Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews held an emotional gathering at a synagogue in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Wednesday and announced they would stage a mass hunger strike if Israel stops funding to allow them to join their families in Israel.
Representing thousands of their fellow Ethiopian Jews, the gathering expressed concern that Israel's proposed budget removes the funding to help them move to Israel to reunite with relatives. Many held photos of their loved ones.
Nearly 8,000 Jews remain in the East African nation, and most are said to have family members already in Israel. Some told The Associated Press they have been separated for well over a decade.
In 1991, with Ethiopia deep in civil war, Israel carried out the dramatic Operation Solomon, successfully airlifting out some 14,500 Ethiopian Jews in less than two days.
In 2015, Israel's government pledged to bring in the remaining Ethiopian Jews, and 1,300 were brought in last year, but the effort is now on hold.
"All of us here in Ethiopia are in a foreign land and suffering from acute poverty and hunger," said Meles Sidisto, the community head of Ethiopian Jews in Addis Ababa.
"We have had enough here. What have we done wrong to suffer this much?" he said, bursting into tears and prompting others to cry out.
He said Addis Ababa's Jewish community, which numbers around 800 households, will hold a hunger strike if the Israeli government does not hear its plea.
Likud MK Avraham Neguise, who chairs the Knesset's Absorption and Diaspora Committee, said the budget for the plan will be voted on in the coming weeks. He accused the government of discrimination, saying it makes it easier for other Diaspora communities to immigrate.
"You cannot find any other communities where the parent is here and children are there and children are here and parents are there and are forced to be separated," he said. "It is only the Ethiopian Jewish community, not the Americans, not the Russians, not Europeans. If this isn't discrimination, what do you call it?"
Of the Jews remaining in Ethiopia, 783 are separated from their children and more than 2,000 have parents or siblings in Israel, he said.
While Israeli law allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to immigrate, the trouble in Ethiopia centers on the community's ancestors, said Alisa Bodner, a spokeswoman for the group Struggle for Ethiopian Aliyah.
Those ancestors were forced to convert to Christianity about a century ago, while their descendants have returned to a "fully Jewish lifestyle," she said.
Wednesday's gathering was described as a solidarity event. Ethiopians are prohibited from holding protests under the country's latest state of emergency, imposed this month after the most severe anti-government demonstrations in a quarter-century.
Ethiopian officials were not immediately available for comment on the issue of the Ethiopian Jews.
Most of the community lives in the northern Amhara region, one of the areas that has experienced the sometimes deadly anti-government protests that began in November 2015 with demands for greater freedoms.
The origin of the Ethiopian Jews is unclear but a popular legend says they descended from the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Ethiopian Jews are often referred to in Ethiopia as "Falashas," a derogatory word that translates into "strangers" or "migrants."
Chekol Alemayehu said he has been waiting desperately to go to Israel and meet his relatives. He said he had completed all the immigration papers but was turned back at the airport more than a decade ago.
"I've no idea why. My daughter died in Israel a few months ago. And I've been suffering since," he said.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jews in Addis Ababa said they want, immediately and without any preconditions, to go to Israel and join family members.
"We will never lose hope in going to Israel because we are winner people," the letter says. "Dear Mr. Prime Minister, we want you to make our wish a reality. We ask you this in the name of our God, Israel's God."
The Prime Minister's Office declined to comment.
