By JOSEPH FEIT, For The Bulletin

Photo by Irene Fertik (www.irenefertik.com)

In Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, Ruth Eglash, reporting on the aliyah (immigration to Israel) conference in Ashdod, noted that, “ braving the pouring rain … hundreds of immigrants from the local Ethiopian community gathered outside to protest the government’s failure to approve for aliyah some 9,000 Falash Mura still waiting in Ethiopia.”

Ms. Eglash’s reference to “the pouring rain” brought back painful memories of a rainy day, over 10 years ago, when I first truly grasped the awful magnitude of the tragedy that continues to devastate the Jews remaining in Ethiopia and their Israeli relatives.

My daughter Rebecca and I visited the children’s cemetery in Abba Antonios, Ethiopia, during the spring of 1999, 18 months after its establishment by the Jewish community. In the interim, the death rate among the 7,000 Ethiopian Jews in Gondar — a province in northwestern Ethiopia — had risen dramatically due to heavy immigration from outlying Jewish villages and the lack of even minimal health care. The unexpected influx overwhelmed the already strained medical resources of the local government.  The Jews came to Gondar because of the Israeli consulate. Even though it was normally closed, the Jews hoped for an opportunity to submit applications to immigrate to Israel. Thousands of their family members had already made aliyah in the glorious airlifts of 1984 and 1991 known as Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991). Tragically, many families were split when the airlifts ended abruptly.

By the time I returned to Gondar in the fall of 1999, this time with my son Jeremy, hundreds of these internally displaced refugees had clawed a serpentine dirt path to the cemetery, using their hands and crude wooden implements. Jeremy caught a small break; the new path reduced the climb to 20 minutes. On my spring trip, the cemetery was a vigorous hour-long climb up a steep boulder-strewn hill.

The children were carried uphill on litters, which were still visible on many of the graves. The litters were made of short branches bound by vines; the close placing of the cross bars — really several stout twigs tied together or a narrow piece of cloth — evidenced how small and vulnerable the children had been. The leaves on a dozen or so of the litters were still green; presumably these litters had been used most recently. There were no tombstones. However, each one of the 200 or so graves had been covered by a small pile of rocks to deter foraging animals. The graves mutely testified that something had gone very wrong.

The size of the cemetery did not reflect the enormity of the tragedy. Infants — and there were many — were not buried in the cemetery; they were buried close to home. Most of the deaths were avoidable. Community death records were replete with references to measles and dehydration. The death rate plummeted once Jewish relief organizations belatedly, started to provide food and medical care. The government of Israel, to this day, has not provided any humanitarian aid.

Business was booming. By my second trip in the autumn of 1999, the cemetery was no longer exclusively devoted to children. Its client base had broadened; adults were buried alongside the children. The old Jewish cemetery in the village of Woleka, a few miles away, could no longer be used for the adults; a number of bodies had been washed downstream when the adjoining river overran its banks. The proximity of the larger graves of the adults to the smaller graves of the children re-emphasized the horror of the situation, adding an extra element of pathos.

These deaths, and those which have continued over the ensuing decade, were not the intentional sins of evil men with callous hearts. But they were and continue to be unpardonable sins of omission. The State of Israel has failed to live up to the Zionist ideal of ingathering, as expeditiously as possible, all Jewish exiles; the American Jewish community, the richest community in Jewish history, has failed to assist adequately a sister Diaspora community in distress.

However, this is not only a saga of grief and despair. It is also a story of endurance and triumphant redemption. To the enduring honor of the Jewish State, over twenty five thousand Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel since my 1999 trip — though only after years of unnecessary suffering. The tears of raw grief, which flowed at the Gondar cemetery, contrast vividly with tears of jubilation at Israeli absorption centers when families, painfully separated for many years, are finally reunited. The children don’t think about Ethiopia during these reunions. Their suffering is a mere wisp of memory, rapidly receding, a distant barely remembered nightmare. But like the worst nightmares, those memories are only submerged and often return in later life. Some wounds never completely heal.

The hundreds of immigrants who stood in the pouring rain in Ashdod were acting in the noblest of Jewish traditions, speaking truth to power.  But is anyone listening? To this very day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to even allow cabinet debate on Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s proposed government resolution to permit the aliyah of the 9,000 Ethiopian Jews still in Gondar.  Clearly, his attention is absorbed by important matters of state, including Israel’s relationship with the United States.

The American Jewish community still does not feed even the Ethiopian Jewish children under the age of six, almost half of whom suffer from malnutrition that can lead to permanent mental and physical impairments.

The lives of the children already buried in Abba Antonios cannot be restored. But it is not too late to redeem the Jews who still remain in Ethiopia, the Jews who have been left behind.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Joseph Feit is a human rights lawyer, practicing in New York and serves as counsel to the international law firm of Simpson Thacher and Bartlett.

Source : http://thebulletin.us/