In order to further mislead the international public opinion and to convince the world community of the sufferings and the woes of the Jews living outside Israel, the Hebrew state carried out an operation in the Horn of Africa under which it repatriated a few thousands Falasha Jews. By doing so, Israel intended to prove its humanism. As is always the case, the US took over the responsibility of lifting the Falasha Jews from Ethiopia to Israel.
Several commentators and analysts have eloquently described the operation as nothing but a cheap manoeuvre with which Israel aimed to attract international publicity. This fact was revealed to the public by the secretariat staff of the White House, who exposed the content of the official memo sent by Tel Aviv to former US president, Ronald Reagan, in which the Israelis requested Washington to stop airlifting more Falashas to Israel.
In their memo the Israelis requested the former president to stop the influx of Falasha Jews to Israel so that the pure Jewish society may not be polluted by Black Jews. We believe that the American public is very much aware of the suffering of the Blacks, who were forcibly taken from their homes in Africa to the US for purely economical reasons.
What supports the content of this letter is that the suffering of the Abyssinian Falashas started the moment they landed in the "Promise(sic) Land." They were frustrated by the humiliating bureaucratic procedures which confined their activities to low and marginal jobs. In fact, these humiliating procedures have never been applied to any of the White Jews who migrated to Israel.
Owing to this ethnic suppression, the Abyssinian Falashas organised a demonstration to protest the maltreatment by the Israeli government against them. What aggravated and widened this conflict was the news published by the Haaretz newspaper that the Israeli health authorities had eliminated the blood donated by the Falashas under the pretext that their blood may be contaminated by the AIDS virus despite all the statistical reports indicating that the American Jews who migrated to Israel, are more affected by this fatal disease than the Falashas.
In reaction to this, the Falashas appealed to the Israeli health authorities to carry out blood test on the blood they donated before eliminating it, but their request was rejected by the Israeli government. When the Israeli riot police restored order, the Israeli government made a statement in which it denied any ethnic prejudice behind the elimination of their blood.
As it is said that the guilty can convict themselves, the Israeli government could not present any proof that the Ethiopian Jews' blood contained the AIDS virus. Hence it could not convince the demonstrators that racial discrimination was not intended by destroying the blood they donated.
Their non-conviction in the Israelis measures made the Falasha leaders in Israel accuse the Israeli government of practising racial discrimination against them, and depicting them in the Israeli society as an element presenting a health hazard, especially after the Israeli National Blood Bank confirmed in a press report that the bank always get rid of all the blood that is donated by the Ethiopians without informing them, so that they may not be embarrassed.
During the massive demonstration in front of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres' office, Addiso Miselli, one of the Falasha leaders in Israel, said, "We cannot accept that racists should occupy senior posts in Israel and this matter necessitates the resignation of Health Minister Ephraim Sneh."
Peres replied that the Israeli government would
continue to get rid of any racial discrimination against the
Falashas so that they could become citizens enjoying full rights
of a citizen "and all of you here in the promised land feel you
are among brothers in religion and citizenship."