They have just been given word that their years of waiting are over, and that soon they will make a 2,000-mile journey by land and air with what is probably the last wave of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel.

In doing so, they join generations of Jews who have immigrated to the Promised Land. But they are flying into the teeth of a dilemma that touches the heart of Israel’s founding philosophy.

For people like 48-year-old Abe Damamo, his wife and eight children, wrenching change awaits.

Like most Ethiopians with Jewish roots, they have come from the Gondar region of northern Ethiopia. Their remote village uses donkeys for transportation and has no bathrooms. Damamo has no formal education and speaks no language but his own.
He is moving to an industrialized democracy where he will have to learn Hebrew, master a cell phone, commute to work and find his place in a nation of immigrants from dozens of countries ranging from Argentina to Yemen, Australia to the United States.

But to him, being Jewish is all that matters. “I am so happy to go and live my religion,” he says through a translator.

Not everyone at the Israeli end is happy, however.

In the initial stages of an immigration that began three decades ago, all the Ethiopians immigrating to Israel were recognized outright as Jews. But those now seeking to make the trip are the so-called Falash Mura, whose ancestors converted to Christianity, the main Ethiopian faith, at the end of the 19th century to escape discrimination.
Initially Israel balked at accepting their claim of Jewishness, but relented after American Jews led a campaign for the Falash Mura.

Some 40,000 moved to Israel, a country of 7 million, joining the 80,000 already there. But their presence has touched off a fierce debate in Israel over where to draw the line.

Ethiopians with any hope, however faint, of eligibility for Israeli citizenship have descended on camps in the city of Gondar, scrambling to prove their Jewishness. Men in prayer shawls sway back and forth in makeshift synagogues and children in skullcaps sit on mud floors learning the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish holidays.

But centuries of intermarriage and a lack of documentation have made it extremely difficult to prove who is a Jew, and the group awaiting their flight to Israel last month were supposed to be among the last, because the Israeli government has decided that the influx must stop.

Those lucky enough to meet the criteria for immigration will have to undergo conversion to Orthodox Judaism after arriving in Israel.

Sixty-six-year-old Tegabie Jember Zegeye’s application was rejected long ago, his links to Judaism deemed too remote. But he has been living with his wife and five children in a Gondar camp for 10 years. He wears a skullcap and attends daily prayers and religion classes.

“When I left my village I didn’t think I would be here for 10 days,” he says, adding that he has close relatives in Israel who he feels are a part of him. “How can you split a man into two halves?”

He says he feels Jewish at heart. But when asked about his previous lifestyle, he replies: “I lived like a Christian, like all the Jews.”

Besides cutting to the heart of the age-old debate over who is a Jew, the dispute between the Israeli government and the American Jewish activists who finance the Gondar camps raises uncomfortable questions about a central tenet of Israel’s founding philosophy.

Israel’s Law of Return guarantees citizenship for any Jew in need, and these days the country is especially concerned about boosting its Jewish population to compete with the Arabs. But the Ethiopians have proved the hardest immigrant group to absorb, and the Falash Mura, some critics feel, is pushing the limits.

Like every other immigrant group, Ethiopian-Israelis have made their mark on the human mosaic of Jewish nationhood giving it top-notch soldiers, funky musicians, world-class athletes and two members of parliament. They also have a powerful backer, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party in the ruling coalition, which capitalizes on the Ethiopian vote.

The sun used to be his main enemy, but now he has others.

Mr. Mluge is an albino, and in Tanzania now there is a price for his pinkish skin.

“I feel like I am being hunted,” he said.

Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.

As the threats have increased, the Tanzanian government has mobilized to protect its albino population, an already beleaguered group whose members are often shunned as outcasts and die of skin cancer before they reach 30.

Police officers are drawing up lists of albinos in every corner of the country to better look after them. Officers are escorting albino children to school. Tanzania’s president even sponsored an albino woman for a seat in Parliament to show that “we are with them in this,” said Salvator Rweyemamu, a Tanzanian government spokesman.

Mr. Rweyemamu said the rash of killings was anathema to what Tanzania had been striving toward; after years of failed socialist economic policies, the country is finally getting development, investment and change.

“This is serious because it continues some of the perceptions of Africa we’re trying to run away from,” he said.

But the killings go on. They have even spread to neighboring Kenya, where an albino woman was hacked to death in late May, with her eyes, tongue and breasts gouged out. Advocates for albinos have also said that witch doctors are selling albino skin in Congo.

The young are often the targets. In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives.

Vumilia was like many other Africans with albinism. She had dropped out of school because of severe near-sightedness, a common problem for albinos, whose eyes develop abnormally and who often have to hold things like books or cellphones two inches away to see them. She could not find a job because no one would hire her. She sold peanuts in the market, making $2 a week while her delicate skin was seared by the sun.

When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.

“They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.

The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died.

Yusuph Malogo, who lives nearby, fears he may be next. He is also an albino and works by himself on a rice farm. He now carries a loud, silver whistle to blow for help.

“I’m on the run,” he said.

He is 26, but his skin is thick and leathery from sun damage, making him look 20 years older.

Many albinos in Tanzania are turning to the Tanzanian Albino Society for help. But the nonprofit advocacy group operates on less than $15,000 a year. That’s not enough for the sunscreen, hats and protective clothing that could save lives.

But they have. Even with record oil prices, some companies are hinting that they may leave as they grapple with the double squeeze of increasingly effective militant attacks and a government hungry to secure a larger slice of the oil profits.

Last week, militants in speedboats carried out their first notable attack on an oil facility in deep waters off the Nigerian coast, previously considered beyond their reach. The attack on a giant floating production, storage and off-loading vessel, known as an FPSO, some 120km (75 miles) out to sea, forced the operators, Royal Dutch Shell, to halt production from its Bonga oilfield, blocking off some 220,000 barrels per day of oil, or around 10% of Nigeria’s crude production.

Security had already emerged as the chief reason for the rapidly dwindling operations on land: Christophe de Margerie, boss of Total SA, says his company has been thinking twice about Nigeria because of the violence. Just to hammer that point home, hours after the Bonga attack, unidentified youths blew a hole in an onshore Chevron pipeline, cutting production by another 120,000 barrels a day. These two attacks ensured that oil prices stayed high at around $140 a barrel this week, dampening hopes raised at meeting in Saudi Arabia that an increase in Saudi production would bring the price down.

But it is not only the insurgents who are prompting the reassessment. It is Nigeria’s government. Its reinterpretation of contracts linked to the much more lucrative offshore blocks has in any event forced companies to take a hard look at the disadvantages of operating in Nigeria.

In late May, President Umaru Yar’Adua told his government to recoup $1.9 billion from Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell in revenue and taxes on offshore projects. The government accuses oil companies of reaping excessive profits and benefiting unfairly from agreements made with long-departed military regimes. But analysts who have seen the documentation say Mr Yar’Adua’s administration is rewriting the rules and applying them retroactively.

Several governments around the world have been openly changing the rules under which oil companies operate to get a bigger cut of the revenues. But the Nigerian government’s more “questionable reinterpretation” of oil contracts is a big worry, says a Lagos-based analyst.

Offshore production, mostly in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea, is highly lucrative for oil companies such as Shell and Exxon. Favourable offshore contracts yield about 20% profit to oil companies on every barrel, compared to only around $3 on an onshore barrel under a formula that is less affected by high oil prices. Shell said recently that the government’s actions have “potential implications” for investor confidence in Nigeria.

With oil companies making record profits, no one expects them to beat a retreat just yet. Much of the latest skirmishing is part of a larger dispute over the government’s reluctance to stump up its full share of investment in the joint ventures under which foreign firms operate. The companies are being squeezed by the government for money owed for the upkeep of the ageing infrastructure needed to keep the industry going. In a rare outbreak of harmony after weeks of quarrelling, the companies agreed to lend the government $3.5 billion, which it promises to invest in the joint ventures.

Still, Shell received another recent blow from the government when Mr Yar’Adua announced the cancellation of the company’s operating rights in an onshore region called Ogoniland. Shell ended its production there in 1993 after local protests culminated in the hanging of an environmental campaigner, Ken Saro-Wiwa, by the military regime of Sani Abacha. So this announcement was mainly symbolic.

Mr Yar’Adua’s motive may have been to exploit local anger against the oil industry and score some easy political points. He certainly needs some, having accomplished little else in his first year in office. This week his peace initiative for the Delta, already rejected by the most active militant group, suffered a further setback when another armed group said it would boycott a peace summit due next month.

None of this makes the climate friendly for foreign oil firms. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s normal production of 2.5m barrels a day is kept off the market by militant violence. In a seemingly hopeful development, Nigeria’s largest militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claimed responsibility for the Bonga attack, has called a “unilateral ceasefire” starting on June 25th. But this is not the first time MEND has called off attacks, and it remains opposed to government-organised peace talks. So world oil prices could soar again on the back of Nigeria’s instability.
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