Saving the Lost Tribe: The Rescue and Redemption of the Ethiopian Jews - Hardcover

Naim, Asher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345450817 ISBN 13: 9780345450814

Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

A portrait of the Falashas, Ethiopia's black Jews, describes their practice of a unique form of ancient Judaism, the peril and threatened annihilation they faced in 1991 at the hands of a brutal dictator, and efforts to rescue some fifteen thousand Falashas who were then flown to safety in Jerusalem.

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Asher Naim, an eminent Israeli diplomat, has served as the cultural attaché to Japan and the U.S. and the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Finland, South Korea and Ethiopia. As the founder of the Ethiopian Scholarship Fund for Ethiopian Jews, Naim raises money for young Ethiopians living in Israel who wish to attend college and graduate school.

Aus dem Klappentext

hree thousand years, the black Jews of Ethiopia known as the Falashas maintained their faith and their identity in the face of drought, famine, and tribal war. They were indeed the lost tribe, tracing their ancestry to King Solomon and the queen of Sheba. Then in May 1991, these Ethiopian Jews staged a miraculous exodus. With Ethiopia exploding around them in brutal civil war, some fourteen thousand Falashas were safely airlifted to Jerusalem by the Israeli air force over the course of twenty-five harrowing hours. Told by the Israeli ambassador who made it happen, this spellbinding book is the story of that incredible rescue as well as an extraordinary history of the Falashas, the remarkable people whose faith never waivered, even when confronted with enormous atrocities.

Asher Naim knew practically nothing about the Falashas when he was posted to Addis Ababa by the Israeli government in the fall of 1990, but he instantly found himself swept up in their plight. As rebel

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Bubot

November 11, 1990

The Peugeot 504 barreled through the pitted streets of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a blue-and-white Israeli flag flapping on its hood. I leaned into its plush backseat. Next to me was Uri Lubrani, a high-level Israeli official in the Ministry of Defense who had gotten me into this mess. The Peugeot plunged into a pothole, suspension rocking, and Lubrani shot me a doleful glance. Lubrani always looks like he's expecting the worst. I paid no attention. I had just arrived in Addis and would soon be meeting with President Mengistu Haile Mariam. Perhaps he was ready to permit the thousands of Beta Israel, the black Ethiopian Jews encamped in Addis, to emigrate to Israel. As the newly appointed Israeli ambassador, I had to conduct the hair-trigger negotiations for their release.

It was not a job I had wanted. I had just concluded a three-year posting in Finland, orchestrating the emigration of tens of thousands of Russian Jews from what was then the Soviet Union to Israel. I'd barely unpacked in my home in Jerusalem when I'd been reassigned. As a professional diplomat I'm accustomed to a whir of time zones, countries, and cultures. But I needed a break, and I'd been pushed into service yet again.

I wondered, fleetingly, why Lubrani had refused the ambassadorship. He loved the limelight. Saving Jews was always a

popular cause with the higher-ups with whom Lubrani loved to consort. Perhaps he'd declined because the risk of failure was high. Instead, he had chosen to oversee the operation, a role that would send him to Washington, his destination of choice. If the mission succeeded, he would hog the credit; if it failed, it would be my bones that would be broken into a million pieces, as we say in Hebrew--but not, God willing, in the way that had almost happened to my predecessor.

The Peugeot was almost brand-new, used for only six months by the last Israeli ambassador, Meir Yoffe. A Libyan operative (a terrorist with a diplomatic passport) had placed a briefcase bomb in the stall of a public bathroom in the Hilton where Yoffe was using the facilities. Fortunately the Libyans, as usual, botched the operation. The bomb exploded but Yoffe escaped unscathed.

He always used the stall they booby-trapped, but for some reason he had changed stalls that day, and it had saved his life. His nerves, however, were shot; he'd had enough of Ethiopia.

I rode through Addis, past peeling billboards of Mengistu and Lenin. The road was a mess. Mengistu had poured Ethiopia's resources into his army, the largest in Africa, and left the rest of the country to rot. Addis itself was a typical sub-Saharan African city--a huge village of huts, mud houses, shanties, and an occasional building. Soldiers in uniform picked their way through emaciated beggars, flies clustered around their lips and eyes. Barefoot women in long brightly colored robes walked with a swaying gait, baskets on their heads. Cars and scooters flew like bats out of hell, weaving around the donkeys, cattle, and sheep that roamed the streets.

"Run over a sheep, sir, and you must pay a hundred birr," said my driver Konata, a man to whom I'd taken an immediate liking. "The courts are full."

"Of dead sheep?"

"Yes, sir! But a pregnant sheep is 150 birr"--about twenty-five dollars.

"Nu?"

"So now every sheep is pregnant!"

We shared a laugh: Africa in a nutshell. I knew this because I was born and raised in Tripoli, and in the 1960s I had directed Israel's aid program in Africa. At that time I had been a great Africa enthusiast. We in Israel were convinced that Africa was the continent of the future. So rich in resources! So much promise! We saw the African independence movements of the 1960s as an immensely positive sign. They had cast off colonial shackles and forged national identities, just as we Jews had done in 1948. But by the time I came to Addis, like so many others, I was deeply disappointed. Corruption, greed, and selfishness had plagued Africa. On the surface (although I was to learn that this appearance was deceptive), Ethiopia was typical--rebels, poverty, famine, dictatorship, and disease.

We went straight to the ambassador's residence--a suite at the Hilton. A round-the-clock guard of Ethiopian soldiers had been posted outside my door. The government didn't want the Libyans pulling another Yoffe.

"Get rid of the bubot," said David, my chief of security. Bubot are dolls who do nothing.

David was in his late twenties, balding on top, wide as a door and silent on his feet. He carried a black Beretta strapped on his back just above the belt. We had plenty of weapons in Addis--Uzis hidden in a safe house and at the embassy. I had been trained in small arms before I came, a refresher course, really, since I had fought in the army and served in the reserves.

"No, no," I said. "I don't want to hurt their feelings."

"Feelings! What do their feelings have to do with your safety?"

This was fast becoming a typical Israeli argument. David's Hebrew had heated up and the Ethiopian guards were wide-eyed. What would have happened to them if they had rebuked a superior in such a tone? They had no idea what was coming next.

I laid my hand on David's arm and took him aside. "Just their presence will serve as deterrent. Don't argue with me on this."

He shook his head, unrepentant, and it wasn't long before I displeased him again. Yoffe's suite had been on the seventh floor, but I didn't want to rely on the elevator every time I wanted to go in or out. David fumed. I was too accessible, he argued. I overruled him.

I could see David was containing himself. He put his own security team of two men in place, members of our specially trained secret service. David wanted me to keep a pistol in my suite, but I said no. If there was a gun around, there was a chance that I'd use it. That was David's job, and I put my faith in him. All security people are a nudge. Wherever I go, I always sign a paper relieving them of responsibility if I'm blown up or shot. Then I do what I want.

My suite on the lower floor was comfortable--two bedrooms, two baths, sitting room, and kitchenette. In the midst of all the chaos, the Hilton was still a Hilton. My balcony looked out over the ten-foot-high wall that enclosed the hotel's grounds against the jumble of the city. Big mountains, green up their slopes, rose into the African sunset.

Darkness fell, and I went out on the lawns that stretched away into shadows of the flowering trees. David was at my side. The city murmured beyond the high walls. Empty tennis courts were lit up under blazing lights. No one swam in the heated pool; the smell of chlorine rose off its unruffled surface. Most foreigners had already jumped ship. The staff stood around doing nothing. I ordered a soda from one of the servers. A scooter backfired as she brought it and she cringed, the bottle dropping onto the grass. She retrieved it with a graceful curtsy and long, slender fingers.

I watched how she was startled at the slightest sound. Who would be rounded up, tortured, and shot by the army tonight? Who would be caught violating the citywide curfew? Guards in army uniforms, cradling rifles, were posted at the hotel gates. Their eyes slid over us toward the dark hills where defeat drew daily closer. Death squads, war, famine--interminable carnage. The wider world went on, oblivious to the misery and terror. But I could smell the fear.

two

Hoopalogia

A month earlier, on October 11, the phone had rung in my home in Jerusalem. My wife, Hilda, and I were unpacking, glad to be back from Finland. I had spent three years of duty as minister in the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., then...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ballantine Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345450817
• ISBN 13: 9780345450814
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 266
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar