💭 Ethiopian Jews Can’t Get The Same Embrace From Israel as Ukrainians
👉 Courtesy: Ynetnews
Opinion: Ukraine crisis is clear evidence of a racial imbalance in how the world responds to tragedies; while many open their doors to Europeans, few do so when it comes to refugees from Ethiopia, or other countries with populations of color
The past few days I couldn’t stop crying about the situation in Ukraine. Watching the news, reading articles and hearing reports took me to dark moments in my past. My heart broke to see people being victims again in a war that they did not choose to be part of.
I have watched videos of fathers saying goodbye to their children, mothers trying to save their babies. When I watch the news it invokes painful memories of my own childhood, of my family’s history. I don’t remember the experience of escaping civil war and famine in Ethiopia as a child. However, I heard and learned about it over the course of my childhood through my father, my family and my community. With the very limited information that I had, I began to piece together the true history of my people.
I only had a few years of happy home memories before everything changed forever. This was after my family and I escaped, in 1990, from a war-torn Ethiopia where Jews were targeted, and settled in Israel, in the town of Beit She’an. My fondest memories are of gathering around the dinner table, talking about our days and laughing at my father’s jokes. I was too young to realize the realities of being a refugee and the racism around me. I was in a naive reality, before the horrors of the world were to enter my life.
My father got sick when I was still very young. I was around 10 years old when I heard him cry for the first time. I didn’t understand why, but the more I listened carefully the more I started to hear him. He repeated one name so often that I had to ask someone in my family who it might be. It was his nephew, who was killed in front of my father by agents of the Derg junta as my father watched, unable to do anything to save him.
The world around me shattered. I learned that the world is a cruel place, and that there are people who are meant to suffer unfathomable things when they don’t deserve it because of disconnected leaders with selfish agendas.
I was overwhelmed and overjoyed, then, to see how the world came together in condemning and isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he is doing to Ukraine. The way Israel and the world acted so quickly to help Ukrainians to escape, and to help others to fight the war alongside them, was nothing short of extraordinary. When people started to advocate for Ukraine, I joined. I changed my profile picture on social media to the Ukrainian flag.
A few days later, however, someone from my Ethiopian community asked why I didn’t post the Ethiopian flag, when the government there has recently and regularly targeted civilians in a 16-month-old war against rebellious forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
I was ashamed. I had done what many white people do: I had brushed off what happened to my people, to Africa, to the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. Why does the survival of one country matter more than another’s? Why does one group of people have more value than another?
When I realized my mistake, I felt rage and the urge to do something about it. I started to do research, make phone calls, ask questions. I reached out to everyone I knew in order to find out more about what is happening in Ethiopia and what we are doing about it.
There is clear evidence of a racial imbalance in how we respond to tragedies, not just in Israel but throughout the world. Many countries have opened their doors to the Ukrainian people, but not to refugees from Ethiopia, or other countries with populations of color.
Despite a pledge to speed up its evacuations of some of the relatives of Ethiopian Israelis who remain in the country in the midst of an escalating civil war, the Israeli government seems to be making it more difficult for Ethiopian Jews to make it into Israel. Case in point: The Israeli High Court has frozen the planned entrance of 7,000-12,000 Ethiopians into the country for more than a month. Meanwhile, the same government is preparing to receive several thousand Jewish Ukrainians, and to take in 5,000 non-Jewish Ukrainian refugees.
Preventing these Ethiopians from entering Israel keeps them in harm’s way while their case gets reviewed by the High Court, and it’s all because of those in Israel who question the Jewishness of those individuals. Ukrainians of any faith are rushed in, while Ethiopians of Jewish heritage are kept out.
The Ukrainian conflict is a perfect example of the world’s hypocrisy. It shows how little Black and brown skin matters. The voices of other refugees aren’t shared on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. War in Ethiopia and other countries is not as appealing to the international media.
But it’s up to each one of us to be their voice. We’re seeing big companies, sports teams, celebrities and governments boycotting Russia and blocking Putin in every way they can. But my wish is that the world will also treat Black and dark-skinned people the way they treat those who are white. A world, for example, that won’t stand for border guards in a war-torn Ukraine preventing brown students from fleeing the country while allowing white Ukrainians to get out.
What is happening in Ukraine is appalling, and we should all absolutely unite to fight oppression and murder any time it happens, but we can’t only do this when it is appealing to our racial or economic biases. Ethiopia is worthy of our time; all suffering around the world is worthy of our time. If we cared about human life more than we care about oil and military spheres of influence and our own racial biases, there would be less suffering in this world.
Let’s be a megaphone for the voices that have been drowned out.
💭 Israel said barring Ethiopian Christian pilgrims from entering country
In letter cited by Israeli TV, immigration authorities tell tourism agencies not to let groups in over fears they won’t return home due to ongoing civil war
Israeli authorities have banned Ethiopian Christian pilgrims groups from visiting the country for the upcoming Easter holiday over fears they will not return home, Israeli television reported Sunday.
According to Channel 13 news, tourism agencies recently received a letter from the Population and Immigration Authority that said due to the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia, there were concerns “these tourists will not head back due to it.”
The letter also said that any Ethiopian who wishes to visit Israel must do so personally by contacting the authorities online.
The network noted Israel has not imposed any such restrictions on pilgrims from other countries.
Yossi Fatal, head of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association, wrote to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked to decry the policy as “severely discriminatory.” He said groups in Ethiopia have contacted Israeli officials in protest.
In response to the report, the population authority justified the policy, saying that “many tourist groups arriving from Ethiopia over the past years have indeed not returned and remained in Israel illegally.”
Competing regional powers have quietly backed Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia’s deadly conflict
👉 From The New Arab
The war that started in November 2020 as a conflict between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray Regional Government has turned the country into an arena where many regional and international powers are active.
Like a Pandora’s box suddenly opened, the conflict has borne many geopolitical surprises, but one of its most important ironies is the reported use of drones and weapons supplied by competing powers in the Middle East, who seem to have agreed on their support for Ethiopia’s government.
U A E, the first player
The United Arab Emirates (U A E) has intervened in the Ethiopian war since it began, with leaders from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) accusing Abu Dhabi of targeting Tigray an forces in November 2020 with drones stationed at its Assab military base in Eritrea.
In the wake of the Ethiopian withdrawal in the face of the advancing Tigray an forces in the summer of 2021, an Emirati air bridge supporting the government was monitored. This comprised more than 90 flights between the two countries in the period between September and November 2021.
Satellite images identified Emirati drones at Harar Meda Airport in Ethiopia and at a military base in Deirdawa in the east of the country.
The U A E’s intervention was an extension of its strategy to build an allied political and security system across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, most notably following Who Tea gains around Bab al-Mandab at the beginning of Yemen’s conflict.
Abiy Ahmed’s election as Ethiopia’s prime minister in 2018 further accelerated an alliance between Addis Ababa and Abu Dhabi.
That same year, the U A E-sponsored Eritrean-Ethiopia peace agreement pledged to support the Ethiopian treasury with three billion dollars, and made huge investments in various sectors.
From this perspective, the possibility of the Tigray ans seizing power in Addis Ababa was a threat to these political arrangements, and Emirati investments, especially since the TPLF view Abu Dhabi with hostility after its role in their first defeat in November 2020.
Turkish drones in the Habesha sky.
The visit of the Ethiopian prime minister to Ankara in August 2021 represented a turning point in the relationship between the two countries, which had become estranged in parallel with the development of Ethiopian ties with the U A E-Saudi axis.
During the visit, a package of agreements was signed that included “military cooperation”. Indeed, according to the Turkish Defence Industries Corporation, the value of Turkish military exports to Ethiopia increased from just $234,000 in 2020 to nearly $95 million in 2021.
Although in July 2021 the Turkish embassy in Addis Ababa denied that it had supplied drones to Addis Ababa, reports alleged the participation of Bayraktar TB2 drones in military operations in Ethiopia’s conflict after Ahmed’s visit to Ankara, which were not denied by either side this time.
This development is an extension of the Turkish approach in the region described by Jason Moseley, a Research Associate at the African Studies Centre at Oxford University. “Turkey has adopted an interventionist attitude in the regional crisis, with the consequent rebalancing between soft and hard power in favor of the latter,” he wrote last year.
In fact, Turkey saw drone support for the Ethiopian government as a strategic gain, bolstering its reputation in the African military and security market after it had proven its success in an African war arena, with growing demand for this type of weapon.
Ankara’s participation also indicates that Turkish construction companies could make a significant contribution to the reconstruction of infrastructure in the areas destroyed by the war
Preventing Ethiopia from sliding into a civil war protects Ankara’s large investments inside the country and ensures that the ensuing chaos does not spread into neighbouring Somalia, the most important centre of Turkish influence in the African continent.
Additionally, Turkish support for the Ethiopian government appears to be a strategic necessity due to Ankara’s fears of the Tigray ans, who Ethiopia has accused of being supported by Egypt.
In this sense, Ankara’s ties with Ethiopia are related to the exchange of support between the two countries, which is taking place in the context of their conflict with Egypt.
Iran seeks an opportunity
In a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, on 7 December 2021, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael accused Iran, along with the UAE and Turkey, of providing the Ethiopian army with weapons, including drones.
Prior to that, the US government had accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) of providing drones to Ethiopia, and on 29 October 2021, sanctions were issued by the US Treasury Department.
According to investigative websites, Iranian drones have been seen in Ethiopia and 15 flights from two airlines linked to the IRGC have been monitored from Iran to the Harar Meda military base in Ethiopia.
Both the Iranian and Ethiopian governments have not yet commented on these reports.
The sharp dispute between Ethiopia and the United States over the war in Tigray, and Washington’s continuous pressure on Ahmed’s government, who has framed the conflict as a colonial attack on Ethiopia’s unity, has apparently brought Tehran and Addis Ababa closer.
Iran sees the Ethiopian PM’s need for military equipment as an opportunity to expand its strategic presence in a country that is historically an ally of the United States and Israel.
This level of Iranian engagement demonstrates the importance of the Ethiopian arena for Tehran, and indicates Iran’s desire to enter the burgeoning military and security market in Africa.
However, the most important prize for Tehran is a return to Ethiopia, which is situated close to Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa, after losing its influence in recent years with allies Eritrea and Sudan following Emirati-Saudi pressure, and the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime in Khartoum after popular protests.
Ultimately, all three powers are trying to exploit a moment of Ethiopian weakness to create or consolidate their influence.
The weight and extent of their involvement are best indicated, perhaps, by consultations the US envoy to the Horn of Africa, which has historical influence in Ethiopia, has been having with Middle Eastern capitals to try to find a solution to the Ethiopian crisis.
Your rulers are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.
In Addis Ababa, African Union vows to save Palestinian Asians from Israelis in the Middle East but not Tigrayan Africans from hunger and Evil Abiy Ahmed regime’s airstrikes right there in Ethiopia. 😠😠😠 😢😢😢
Last week, Human Rights Watch called on African leaders meeting in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, between February 5 and February 6, for the African Union summit, to urge Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali to release thousands of Tigrayans being held across the country. They should also use their time in Africa’s second most populous nation to address “rampant abuses occurring in the conflict in Ethiopia.
Last week, Human Rights Watch called on African leaders meeting in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, between February 5 and February 6, for the African Union summit, to urge Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali to release thousands of Tigrayans being held across the country. They should also use their time in Africa’s second most populous nation to address “rampant abuses occurring in the conflict in Ethiopia.
The human rights organization noted that during the first two weeks of January, at least 108 civilians were killed in government airstrikes in Tigray, including 59 in a January 7 airstrike on an internal displacement site.
“And while the government has released some detainees in recent weeks, thousands of Tigrayans arbitrarily detained under the country’s sweeping state of emergency remain in informal and formal detention sites,” it wrote.
💭 African Union Meets Amid Concerns Over Palestine but not Africa
💭 Investigate War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide in Tigray Now
❖ When victims remain silent they create the illusion that the atrocities are not widespread – and are often reversed or projected.
😈The following entities and bodies are helping the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali:
☆ The United Nations
☆ The European Union
☆ The African Union
☆ The United States, Canada & Cuba
☆ Russia
☆ China
☆ Israel
☆ Arab States
☆ Southern Ethiopians
☆ Amharas
☆ Eritrea
☆ Djibouti
☆ Kenya
☆ Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Egypt
☆ Iran
☆ Pakistan
☆ India
☆ Azerbaijan
☆ Amnesty International
☆ Human Rights Watch
☆ World Food Program (2020 Nobel Peace Laureate)
☆ The Nobel Prize Committee
☆ The Atheists and Animists
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
💭 Even those unlikely allies like: ‘Israel vs Iran’, ‘Russia + China vs Ukraine + The West’, ‘Egypt + Sudan vs Iran + Turkey’, ‘India vs Pakistan’ are all united now in the Anti Zionist-Ethiopia-Conspiracy. This has never ever happened before it is a very curios phenomenon unique appearance in world history.
💭 I believe this earthquake is The Almighty God-Egziabher’s wrath announcement-sign! The Ark of The Covenant is doing Its JOB! It’s just the beginning.
❖❖❖ [Revelation 11:15–19] ❖❖❖
🎺 The Seventh Trumpet
“Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and she shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 15, 2021
The UAE is running a huge airlift arming an Ethiopian regime committing mass atrocities in Tigray. That inhumane adventurism is a strategic problem for Israel, too
The Abraham Accords gave Israel new leverage across the Arab world. Israel has new allies, notably the United Arab Emirates. It’s now vital to examine what these allies might be doing — especially when they contradict the founding values of the State of Israel.
Genocide scholars are sounding the alarm over Ethiopia, where the UAE is arming the government. Emirati-supplied weapons are encouraging Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to go all out for a military solution, which risks mass ethnically-targeted violence.
Israel should stop its new ally before a blunder becomes a crime.
The war in Ethiopia broke out last year, pitting the Ethiopian government and its allies—Eritrea and Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state—against the Tigray region. All sides share responsibility for the war. Once it began, the Ethiopian government chose to fight with unspeakable brutality against Tigrayan civilians.
I receive daily calls from Tigrayans. My instinctive greeting, by now, is to offer condolences. Every single caller has lost a family member, often in one of the 260 documented massacres. I don’t ask about the daughters, sisters and mothers who have been raped. I hear about deaths from disease, of people who cannot get medicine because the hospitals were ransacked. I hear about children and their mothers perishing from hunger, because food was looted and plow oxen slaughtered.
This suffering is unseen. Journalists are forbidden from travelling to Tigray. The few aid workers let in work under a rigidly enforced code of silence.
Faced with imminent annihilation, Tigrayans rallied and fought back. Last June, they defeated the Ethiopian army and reoccupied their region. The government imposed a starvation siege: only about ten percent of the needed emergency aid has been allowed to get through.
Today the Tigrayan people are facing an even greater threat. Abiy Ahmed has rallied his supporters around a campaign of blatant ethnic hostility. They portray the Tigrayans as a “cancer,” “weeds,” “daylight hyenas” and “rats.” One of Abiy’s leading supporters was videotaped saying that they should be destroyed with the “utmost cruelty.”
Local militia and vigilantes are mobilized to the front line. They also instructed to patrol their own neighborhoods, far from the front line, to identify “enemies”—in practice, any Tigrayan. At least 40,000 Tigrayan civilians are believed to be held in internment camps and police stations in and around the Ethiopian capital.
Anyone who speaks of peace is hounded. A singer, Tariku Gankisi, was asked to perform at a rally, and he deviated from the script, telling the crowd, “This is no time for singing, there is nothing to sing about.” He called for peace. His microphone was shut off and the official media rounded on him, trying to force him to grovel and apologize.
Prominent elders of the peacemaking community, academics and businesspeople have also been targeted for online vilificationand real life intimidation for standing for peace or reaching out for dialogue with the opposition.
Among Tigrayans, I hear the sentiment that Ethiopia no longer wants them, and in turn they no longer want to be part of Ethiopia.
International efforts to negotiate a political solution are getting no traction. Efforts by the African Union, Kenya and the United States have been rebuffed. The Tigrayans say that they cannot trust Abiy. For his part, Abiy promises he will crush Tigray.
Abiy is emboldened by the weapons he has obtained on a global arms-buying spree. His supplies include the usual suspects—China, Russia, Ukraine and eastern European countries that manufacture small arms—and also Turkey and Iran. His most significant supplier has been the UAE, which is running a massive airlift of lethal equipment, including drones.
The UAE is a newcomer to the Horn of Africa. It sees opportunities for investment in agriculture and ports, and wants to make Ethiopia part of its security perimeter in the western Indian Ocean. Abu Dhabi was the sponsor of the peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, which won Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel committee didn’t give Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki a share in the award, because he is a totalitarian despot who runs his country like a personal fiefdom. Isaias didn’t mind. He got what he wanted, which was a security pact against Tigray — whose leaders had run Ethiopia for the previous quarter century and had fought a war against him.
It seems that when Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed hosted Isaias and Abiy, he promised them ongoing financial and military support. He is certainly fulfilling that promise to Abiy, even though in doing so he is defying the U.S. policy of trying to de-escalate the Ethiopian war in favor of a negotiated peace.
The UAE belatedly reconsidered its support for proxies and its air campaigns in the wars in Libya and Yemen, but not before irreparable damage had been done to those countries. It should not have to re-learn this lesson at the expense of Ethiopia. With 110 million people, characterized by significant ethnic and religious diversity, the collapse of the country would be a calamity of surpassing size.
Israel should be worried. It has ties to Ethiopia dating back to the time of Emperor Haile Selassie. It has a deep connection to the country’s historic Jewish community, the Beta Israel. It has a security interest in a country strategically positioned at the southern end of the Red Sea arena, neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
Over the years Israel has cut deals to secure its strategic interests, and to get Ethiopia to allow its Jews to emigrate. Thirty years ago, during the last months of the communist military regime, Israel reportedly supplied munitions to the Ethiopian air force in return for expediting Operation Solomon which airlifted out 39,000 Beta Israel. Recently, as the Red Sea arena has become a theater of strategic rivalries and turmoil, Israel has kept a close eye on possible threats in the region, including militant groups.
And with the Abraham Accords, Israel is becoming a partner to bin Zayed’s adventurism. In Washington DC and European capitals, Israeli and Emirati diplomats work hand in glove. The allies are building a new security architecture for the region — which is also giving the Emiratis a free pass when they go rogue.
Emirati arms may save Abiy Ahmed’s government, but, as we have seen from Libya and Yemen, saving a government may come at the cost of losing a functioning state. That could destabilize the Horn of Africa for an entire generation.
Worse still, knowingly or not, the UAE is abetting an Ethiopian regime committing mass atrocities that are escalating by the day. The warning sirens of genocide are blaring, loudly.
Israel took a moral stand against genocide in Rwanda and Darfur. It must act now when Tigrayans face that hideous prospect. It should tell its new-found ally in Abu Dhabi to stop, now, in the name of humanity.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 7, 2021
💭 A terrible storm hits Antalya, Turkey – which is waging a NATO green-lighted Drone Jihad – unleashing war crimes against the two most ancient Christian nations of the world: Armenia and Ethiopia