Press Statement On August 28, 2015, the Governor of Sudan’s Gedaref State, Merghani Salih “called for redrawing borders between the Sudan and Ethiopia.” This call is intended to finalize secret deals that EBAC, in collaboration with Ethiopian opposition political and civic organizations, has rejected numerous times over the past decade. Once again, we are obliged
ST- The governor of Gedaref state, Merghani Salih, has called for redrawing borders between Sudan and Ethiopia in order to bring the long running dispute between the two nations to an end.
Farmers from two sides of the border used to dispute the ownership of land in the Al-Fashaga area located in the south-eastern part of Sudan’s eastern state of Gedaref.
The two governments have agreed in the past to redraw the borders, and to promote joint projects between people from both sides for the benefit of local population. However, the Ethiopian opposition has used to accuse the ruling party of abandoning Ethiopian territory to Sudan.
In November 2014, Sudan’s president Omer al-Bashir and Ethiopia’s premier, Hailemariam Desalegn, instructed their foreign ministers to set a date for resuming borders demarcation after it had stopped following the death of Ethiopia’s former prime minister, Meles Zenawi.
Also, in December 2013 the Joint Sudanese- Ethiopian Higher Committee (JSEHC) announced that it reached an agreement to end disputes between farmers from two sides of the border over the ownership of agricultural land particularly in the Al-Fashaga.
Salih on Friday emphasized to a federal delegation from the societal and popular police currently visiting Gedaref the need to redraw the Sudanese-Ethiopian borders in order to end land disputes permanently.
He pointed to the importance of the joint military patrols to secure the borders between the two countries, praising the role of the societal and popular police in protecting the borders.
It should be mentioned that Al-Fashaga covers an area of about 250 square kilometers and it has about 600.000 acres of fertile lands. Also there are river systems flowing across the area including Atbara, Setait and Baslam rivers.
Sudan’s Gadarif and Blue Nile states border Ethiopia’s Amhara region. The borders between Sudan and Ethiopia were drawn by British and Ethiopia in 1908.
Jews of Kechene, Ethiopia pretend to be Christians as they secretly practice Judaism in remote synagogues.
Elders of theBeta Israel community of North Shewa, Ethiopia . (photo credit:Courtesy)
I have always been fascinated by the story of the Beta Israel Jews of Ethiopia.
At the time of the epic Operation Solomon, I was living in Russia. By the time I made aliya, the majority of the Ethiopian Jews were already in Israel. Here in Israel, I met many Ethiopian Jews and my interest in Beta Israel history and traditions became even stronger.
This is how one day, while reading a journey diary written in 1910 by the prominent European scholar Jacob Faitlovitch, I read his account of an encounter with a group of Falashas residing in the highlands of North Shewa region of Ethiopia, an area between Gondar, where most Jews lived, and the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.
It took Faitlovitch some time to win the trust of these Falashas, to get any information from them. Finally, they revealed to him that they had come to North Shewa from the Dembiya region near Gondar, mostly at the time of Emperor Menelik II’s rule.
In his account, Faitlovitch discussed the difficulties they faced, which pushed them to pretend to be Christians.
“These Falashas live in a relationship of dependence and a lack of freedom which almost borders with slavery and they are strictly forbidden to ever leave the boundaries of the Shewa. Only rarely some of them succeed to move away secretly from the Shewa and to return to their homeland, where they will live again in the Falasha community as Jews.”
Faitlovitch expected this group to vanish in two generations, due to assimilation and persecution. More than two generations passed since that time.
Fortunately nowadays, access to information is much easier than at the time of Faitlovitch. With the help of the Internet, I contacted a group of Jews in the Kechene neighborhood of the northern part of Addis Ababa, who claim to be descendants of Beta Israel who migrated from Gondar to North Shewa.
I went on a long journey, not only a geographically but also in time.
Young members of the Bal Ej community look over the North Shewa mountains in Ethiopia (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
The first historical account of Jewish presence in Ethiopia came from a 10th-century Jewish merchant and traveler Eldad Ha-Dani. He recounts that when the Northern Kingdom tribes of Israel went to war against the Southern Kingdom tribe of Judah, the Danites, who were renowned as skilled warriors, refused to fight against their kinsmen and left Israel for Egypt. They continued their journey until they reached the land of Cush where they finally settled.
According to their oral history, the Beta Israel of North Shewa settled in Kechene when Menelik II decided to build his new palace in Entoto, north of today’s Addis Ababa. Menelik II needed them for their skills in crafts to build his palaces and produce weapons.
For years, the Jews of Kechene continued practicing Judaism in secret, following the instructions of the leaders who still remained in North Shewa. However, recently a group of young people of Kechene have decided to disclose their faith. They have opened a synagogue right in the heart of Kechene, creating serious tensions between the youth and the elders.
Bet Selam synagogue. (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
They call their synagogue Bet Selam, the House of Peace. Thanks to modern technologies, these young Jews have learned about the world Jewish community and modern Jewish practices. In their synagogue, they combine pre-Talmudic practices of their forefathers that trace back to the times of the First Temple and modern rabbinical Jewish practices which they have learned about from the Internet and from visitors.
The chazan of Bet Selam synagogue in Ethiopia (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
Kechene is the neighborhood of craftsmen, Bal Ej in Amharic. Men mainly work as weavers and blacksmiths and the women work as potters.
Similar to the Beta Israel community in Gondar, Bal Ej are slandered as buda, or evil eyed. Their neighbors believe that they are humans at day and hyenas by night. They believe that eye contact with Bal Ej can bring illness or even death. Suspicions remain even among those who are educated, like civil servants and university professors. They avoid approaching Kechene attach a clove of garlic to their arm to protect them from the evil eye if they have to visit the neighborhood.
A piece of pottery in Kechene. (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
Even though Bal Ej provide Addis Ababa and surrounding areas with clothes, utensils and blacksmith products, they cannot sell their products on their own at markets. Instead, they are forced to sell their items through Christian merchants, which causes them to lose as much as 80 percent of the product price. However the difficulties that people of Kechene are going through, cannot be compared to those experienced by craftsmen from the community who still live in towns and villages of North Shewa.
I visited Morat, a small town of North Shewa, where the Beta Israel community first settled when they migrated from Gondar. Most of them are blacksmiths and potters. Almost every month, a member of the community is murdered or has property is destroyed since the Christian neighbors believe each time a person gets sick or dies, it is because of the curse of the “hyena people.” They randomly choose a victim to avenge. Most of the crimes committed against Bal Ej of North Shewa remain unpunished. The police allows murderers to escape or simply fail to investigate the crimes.
Life in this town is a life of fear since nobody knows who will be the next victim. To reduce the danger to some degree, community members pretend to be Christians. They go to church on Sunday, but attend hidden synagogues on Saturday.
A weaver in Kechene. (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
When I interviewed the community members, we had to change topic whenever a stranger entered the room. To protect their secret, I pretended to be an American visitor, since the word Israel itself can raise eyebrows.
The biggest challenge was garnering a visit to the synagogues. The locations kept under strict secrecy and visitors are not welcome. It took a long time to build the trust and confidence of elders in order to gain permission to visit a few.
The synagogues are located deep in the mountains and getting there requires a long, tiring and sometimes dangerous trek. This strategy of building synagogues in remote and inaccessible places has protected the community for centuries.
The compound does not contain Jewish symbols. This is for two reasons. The first is to stave off unwelcome attention from hostile neighbors. The second is that most modern Jewish symbols, such as the Star of David, are simply unknown to the members of the community.
A young member of the community looking over a synagogue in North Shewa. (photo credit: IRENE ORLEANSKY)
There are two entrances to the synagogue, one for men and another for women. Most of the prayers are conducted in Ge’ez, the liturgical language of Beta Israel. Surprisingly, the spoken language of many community elders is Quarenya, a language of an area near Dembiya.
Another interesting feature of the synagogues is that they are always located near a river because the Jews of North Shewa strictly observe the Biblical laws of ritual purity, or niddah.To observe the laws of niddah, a menstruating woman stays in a separate house for seven days. After the seven days she immerses in the river and can then join the rest of the community.
The members of the secret synagogues practice pre-Talmudic Judaism, and therefore practice of animal sacrifice for Passover and other occasions. I had a chance to witness the process of sheep slaughter, which corresponds to the laws of Kashrut. It was reminiscent of the traditions of other ancient Jewish communities, such as Bukharian Jews of Central Asia.
Even though the community has strong historical evidence of their connection to the Beta Israel of Gondar as well as a remarkable resemblance to their traditions, the community remains unknown to the most of the Jewish world.
The chances of the Beta Israel of North Shewa gaining recognition from the Israeli government seems slim. Currently, 6,000 Falash Mura are still waiting to emigrate to Israel, some for 10 to 20 years at the compound near the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa.
To generate awareness of this amazing community, I decided to make a documentary about this community – their culture, traditions, music and struggle to survive and preserve their identity. The film is called Bal Ej: The hidden Jews of Ethiopia and it is due to be released at the beginning of 2016.
The Beta Israel of North Shewa are as important to us as we are to them. It is now our turn and obligation to bring the remaining Jews of Ethiopia back to Israel and ensure that both their lives and traditions from Ethiopia are not endangered.
For more information about the upcoming documentary Bal Ej: the hidden Jews of Ethiopia, visit www.ireneorleansky.com
(ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopian deputy prime minister Demeke Mekonen has dismissed accusations alleging that the horn of Africa’s nation has secretly given away farm lands to neighbouring Sudan along its border with Amhara regional state.
Some exiled opposition outlets have frequently released reports accusing Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state bordering Sudan of giving away Ethiopian lands as large as 1,600 Sq Km to Sudan.
Mekonen said those reports are “baseless” and a deliberate smear campaigns by some irresponsible opposition elements.
While responding to questions during a forum with the Ethiopian Diaspora, the deputy premier underscored there was no “inches” of land offered to Sudan by the Amhara regional state.
“In the first place regional states are not authorized to handle border issues,” he said.
He added “It is only the Federal Government of Ethiopia that has the authority to negotiate and decide on boarder issues. Even in that sense there is no piece of land given to Sudan”.
The Ethiopian official added that “it is so easy that any concerned group or individual can go to the place and check the reality on the ground”.
The issue of border re-demarcation has long been a source of conflict between Ethiopia and Sudan, but the two countries worked during the past years to fix it and established joint projects for the benefit of the residents of the border areas from both sides.
A number of opposition parties accuse the ruling EPRDF-led Ethiopian government of offering large territories of the country to Sudan in order to ease the tension which started in 2001 when the two neighbours tried to re-demarcate their boundary.
However, the Ethiopian government says it only gave back a lands occupied in 1996 which belongs to Sudanese farmers adding no single individual from both sides was displaced at the borders as a result.
Ethiopian officials further argue that Ethiopia and Sudan were only implementing prior agreements signed on border demarcation and there are no land given away to Sudan as had been reported by some Medias.
The deputy prime minister further said that border issues with Sudan could be raised but the government of Ethiopia has the right and duty to keep and maintain the sovereignty of the nation.
He added that the major objectives of such accusations are to create a gap among top leadership; thereby, attempt to jeopardize nation’s development efforts.
Growing tourism industry adding tailwind to Horn of African country’s burgeoning economy. MORE than 96 million people are counted as Ethiopian, accounting for 1.3% of the total world population and making the country the 13th most-populated globally. The country is also as diverse as it is populated, home to cross-cultural civilisations from North Africa, sub-Saharan
JERUSALEM — A slender and boyish-looking Israeli soldier, wearing a skullcap and an army shirt with sleeves too long for him, has become the unlikely and unwitting face of an outburst of anger and violent protests that have shaken Israel.
But Demas Fikadey, a 21-year-old soldier of Ethiopian descent, said he did not see himself as a symbol or a hero.
He was heading home alone, in uniform, on April 26 when he was beaten by two Israeli police officers in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon, where he lives. The seemingly unprovoked assault, caught on video, was broadcast on national television and went viral on social networks, unleashing the pent-up rage of a young generation of Ethiopian-Israelis who have taken to the streets in recent days.
“It just happened to me,” Mr. Fikadey said in an interview Monday, more than a week after his assault and a day after thousands of demonstrators converged on Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to protest police harassment and the discrimination many Israelis of Ethiopian descent say they experience regularly.
The police said on Sunday that protesters pelted them with stones and bottles. The police responded with stun grenades and water cannons, and officers on horseback charged the crowds.
Fifty-six officers were injured, according to the police, and at least one remained hospitalized with moderate injuries on Monday. Several protesters were also wounded, and 43 were arrested. A smaller protest in Jerusalem last week also ended in fierce clashes.
Mr. Fikadey said he was opposed to violence, and as a soldier on active duty, he could not join the protesters. “But my heart is with them,” he said.
Mr. Fikadey came to Israel seven years ago from the Gojam region in Ethiopia. His father died before the family left for Israel, and his mother died a couple of years after their arrival, according to Selah, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that supports vulnerable immigrants and that has aided Mr. Fikadey and his four brothers.
In high school, Mr. Fikadey was one of eight outstanding students nationwide who won an annual leadership award. He now serves in the military as a computer technician.
On the same day he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an effort to help defuse the violent outbursts, Mr. Fikadey recounted the events that set off the initial protests. It was about 6:30 in the evening, he said, and he was on his way home from duty. He had gotten off his bicycle when a police officer stopped him and told him to turn around and go back, without any explanation. Mr. Fikadey said he did not know that the road on which he was traveling had been closed because of a suspicious object, and that police investigators had been called.
He said he waited for the police officer to get off his cellphone so that he could pass. But the officer threw Mr. Fikadey’s bicycle down and started to shove him. “When I asked him why he was pushing me, he began hitting me in the face,” Mr. Fikadey recounted.
A volunteer policeman came to help the officer, and Mr. Fikadey ended up on the ground. The officer later told his superiors that the soldier had hit him and thrown a stone at him, according to Mr. Fikadey’s lawyer.
“If it hadn’t all been caught on camera from beginning to end, I would be in some prison now,” Mr. Fikadey said.
Since the attack on Mr. Fikadey, many young Ethiopian-Israelis have shared their own tales of police harassment and brutality that they say are commonplace. Ethiopian leaders say the community also faces discrimination in housing, education and employment, painting a bleak picture of the group’s position in society 24 years after a mass airlift of descendants of an ancient Jewish tribe.
There are now about 135,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, less than 2 percent of the state’s population. But Ethiopians represent up to a third of youths in detention facilities, according to government reports, and have higher rates of poverty, unemployment, suicide, divorce and domestic violence.
Rabbinic authorities have offended Ethiopians by questioning their Jewishness and requiring conversion before approving weddings. Health officials prompted outrage in 1996 by dumping Ethiopians’ blood donations over fears of H.I.V. Schools have restricted Ethiopian enrollment.
In 2012, protests started after residents of four apartment buildings in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi vowed not to rent or sell to Ethiopians.
This year’s movement has been propelled in part by the parallels with African-American protests against police brutality in Baltimore; Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere.
Shlomo Molla, an Ethiopian-Israeli former member of Parliament, called for civil disobedience, including refusing to serve in the army or pay taxes until the situation improves.
“Ethiopians are demonstrating, but no one is giving the right answer, no one is hearing, no one wants to understand,” Mr. Molla said.
Israeli leaders have called for calm, and began on Monday to address the rising tensions.
Mr. Netanyahu convened meetings with Ethiopian-Israeli community leaders and officials from relevant government ministries. He held a separate, half-hour meeting with Mr. Fikadey that was also attended by the minister of internal security and the national police chief.
“I told the prime minister he must work to end racism and discrimination,” Mr. Fikadey said after the meeting. “We dreamed for so many years to come to Israel. He must work to solve the problem.”
Mr. Netanyahu posted on Twitter a photo of the two shaking hands and smiling. “I said to the soldier, ‘I was shocked by the pictures. We cannot accept this and we will change things,’ ” he wrote.
In a statement later Monday Mr. Netanyahu said, “We must all line up against racism, condemn it and work to eradicate it.” He said he would chair a ministerial committee to advance plans to resolve problems in education, housing, culture, religion, employment and in other areas.
President Reuven Rivlin of Israel said the protests by Ethiopian-Israelis had “revealed an open and raw wound at the heart of Israeli society,” but he condemned the violence that erupted the night before. “We must look directly at this open wound — we have erred, we did not look, and we did not listen enough,” said Mr. Rivlin, who has emerged as a leading advocatefor Israel’s Arab and other minorities during his first year in his largely ceremonial post.
Speaking in the Rose Garden, a park opposite the prime minister’s office, Mr. Fikadey said Mr. Netanyahu appeared informed about the situation and listened to what he had to say.
As he spoke, a group of schoolgirls, including several of Ethiopian descent, spotted the reluctant hero and ran up to him screeching, as if he were a rock star. Seeming to enjoy the attention, he spoke to them with quiet words meant to encourage and motivate them to serve their country.