Aliyah from Ethiopia

A year after the first letter was sent, Daniel Ben Hananiah and his son were sent by the Kahen to Jerusalem and made contact with the Jewish leaders there.

[1] In a letter written by Abba Zaga of Beta Israel to Jerusalem, the Kahen speaks on their wish to return to Zion: Peace be upon you Hebrew brothers.

[3] German-born missionary Johann Martin Flad reported in 1874: "Once I met a monk, Abba Mehari, who was convinced that the time was coming when the Lord would gather them the Jews of all peoples, and bring them into the land of their ancestors.

[4] In 1973, the Israeli Ministry of Absorption prepared a comprehensive report on the Beta Israel ethnic group (the historical name of the Israelite Ethiopian community), which stated that the Falasha were foreign in all aspects to the Jewish nation.

[6] Goren did not, however, issue an official statement, claiming that Kook's 1921 letter calling for Jews across the world to "save their Falasha brothers" was still a relevant decree.

[6] Ovadia Yosef's Halakha ruling ended with the Law of Return being applied to Ethiopian Jews,[5] notwithstanding the Ministry of Absorption report.

As a result of the difficulties of the journey and bad conditions, hundreds and possibly even thousands of Beta Israel Ethiopians died on the way to the Sudanese camps.

Operation Moses ended on Friday, January 5, 1985, after Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres held a press conference confirming the airlift while asking people not to talk about it.

Sudan killed the airlift moments after Peres stopped speaking, ending it prematurely as the news began to reach their Arab allies.

They are admitted entrance to Israel, although not as Israelites, thus enabling the Israeli government to set quotas to their immigration and make citizenship dependent on Orthodox conversion to modern Judaism.

[29] The biggest concentrations of the Ethiopians Beta Israel are in the cities Beersheba, Dimona, Mitzpe Ramon, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Lod, Ramla, Or Yehuda, Jerusalem, Netanya, Kiryat Malakhi.

A report carried out by the Bank of Israel in 2006 gave cause for concern regarding the absorption of the Ethiopian community to Israeli society: The Bank of Israel report also highlights mistakes made by the government in its attempt to integrate Ethiopian immigrants into mainstream Israeli society, despite the estimated 400,000 NIS spent per immigrant.

The report recommended that measures be taken to encourage immigrants to disperse around the country, rather than remain concentrated in the small communities in which they were initially placed.

Lastly, the report recommended that greater emphasis be placed on providing professional training to Ethiopian immigrants and that affirmative action be considered to aid their inclusion in public service jobs.