Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Ethiopia

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The Beta Israel and their airlifts in Operations Moses, Joshua and Solomon, the Falash Mura and aliyah policy, the Depo-Provera allegations, protests over police violence, Israeli military advisers under Haile Selassie and the Derg, arms and cluster bombs traded for emigration, the dam rumours, agribusiness and Chabad in Addis Ababa


Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Ethiopia centre on the Beta Israel, an ancient Ethiopian Jewish community almost all of whose members were moved to "Israel" in the 1980s and 1990s, largely through covert and open airlifts, and on a long military and intelligence relationship between "Israel" and successive Ethiopian governments.[1][2] Israeli advisers trained Ethiopian forces fighting Eritrean independence from the 1960s, and under Mengistu Haile Mariam Israeli arms, including cluster bombs, were linked to permission for Ethiopian Jews to emigrate.[3] The emigration of the Falash Mura, who say they descend from Jews who converted to Christianity, remains a live political question in "Israel", as do the treatment of Ethiopian Israelis by the police and the health system.[4][5]

Jewish community and religious life

History

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) says little is known about the early origins of the community, which is believed to have adopted Jewish beliefs around the second and third centuries CE. The community calls itself Beta Israel; Ethiopian Jews are also often called Falashas, which the WJC says means "strangers" or "immigrants" in Ge'ez. During the Italian occupation of 1935–41 the small communities of European and Yemenite Jews in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa were disbanded. The WJC says the Israeli rabbinate recognised the status of Ethiopian Jews in 1975, "paving the way for mass immigration".[1] Africa Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch, put the Beta Israel at about 50,000 in 1980, living in northern Gonder and nearby areas. It said most scholars regard them as belonging to the Agau ethnic group, that their Judaism "incorporates the Pentateuch but neither the Mishnah nor Talmud", and that the Israeli rabbinate "was, until 1973, unsure of the legitimacy of their claim to Judaism". Until the 1974 revolution they were not allowed to own land and worked mainly as potters and craftworkers.[3]

The community today

The WJC says that nearly all the Jews of Ethiopia, about 50,000 people, were brought to "Israel", but that thousands of Ethiopians who claim Jewish ancestry were left behind. Many of these Falash Mura have family ties with those who emigrated and "are returning to Judaism", and their requests to emigrate are treated as family reunification. Several hundred Jews still live in rural villages in Gondar. Religious life is concentrated in Addis Ababa, where most of those awaiting emigration live; they have a synagogue, a vocational training centre and a burial ground.[1] The US State Department reported in 2023 that the Beta Israel, living mainly in Amhara and Gondar with smaller communities in Kechene and Addis Ababa, "reportedly continued to attempt to migrate to Israel with the help of international nongovernmental organizations". Community representatives said hundreds of Jews had fled fighting and arrived in Debre Birhan and other Jewish communities as internally displaced people. The community reported social exclusion, and said its members were accused of witchcraft and ostracised by neighbours who believed Jews "were possessed by demons or became hyenas at night".[6]

How far is it Zionist? Communal life in Ethiopia is organised around emigration to "Israel". The WJC describes the Addis Ababa community as people "awaiting eventual repatriation to Israel", and says that Israeli and Jewish organisations provided help in education and welfare and "later lobbied for Ethiopian Jews' right of emigration".[1] The transit compound in Gondar where intending emigrants were gathered has a clinic run by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).[7] The Chabad rabbi in Addis Ababa told a visiting journalist in 2018 that "many Israelis and Jews" travel there, and the journalist urged readers passing through "perhaps on the way to Israel" to visit.[8]

Chabad

Main article: Chabad Lubavitch of Ethiopia

Writing in February 2018, the journalist Steven Gruzd said that Rabbi Eliyahu Chabib had set up Chabad Ethiopia in Addis Ababa "five years ago from scratch", and that the centre offered "all Jews in Addis Ababa a kosher meal every night".[8] Chabadinfo reported that Chabad of Ethiopia, headed by Rabbi Eliyahu Chaviv and his wife Devorah, held a groundbreaking ceremony on the last night of Hanukkah in December 2023 for a new 3,000-square-metre campus with a synagogue, a hall, guest rooms, a kosher restaurant, a mikveh and a preschool.[9] Chabad also runs a synagogue inside Bole International Airport, where a new Torah scroll was dedicated in early 2024.[10] The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States lists no rabbi in Ethiopia.[11]

Zionist movement and advocacy

No Zionist organisation based in Ethiopia was found. Zionist advocacy concerning Ethiopia has centred on emigration. Africa Watch said that in the 1970s the plight of the Beta Israel "aroused concern among Israelis and Jewish Americans, who lobbied for them to be allowed to migrate to Israel". It said the underlying reason for repeated US approaches to Ethiopia about their emigration "was pressure brought by the pro-Israel lobby on congress and the administration, and accompanying media attention".[3] In "Israel", the campaign group Activists for the Aliyah of Ethiopian Jews has pressed for the remaining Falash Mura to be brought over.[12] At a Knesset committee hearing in May 2023 Rabbi Menachem Waldman and representatives of "American organizations that encourage Aliyah from Ethiopia" said about 12,000 people were waiting in camps in Addis Ababa and Gondar.[4]

Israeli state and commercial ties

Under Haile Selassie, 1956–74

According to the historian Michael Bishku, relations between "Israel" and Ethiopia were first established in 1956, and "Israel" regarded Ethiopia as strategically vital because, until Eritrean independence, it held the only Red Sea coastline that was not Arab or Somali. Emperor Haile Selassie saw "Israel" as a pro-Western ally against Arab-backed Eritrean and Somali nationalism.[2] Ethiopia and "Israel" signed a military pact in 1958, under which "Israel" provided training at the Holeta military academy and, from 1964, counter-insurgency advisers in Eritrea.[3] Shimon Peres, then deputy defence minister, visited Addis Ababa in 1963. In December 1960, while the emperor was abroad, the United States and "Israel" helped him contact the forces that put down a coup attempt. Bishku cites a former Israeli general staff officer, Matityahu Peled, as saying that Israeli advisers to the Ethiopian secret police "saved Haile Selassie three times from coup attempts" before 1974. In 1966 the Israeli military mission numbered about 100, second in size only to the American one, and Ethiopia received more Israeli aid, military and civilian, than any other African country. Bishku says Addis Ababa "reportedly became the 'nerve center' of Israeli covert political action elsewhere on the African continent".[2] In March 1966 "Israel" began a five-month police course whose first group was ten officers of the Ethiopian police.[13] Haile Selassie broke off relations in October 1973, in line with the Organisation of African Unity's support for the Arab states in the 1973 war.[3]

Under the Derg, 1974–91

Israeli military advisers returned during 1975–77.[3] Bishku cites an Ethiopian brigade commander who defected in 1977 as saying that Israeli instructors trained an elite force of 400 that became Mengistu's "personal bodyguard". "Israel" also supplied spare parts for American F-5 aircraft, napalm and aircraft-fired missiles, and there were 25 to 30 Israeli advisers in the country in mid-1977. Prime Minister Menachem Begin authorised an arms shipment as a "quid pro quo" for allowing Ethiopian Jews to join their families in "Israel". After Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan publicly acknowledged the military ties in February 1978, Mengistu expelled the Israelis. In 1983 "Israel" reportedly supplied about $20 million worth of Soviet equipment captured from the PLO, and by 1985 Israeli military advisers had been invited back. Relations were restored in November 1989.[2]

Africa Watch reported that "in return for allowing the Falasha to emigrate, Ethiopia received weapons and military instructors". Israeli officials at times admitted supplying small arms, non-lethal military technology and counter-insurgency training, and at other times denied giving any help. A leaked congressional staff memo said about 100 cluster bombs had been supplied in late 1989. Africa Watch said cluster bombs were used against civilian targets in Eritrea, including Massawa, causing large numbers of civilian casualties. Former US President Jimmy Carter told a Knesset member, "You don't need to sell Mengistu fragmentation bombs in order to persuade him to let your people go." The US government opposed the cluster bomb sales, and Africa Watch said this opposition appears to have prevented further deliveries from early 1990.[3] Mengistu himself said in 1990, "There isn't a single Israeli soldier in Ethiopia".[2]

Since 1991

On 7 July 2016 Benjamin Netanyahu became the first Israeli prime minister to visit Ethiopia. He met Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, and agreements were signed on science, technology and tourism.[14] The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute records an Ethiopian order in 2012 for 75 Israeli Thunder armoured personnel carriers, delivered in 2013–17 and including assembly in Ethiopia.[15]

The Renaissance Dam

In 2019 Israeli media reported that three Israeli firms had installed the Spyder-MR air defence system around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt regards as a threat to its Nile water. Egyptian analysts quoted by The Arab Weekly doubted the reports.[16] In October 2019 the Israeli embassy in Cairo said on Facebook that these were "just rumors" and that "Israel" stood at the same distance from Egypt and Ethiopia.[17] Similar claims circulated in 1990, when Mengistu dismissed Arab allegations that "a host of Israeli engineers" was building a dam on the Blue Nile.[2]

Agribusiness

In 2016 Bank Hapoalim led a loan of more than $200 million to Ethiopia's state sugar company to pay the Israeli firm Netafim for an irrigation project covering 7,000 hectares. The credit was guaranteed by the Ethiopian government.[18] A World Bank blog said Ethiopia's first rose farm, founded in 2000, drew on an Israeli farm-irrigation company to secure its water supply and recruited an Israeli as one of its managers; within ten years the rose export industry had more than 75 firms and 50,000 workers.[19] From the late 1950s "Israel" ran agricultural, medical and public works programmes in Ethiopia, and in the 1950s and 1960s beef was its main purchase from the country.[2]

Trade

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics records imports from Ethiopia of $69.4 million in 2022, $64.1 million in 2023, $42.5 million in 2024 and $44.6 million in 2025, and exports to Ethiopia of $30.6 million, $32.4 million, $23.0 million and $8.5 million in the same years.[20]

Migration and aliyah

Operations Moses and Joshua

Beta Israel began fleeing to refugee camps in Sudan in the late 1970s, and up to late 1985 about 14,000 walked there; about 1,500 died on the way or in the camps, or were abducted. From late 1984, in an airlift codenamed Operation Moses, 6,380 were flown on 28 covert flights from Khartoum to Brussels and on to "Israel", until Sudan halted the flights in January 1985.[21] Bishku gives a higher figure of about 7,000 to 8,000 between 21 November 1984 and 6 January 1985, on at least 35 flights, and says the operation was carried out by bodies including the CIA and the Mossad.[2] The WJC says some 10,000 left and about 15,000 were stranded.[1] In March 1985 US military aircraft flew out the last group from Sudan in an operation planned by the CIA,[22] which the Jewish Telegraphic Agency calls Operation Joshua.[23] Mengistu's government said the emigrants had been abducted and demanded their return.[2]

Operation Solomon

In 1990 almost all the remaining Beta Israel moved from Gonder to Addis Ababa expecting to be taken to "Israel", abandoning their farms. The government allowed only a slow exodus, and many waited for a long time without adequate shelter or food.[3] "Israel" employed a former ambassador, Uri Lubrani, to negotiate with Mengistu, who repeatedly asked for arms. Within about 33 hours on 24–25 May 1991, in the last days of the Mengistu government, some 14,500 Beta Israel were flown from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv on 32 Israeli aircraft and one Ethiopian one.[2]

The Falash Mura

In June 1997 an Israeli ministerial committee led by Natan Sharansky decided to close the Addis Ababa compound and bring its 4,000 Falash Mura residents to "Israel" within a year. Ynetnews says that over the years hundreds were brought over each month.[4] Government resolution 716 of 2015 called for all the remaining members of the group to be brought over; about 4,500 had arrived by November 2021. That month the cabinet approved the immigration of 3,000 more who had a parent, child or sibling in "Israel", with a budget of NIS 570 million, during the civil war in Ethiopia. The aliyah minister, Pnina Tamano-Shata, had pushed for the decision.[12] At a Knesset hearing on 1 May 2023 an official of the Jewish Agency said 919 people were waiting to emigrate, while campaigners said about 12,000 were waiting in Addis Ababa and Gondar.[4]

Immigration figures

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics records immigrants born in Ethiopia as 10 in 1948–51, 59 in 1952–60, 98 in 1961–71, 306 in 1972–79, 16,965 in 1980–89, 39,621 in 1990–99 and 36,040 in 2000–2020.[24]

Depo-Provera allegations

In December 2012 the Israeli investigative programme Vacuum alleged that Ethiopian women were coerced or coaxed into receiving the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera, both by Jewish aid officials before they emigrated and by health workers once in "Israel". One woman said she had been told at the Jewish aid compound in Gondar that she would not get a ticket to "Israel" unless she had the injection. In January 2013, after a petition by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the director general of the health ministry, Ronni Gamzu, told doctors not to renew the prescriptions of women of Ethiopian origin who might not understand the treatment's implications. The directive did not confirm the allegations or admit wrongdoing, and a ministry spokeswoman said, "We didn't give the shots." The JDC said it had at no time coerced anyone into family planning at its clinics.[25] ACRI and other groups wrote that data from Clalit, the largest health fund, showed some 5,000 women using the injection in 2008, about 57% of them of African, in effect Ethiopian, origin. Most women interviewed said they first heard of it from the JDC, the Jewish Agency or the absorption ministry, and the groups argued that their consent "was not informed".[7]

Protests over police violence

In April 2015 a video showed police officers shoving and punching a soldier of Ethiopian descent. Several thousand Ethiopian Israelis and supporters protested in Tel Aviv on 3 May; clashes in Rabin Square left at least 56 officers and 12 protesters injured, and 43 people were arrested.[26] In June 2019 an off-duty police officer shot dead Solomon Tekah, 18, near Haifa. In the protests that followed, police said 111 officers were wounded and 136 people arrested. In January that year a police officer had shot dead a mentally ill Ethiopian man who ran towards him with a knife.[5]

Political interference

Israeli advisers to the Ethiopian security services helped protect Haile Selassie against coup attempts, and Israeli instructors trained Mengistu's bodyguard.[2] Under Mengistu, according to Africa Watch, "the Ethiopian government repeatedly used the Falasha population as pawns to obtain arms", and it reported that "Israel" supplied cluster bombs in late 1989 and that cluster bombs were used against civilian targets in Eritrea.[3]

No credible sourced link between Jeffrey Epstein and Zionist or Israeli activity in Ethiopia was found, so this page has no Epstein section.

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 World Jewish Congress, Community in Ethiopia World Jewish Congress, accessed 21 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Michael B. Bishku, "Israel and Ethiopia: From a Special to a Pragmatic Relationship" Conflict Quarterly, Spring 1994.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Africa Watch, "Western Policy towards Ethiopia", chapter 20 of Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch, September 1991 (critical).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Yona Cherki, Immigration from Ethiopia: The neverending merry-go-round Ynetnews, 4 June 2023.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 BBC News, Clashes as Ethiopian Israelis protest over police shooting BBC News, 3 July 2019.
  6. ↑ US Department of State, 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Ethiopia US Department of State, 2024.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Association for Civil Rights in Israel and others, Re: Use of Depo-Provera as Contraception for Women of the Ethiopian Community in Israel, letter to Prof. Ronni Gamzu, Director General, Ministry of Health, 10 January 2013 (critical).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Steven Gruzd, Finding Jewish communities in Africa South African Jewish Report, 8 February 2018.
  9. ↑ Chabadinfo, Ethiopia: New Chabad Campus Holds Groundbreaking Event Chabadinfo, 18 December 2023.
  10. ↑ Chabadinfo, New Sefer Torah Dedicated To Shul at Addis Ababa's Airport Chabadinfo, 5 March 2024.
  11. ↑ Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, The Rabbis rabbisalliance.org, accessed 21 October 2026 (partisan).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Jeremy Sharon, Cabinet unanimously approves further immigration from Ethiopia The Jerusalem Post, 28 November 2021.
  13. ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Israel Starts Course of Training Policemen from African Lands JTA, 10 March 1966.
  14. ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Benjamin Netanyahu Makes Groundbreaking Visit to Ethiopia The Forward, 7 July 2016.
  15. ↑ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Arms Transfers Database SIPRI, accessed 20 October 2026.
  16. ↑ Hassan Abdel Zaher, Concerns mount in Egypt as Israel boosts ties with Ethiopia The Arab Weekly, 20 July 2019.
  17. ↑ Xinhua, Israel denies providing air defense systems to protect Ethiopia's disputed Nile dam Xinhua, 23 October 2019.
  18. ↑ Globes, Hapoalim leads $200m finance for Netafim project in Ethiopia Globes, 6 March 2016.
  19. ↑ Hinh T. Dinh, Vincent Palmade and Vandana Chandra, The story of the first rose farm in Ethiopia World Bank Blogs, 23 September 2010.
  20. ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Foreign Trade Statistics Monthly, Table D1: Trade Countries – Imports and Exports CBS, December 2025 issue (library copy) (partisan).
  21. ↑ Raffi Berg, Red Sea Diving Resort: The holiday village run by spies BBC News, 5 August 2019.
  22. ↑ Charles T. Powers, U.S. Evacuates Ethiopian Jews: Last Group of Falashas Secretly Airlifted From Sudan to Israel Los Angeles Times, 23 March 1985.
  23. ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sudan aided Ethiopian aliyah JTA, 27 March 2007.
  24. ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2024, Table 2.55: Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence CBS, 2024 (partisan).
  25. ↑ Ben Sales, Israeli officials order halt to underhanded contraception of Ethiopian women Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 29 January 2013.
  26. ↑ The Guardian, Ethiopian Israelis clash with police as anti-racism rally turns violent The Guardian, 4 May 2015.
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