.”
thiopian citizens at an immigration center in Beit Alfa, Israel, in August.Credit: Gil Eliahu
'Major doubts'
The secret decision to bring the group of Ethiopians to Israel was made earlier this year after information indicated that their lives were in danger. At that time, Ethiopia’s civil war was still in its early stages, and most of the fighting was taking place in the northern province of Tigray, where the Ethiopians in question were living. Because they were not Jewish themselves, instead only thought to have Jewish roots, they could immigrate to Israel only through a cabinet decision.
Bennett's cabinet gave the operation the green light and the plan was put into motion - 61 Ethiopians would arrive in Israel. They were taken to an absorption center in Beit Alfa, where they underwent an identification process by the Interior Ministry and the Immigration and Population Authority. This is when the first question marks were raised.
The authorities soon realized that these probably did not have Jewish descendants at all and that they did not actually live in the conflict zone. In light of this, the Population and Immigration Authority launched a secret investigation into the matter.
The investigation, whose findings were obtained by Haaretz, concluded that there are “major doubts” about whether the immigrants actually have Jewish roots, even though they submitted affidavits saying they did. Moreover, it said, most “didn’t come from the conflict zone as claimed, and their lives weren’t at risk at all.”
Consequently, most would also have had “no chance of moving to Israel” had they told the truth, the document concluded. A senior immigration authority official added that so far, only four of the 61 have managed to prove their Jewish roots.
The authority then began looking into who drafted the list of 61 immigrants. Astoundingly, it discovered that 53 of them came at the request of and based on information provided by a single Israeli identified in the document as S.S. (Haaretz has his full name). As far as Haaretz can determine, he moved to Israel in 1996, has no official position and is not a well-known figure in Israel’s Tigrayan community.
The investigation found that the 53 people included “his Christian ex-wife, who came to Israel with her Christian husband and the three children they had together,” as well as “two boys who claimed to be his sons.” Several others “will work or have worked in S.S.’s businesses.”
The tone of the document reveals that the authority was furious. “The feeling we have is that some kind of planned conspiracy was concocted here that exploited the system,” its conclusion says. “More remains concealed than revealed about the intentions of the community’s representatives in Israel.”
The document was written and signed by Michal Yosefov, head of the authority’s department of temporary populations.
“On the face of it,” a senior government official said, “there seems to have been very sloppy work here. I can’t say this with certainty, because they received the decision about the immigration operation as done and dusted. But there seems to have been a big mess here.”
Despite the immigration authority’s harsh conclusions, Israeli officials remain divided about the operation. Some officials in Jerusalem said the authority’s investigation had been conducted hastily and without speaking to senior members of the Ethiopian-Israeli community, who know the family trees and say that the immigrants do have Jewish roots.
But regardless of whether they can truthfully claim Jewish ancestry and the grave suspicions about how they got to Israel, the immigrants will remain here, senior government sources said. The Ethiopian civil war has now spread to encompass the entire country, and several officials, including some ministers, are now talking about the need for an emergency operation to bring additional immigrants from Ethiopia.
The National Security Council, however, is adamantly opposed to such an operation, apparently due to what happened during the last one.
“It’s not at all clear that it’s necessary to bring the people waiting [to immigrate] right now, or at all,” an NSC document written on Sunday said. “Bringing thousands of people to Israel without an inquiry [into their Jewish roots] would be an unnecessary, dangerous and precedent-setting demographic mistake.”
