Help Bring Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews Home to Israel

By: David Parsons, ICEJ VP & Senior Spokesman

Over the coming months, the ICEJ is taking on an urgent challenge – assisting with a wave of 2,000 Ethiopian Jews being brought home to Israel.

Aliyah flights for these Ethiopian Jews are scheduled to start in December and will take several months to complete. The costs per person for bringing them home to Israel is currently higher than normal, but the Israeli government has decided to bring them as soon as possible. And the Jewish Agency is looking to the ICEJ to support this urgent Aliyah effort as much as we can.

The Ethiopian Jewish community can trace their heritage back to Moses, who married an Ethiopian woman (see Numbers 12:1-10). Some 135,000 now live in Israel, but thousands more have left behind in Ethiopia because their ancestors were pressured to convert to Christianity several generations ago. There are 8,000 of these “Falash Mura” still stuck in rundown transit camps in Addis Ababa and Gondar – many living there for up to two decades now in impoverished conditions. They have nothing to go back to, and they simply refuse to give up on their dream of being reunited with their families back in the Promised Land.

After much debate and many delays, the Israeli government finally decided in 2015 to allow them to come home. But the process has been slow and now their plight has worsened due to several developments:

1) Malnourishment: Ethiopia is suffering from a prolonged drought which has impacted the whole nation. Jewish and Christian groups (including the ICEJ) have helped feed and care for these Ethiopian Jews left in transit camps, but many are malnourished and need to be relocated to healthier surroundings.

2) Coronavirus: Much of Africa has been spared by COVID-19 so far, but Ethiopia has seen a high rate of infections and deaths.

3) Locust plague: There are currently massive swarms of locust devouring the land across Ethiopia and East Africa.

4) Conflict: A civil war has broken out between Ethiopian government forces and a regional rebel militia, with fighting reported only 45 miles from the Gondar transit camps.

Thus, this latest wave of Ethiopian Aliyah has become an urgent humanitarian mission!

The ICEJ has flown over 2,200 Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel in recent years, including 268 olim so far this year – despite the Corona travel bans. Now the opportunity is here to bring home another 2,000 Ethiopian Jews who are desperate to reach Israel. It’s time for us to act!

Please consider a generous donation to help these very deserving people re-join their families in the Jewish homeland. May the Lord bless you richly as you donate towards this very urgent and worthy cause!

You may also want to watch our documentary “Journey of Dreams” – filmed when an ICEJ team recently visited the transit camps in Ethiopia to see first-hand the difficult conditions in which thousands of Ethiopian Jews are now living. It is very moving to see their determination to reach the Land of Israel, in order to be reunited with their families and the Jewish people.

With overwhelming emotions and a sense of jubilation in the air, 116 Ethiopian Jews arrive in their homeland, Israel on an ICEJ-sponsored flight. Watch our video report and share in their moving arrival.