Former MK Neguise’s candidacy as ambassador to Ethiopia stirs up his ‘missionary’ past
Within an Ethiopian-Israeli community fractured along religious lines, the former lawmaker’s nomination is refocusing attention on his little-known Christian chapter
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
In a 2018 interview (Hebrew) for the Knesset website, Avraham Neguise offered an abbreviated version of the remarkable story of his immigration to Israel.
“In 1985 I immigrated to Israel, due to Zionism, from Ethiopia through India, and settled in Jerusalem,” said Neguise, a former lawmaker whom many regard as a symbol of excellence amid the perceived disenfranchisement affecting his community.
Last month, Neguise, 65, who holds a doctorate in education, reached another milestone: He was tapped to serve as Israel’s next ambassador to Ethiopia.
This nomination to serve in one of Israel’s key allies in Africa is refocusing attention within Neguise’s community on little-known elements of his biography that he rarely discusses, and had left out of the Knesset video: For years, even after he arrived in Israel, he worked for Christian organizations, including one whose mission is proselytizing among Jews.
The episode, which some Ethiopian-Israelis regard as a scandal, is connected to a broader divide separating the two major segments of Ethiopian-Israelis, a community of about 100,000 people. They are split more or less evenly between those with ancestors who had converted to Christianity, known as Falash Mura, and those whose ancestors had not, called Beta Israel.
Controversially, Neguise (pronounced neh-go-zah), who counts himself a member of Beta Israel, has played a decisive role in bringing to Israel tens of thousands of Falash Mura.
“In this regard, his missionary work continues. He does not represent real Ethiopian Jews,” Avraham Yerdai, a former vice chair of the Union of Ethiopian Jews, the community’s main umbrella group, told The Times of Israel this month.
Neguise, who has not replied to this reporter’s requests for an interview or comment, has in the past said that his work for missionaries was strictly about employment.
People who know Neguise well say that he leads an observant Jewish lifestyle.
But in 1981, Neguise identified as a Christian who was afraid of being forced to become Jewish in a letter viewed by The Times of Israel that he signed under his patronymic, Beyyene, written to a missionary named Roger Cowley, founder of a British group called the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People, or CMJ.
“Because I have become a Christian, although I am of Jewish descent, they do not take much care of me,” Neguise wrote to Cowely in 1981 from the Atlit absorption center in Israel, which is only open to immigrants or Jews who are applying for immigration.
In the letter, Neguise added that he had heard a “rumor that before long they will ask us to enter the Jewish faith.” He added: “I am very afraid of this. I want to remain a Christian.” Neguise signed multiple letters with the addition: “Your son in Christ.”
Neguise left Israel in 1982 and was sent by CMJ for training in the United Kingdom and India. Neguise signed a letter on CMJ stationery to Kindernothilfte, a German aid group, assuring it he would return to work for it in Ethiopia after the India stint of his training.
Neguise, who says he is a Beta Israel Ethiopian Jew, returned to Israel in 1985 and made aliyah from Ethiopia.
In a 2003 interview with the Maariv daily, Neguise, who has two children and lives in Jerusalem, acknowledged that he had worked for Christian missionaries, but said that this association ended in 1985. He claimed that history was being used against him to block his efforts to help Falash Mura Ethiopians immigrate to Israel.
“In the Diaspora, Jews work for all kinds of institutions, usually not Jewish, and since I worked with Christians I used their terminology,” he told Maariv in 2003. “I consider myself an observant Jew,” he said. “I don’t see why we need to bring up history from decades ago.”
Internal power struggle?
The renewed focus on Neguise’s past is part of an internal power struggle, according to Uri Perednik, a former aide from Neguise’s stint as a Likud Knesset member from 2015 to 2019: The history of his employment is again hitting headlines while Ethiopia’s foreign ministry or President Sahle-Work Zewde need to ratify Neguise’s posting for it to come into effect.
“He’s a true champion of the cause of Ethiopian Jewry and marginal voices in the community are using his distant past to attack him,” Perednik said.
Neguise is considered a major Likud asset for his ability to garner votes for the party within his community, people who know his political work have said. Neguise is also regarded as a close ally of Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem, a key supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Perednik described Neguise as a passionate speaker and activist, “but what impressed me most about him was how closely he listened. After each political rally, people from the community would come to him with problems and issues. He’d stay and listen for as long as necessary. Then he tried to use his power to help,” Perednik said.
Micha Feldmann, the first envoy sent to Ethiopia by the Jewish Agency for Israel, told The Times of Israel that Neguise had told him in the past that working for missionaries was a “mistake” that he “regrets.” In a letter he sent in the 1990s, Feldman expressed opposition to using Neguise as an interpreter in Ethiopia, citing reports he had proselytized among Jews there, Maariv reported (Hebrew link). Feldman last month said that he does not recall raising such objections.
To Neguise’s opponents, his Christian affiliation from 40 years ago add to their distrust of his successful lobbying (Hebrew link) for bringing to Israel some 50,000 Falash Mura, people who identify as descended from Jewish ancestors who had been forcibly converted to Christianity in the 1800s as that religion took hold as Ethiopia’s predominant faith.
The Falash Mura’s arrival in Israel began in the 1990s, after the arrival in the 1980s of Beta Israel Ethiopians. Beta Israel community members take pride in adhering to Jewish traditions for more than 2,600 years.
Waves of immigration by Falash Mura, who are not universally recognized as Jewish, have continued, the last one occurring last year. This has boosted their numbers, which now match those of Beta Israel.
“It created not only a split in the community but concerns about its long-term viability as a Jewish one,” said Ayanawo Ferada Senebato, an Ethiopian-born journalist and conservative politician who is critical of Neguise. “The ancestors of Ethiopian Jews who left Ethiopia not to assimilate are now in danger of assimilating in Israel because of some Falash Mura,” he said.
Senebato acknowledged that some Falash Mura are connected to their Jewish roots and have a genuine desire to return to Judaism’s fold. “But others go to church here in Israel. It’s a disaster for Ethiopian Jewry,” he said.
Last year, data obtained from the Population and Immigration Authority suggested that more than two-thirds of some 5,000 Falash Mura who immigrated to Israel between 2020 and 2022 identified as Christians.
Cries of racism
The data, published by the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, a conservative nongovernmental organization, contrast with the narrative of proponents of Falash Mura immigration, including Neguise, who say they are essentially Jews. In a 2016 interview for Channel 99, he said that reluctance about allowing Falash Mura to immigrate to Israel “cannot be described as anything other than racism.”
Leaders of Ethiopian Jewry in Israel have often protested perceived racism against their demographic, which they say manifests itself in police brutality and discrimination, including in the years-long refusal of Israel’s bank blood to use their donations for fear of disease. This practice was banned only in 2017.
When it comes to immigration, Neguise and other Falash Mura advocates often note that some years, most immigrants from the former Soviet Union are also not Jewish. Opposing Falash Mura immigration while allowing non-Jewish Russian speakers to immigrate is unfair and racist, they say.
But Senebato and others say this is a false equivalence because the Russian speakers immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their relatives. Falash Mura don’t qualify under that law. They immigrate under a government decree, and only if they commit to undergoing a government-supervised Orthodox conversion to Judaism.
The first Flash Mura immigrants came following pressure by Beta Israel Ethiopians in Israel with Falash Mura relatives. Each wave of Falash Mura arrivals created more split families and fueled further pressures, including at protest rallies, by the newcomers who sought to bring over to Israel relatives – including children and parents — they had left behind in Ethiopia. Many, like Neguise, accused Israel of racism when it failed to accommodate their demands.
Senebato dismisses this allegation. “When Israel doesn’t want to bring in Falash Mura, it is being consistent with its purpose as the Jewish state,” he said. “The only racism here is working in their favor. Israel would never let in Moldovans, Romanians or Turks. But because they’re black and accuse it of racism, the government folds each time.”
Thousands of Falash Mura await permission to come to Israel in Addis Ababa and Gondar, where their community has a synagogue, operating under a large corrugated metal shed. The community is funded in part by the Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry, a US-based charity that has received funding or assistance from the Jewish Agency for Israel, JDC, and the Jewish Federations of North America.
In the 2018 interview for the Knesset website, Neguise described an immigrant’s duality — a source of various frustrations, but a possible aid to his work as an ambassador.
“My behavior and thinking is determined by where I grew up, back in Ethiopia,” Neguise said. “My children are more Israeli, with their Israeli pushiness. I don’t have it in me, because my mentality keeps pulling me back.”
