Ethiopian-Israelis decry family separation as discriminatory

JERUSALEM: Zemenech Bililin has not seen her sisters in more than a decade, since she immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with part of her family.

Now a 19-year-old infantry soldier in Israel’s military, Bililin says she is outraged that she is fulfilling her duties as a citizen but the state is shirking its responsibility to bring her relatives to Israel.

Bililin’s family is one of hundreds that have been split between Israel and Ethiopia over what they say is an inconsistent immigration policy, and whose fate hinges on an Israeli government decision over whether to allow for their reunification. Ethiopians in Israel say the bitter public feud to unite with long-lost relatives has exacerbated a feeling that the state discriminates against its Ethiopian minority.

“It’s shocking in my opinion. They only do this to us, to our ethnicity,” said Bililin. “The state should take responsibility and stop abandoning the Jews.”

The issue faces a critical juncture next week, when the government is tentatively scheduled to decide whether to allocate funding to bring as many as 8,000 Ethiopians to Israel to reunite with their families.

Israel clandestinely airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews from the country in the 1980s and 90s, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the ancient community to the Jewish state and help them integrate. About 140,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel today, a small minority in a country of over 8 million. But their assimilation has not been smooth, with many arriving without a modern education and then falling into unemployment and poverty.

As far as Israel is concerned, the drive to bring over Ethiopia’s Jewish community officially ended in the 90s, but amid pressure from lawmakers and family members, successive Israeli governments have opened the door to immigration by a community of descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity under duress about a century ago.

Although many of them are practicing Jews, Israel does not consider them Jewish, meaning they are not automatically eligible to immigrate under its “law of return,” which grants automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent. Instead, the government must approve their arrival.

Community members have been permitted to immigrate over the last two decades in limited bursts that have left hundreds of families torn apart.

Nearly 8,000 people in Ethiopia are hoping to immigrate, among them Bililin’s sisters, who as married women applied to emigrate separately.

In 2015, Israel agreed in principle to bring over the remaining Ethiopians who have Israeli relatives, vowing that it would be the last round of Ethiopian immigration and clearing the way for the arrival of 1,300 people last year.

Israel says it has continued to greenlight the community’s immigration on humanitarian grounds but it also has set a slew of requirements on those waiting in Ethiopia, in part to prevent what could be an endless loop of immigration claims.

Avraham Neguise, an Ethiopian-Israeli lawmaker in the ruling Likud party who chairs the Israeli Parliament’s Absorption and Diaspora Committee, accused the government of dragging its feet and in turn damaging the Ethiopian community’s already brittle relationship with the state.

While Ethiopians have made strides in certain fields and have reached the halls of Israel’s Parliament, many complain of racism, lack of opportunity, endemic poverty and routine police harassment.

Activists have been lobbying the government to approve the immigration, penning letters to Israeli officials and sharing their poignant stories of separation in parliamentary committees. They see the issue as an easily solvable one that has needlessly shattered families and marooned people in a troubled country.

The community expected to see funding for immigration in the proposed budget, which is expected to come up for a vote as early as next week. But they were stunned when it was absent from preliminary versions of the budget.

The estimated cost of flying all 8,000 people to Israel along with housing and social services is roughly 1.4 billion shekels, or about $400 million, a sizeable figure but a tiny fraction of a nearly 500 billion shekel ($143 billion) national budget, according to an official from the Finance Ministry.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss a budget that has not yet been passed.