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At week's end the logistical details of the operation remained sketchy. It is believed, however, that a Belgian charter company, Trans European Airways, has been flying Boeing 707s to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, picking up the Falashas and flying them to Israel via Brussels and other cities in Western Europe. Israel faces considerable problems in assimilating its new Ethiopian residents. Even though their numbers are not great enough to strain school budgets or the job market, the Falashas' presence has triggered racial tension. Last month the city of Eilat (pop. 20,000) refused at first to provide a group of the newcomers with water and electricity. "We don't want blacks here," one municipal official said.
Matters are complicated by the blacks' religious practices, which differ from those of most Jews. They believe in the Torah, the basic Jewish Scriptures, observe the Sabbath and dietary laws, and are circumcised. The Talmud, Jewish law and its interpretation, seems never to have reached them, however, because of their geographic isolation. The issue of whether the Ethiopians are even Jews was not settled in Israel until 1972. That was when Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef decreed that the Falashas are "undoubtedly of the tribe of Dan," the inhabitants of the biblical land of Havileh in what is today the southern Arabian Peninsula. A government committee later decided that the Ethiopians are covered by Israel's Law of Return, which permits all Jews to become citizens upon arriving in Israel.
The Ethiopians have arrived in abysmally poor condition. Said one Israeli involved in the resettlement program: "They are coming here less than ill clothed, less than ill fed and without homes. We have had to start from scratch." In fact, some arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport carrying nothing but water pails, cherished possessions in drought-stricken Sudan and Ethiopia. Many suffer from malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, jaundice, typhus and tapeworm. "I had to go back to my textbooks to look up some of these diseases," said an Israeli doctor.
Many Israelis take pride in the Ethiopians' presence. Says David Hartman, director of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies in Jerusalem: "Jews can be yellow, black, whatever. The Falashas are here because our people are defined by Abraham's covenant and not because someone ate gefilte fish." Declares a government official: "We can only gain from showing the world the extent to which we are willing to go to rescue Jews. The rescue mission is a national achievement of the highest order."