Then IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi meets with Ethiopian-Israeli officers, July 28, 2019. Photo: Courtesy.

Last month, the State of Israel took the courageous step of announcing, with great fanfare, that they would be bringing in all the remaining B’nai Menashe from India. Jerusalem also ruled that it would not bring in Jews from Ethiopia because there are “no eligible individuals.”

After October 7, many people believed that the divides in Israel had melted: secular and religious, right and left, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, veteran Israelis and new immigrants.

But one divide did not melt — the plight of the segment of Jews who are still stuck in Ethiopia.

Few cases expose this inconsistency more vividly than the contrast between two immigrant groups Israel is dealing with right now: the B’nai Menashe of Northeast India and the Ethiopian Jewish families still waiting in Addis Ababa and Gondar.

Both communities have claims that they are part of the Jewish people.

But only one is being brought.

In November 2023, in the middle of the war, Israel heroically brought more than 250 B’nai Menashe immigrants — from a community that has sent hundreds each year (218 in 2021, 274 in 2020, and many more in previous years). They arrive under the Law of Entry, undergo conversion afterward, and settle in supportive communities.

The Ethiopian Jewish community has centuries of documented Jewish lineage. Some groups (and parts of the Israeli government) contest that many of the Jews remaining in Ethiopia are not halachically Jewish, but these claims are greatly disputed.

Tragically, Israel is turning its back on the remaining 14,000 Jews in Ethiopia. Many, if not most, are first-degree relatives of the 175,000 Ethiopian Israelis already living in the country — parents, siblings, children, and spouses.

Since October 7, 2023, 40 Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and on the northern front. Representing just 1.7% of Israel, they account for over 4% of the deaths in the IDF. Many fallen soldiers left behind siblings or parents whom Israel has refused to bring.

“My son died defending Israel, but his sister is still stuck in Gondar. How is that justice?” one grieving mother told Yediot Ahronot this winter.

Israel has no convincing answer, a halachic inconsistency Israel refuses to acknowledge.

There is a second truth that makes the state’s inconsistency impossible to defend.

Virtually all Ethiopian immigrants undergo rabbinic giyur when they arrive in Israel. But those maternally linked do so, according to the Chief Rabbinate, out of extreme caution — not because their Jewish identity is unknown.

The Beta Israel have centuries of documented maternal-line Jewish descent, recognized by:

• Rav Ovadia Yosef and the Chief Rabbinate (1973)
• The Radbaz in the 16th century
• Rabbinic delegations from the 19th and 20th centuries
• Every serious historical study of Beta Israel origins

Indeed, many thousands of Ethiopian families today can show direct maternal Jewish lineage — the halachically determinative line.

The Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav Shlomo Amar, wrote that Jews in Ethiopia “are completely Jewish without any doubt.” According to the Chief Rabbi, any confirmatory immersion in a mikvah, ritual bath, was a stringency to remove all doubt, not a requirement.

The B’nai Menashe also received religious recognition by Israel from Rav Amar. However, in contrast to the Jews from Ethiopia, Rav Amar ruled that they are the “Seed of Israel” requiring a conversion to immigrate. Although their connection is real, sincere, and important, every B’nai Menashe immigrant undergoes full conversion, not confirmatory immersion.

And yet, while Israel rightfully and courageously brings thousands of B’nai Menashe with ease, it blocks thousands of Ethiopians whose lineage many believe to be stronger, older, and halachically grounded.

In 2022, the Israeli cabinet passed Government Decision 716, which obligated the state to:

1. Bring 3,000 Ethiopian Jews, a quota imposed because of short term budgetary considerations, not because of the number of remaining Jews in Ethiopia.

2. Complete the process within two years,

3. Reconvene afterward to decide on the next stage and bring in all others eligible.

While the State brought the initial 3,000, it never reconvened and never made the legally required follow-up decision. Thousands of Jews’ cases were never fully reviewed.

Instead, the Interior Ministry announced that the issue required “further examination” — as if decades of verifications, committees, and unanimous cabinet votes had not already taken place.

It is my understanding that the burdens Israel places on Ethiopian Jews are not applied to other groups. The government’s own Harel Committee confirmed in 2023 that Israel’s Ethiopian-aliyah criteria were “inconsistent and incoherent,” that family separations were “often unjustified,” and that Interior Ministry demographic concerns were “based on flawed assumptions.”

Yet not a single recommendation has been implemented.

One Ethiopian father whose son fell in Gaza told Kan News: “Israel trusted my son with a rifle. It will not trust me with a plane ticket.”

If Israel wants strict standards, apply them uniformly. If Israel wants broader inclusion, include also those with stronger claims.

What cannot be defended is a two-tier system of Jewish belonging. October 7 taught Israel who its defenders are. Ethiopian Israelis fought in every front-line brigade and paid a devastating price. Their families deserve the same commitment they have shown to the State of Israel.

The demand is simple and just: One standard. One policy. One people.

Gail Propp is a board member or officer of numerous boards. She has advocated on behalf of the Jews in Ethiopia for over 20 years.

A woman keeps a candle next to flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone

Last Sunday, on the Bondi Beach beachfront, something broke in Australian society.

Two Jihadi terrorists — a father and son — decided to “Globalize the Intifada,” actualizing the chant so many anti-Israel demonstrators have been repeating in Australia over the past two years.

They did it by launching a murderous attack on innocent men, women, and children celebrating the first night of Hanukkah.

And by the time they were finally stopped, 15 people lay dead, their blood staining the grass and sand amidst the petting zoo and face painting booths.

It was both the deadliest terror attack in Australian history and the greatest loss of Jewish life since the October 7 massacre.

But as shocked as we are, and as traumatized as we feel, every Jew in Australia will tell you the same thing: we are not surprised.

In the pages of The Algemeiner itself, I had warned about this exact scenario for years.

This massacre had been building ever since the sickening displays of open Jew-hatred in Australia on the very evening of October 7. Even as the Hamas attack was still taking place, firebrand imams were standing in the street of Sydney and screaming to a joyous crowd, “This is a day of celebration! This is a day of courage!”

Just two days later, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, chants of “F the Jews” echoed around Australia’s most famous icon, as thousands of people celebrated the “success” of the Hamas terror spree in southern Israel.

The failure of the police authorities, the state government, and the federal government to snuff out that hatred right there and then meant a green light was tacitly given for the greatest increase in Jew-hatred in Australian history.

From that moment, antisemitic graffiti popped up everywhere. Anti-Israel demonstrations that often descended into violence and chaos were held weekly, intimidating the Jewish community. Soon after came the torching of vehicles in Jewish neighborhoods. Then attacks on businesses and houses of worship.

Schoolchildren were subjected to antisemitic assaults on buses. In the virtual world, Jewish creatives were doxed by online groups, leading to many artists and musicians losing their livelihoods. In the physical world, they were attacked in the streets. Worshipers were forced to evacuate synagogues during Friday night Shabbat services. And one synagogue was burnt down in an arson attack, while others were similarly targeted.

Each escalation added to the mounting pressure on the social cohesion of our multicultural society until it finally gave way, with disastrous consequences, last Sunday.

So how does the Australian Jewish community feel right now, knowing that the attention of much of the world has been focused on this small community of 120,000 people in this far-flung island, making up less than half a percent of the population?

Well, we feel worried. We feel vulnerable. We feel abandoned. We feel devastated and traumatized. We feel isolated and alone. And we feel an overwhelming sense of grief and sadness.

It is a feeling that most Jews felt right after October 7. A deep and aching numbness in which the joy of life had been taken from us, leaving just empty vessels struggling to feel anything, unable to eat, to smile, to laugh.

Many Australian Jews believed we were in the lucky country, far from those places in the old world like France, Belgium, or the UK, where Jews were forced to hide their identity and violence was never far.

But that illusion has been shattered, along with a realization that has hit Australia — and hit it hard. We now know that the hatred we once believed belonged to distant places is now firmly entrenched in our own soil — and in our own lives.

However, we also feel something else.

Last evening, I attended a Hanukkah candle lighting at another beachfront in Melbourne to celebrate our identity and show solidarity with our community. While there was a strong police contingent and I never felt unsafe, I nevertheless instinctively couldn’t help scouring the buildings and the surroundings, trying to assess if there were any visible threats lying in wait. It sounds crazy, yet this is how many Jews feel right now — extreme vigilance is now part of our existence.

However, seeing the support from not just the Jewish community but from the wider community has been overwhelming. I, along with many other Australian Jews, have received messages of support and love from around the world, from America and from Israel and from South Africa and from the UK. Ordinary Australians have been donating blood in huge numbers and laying floral tributes at the massacre site and at synagogues and public menorahs around Australia.

Just as Australian Jews held vigils for the victims of October 7, so now are Israeli Jews holding vigil for the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack.

Never underestimate the power of standing with someone who is hurting, and the impact that support has, because I know that we all feel it deeply down under in this far corner of the world.

So how do I feel now? Still wounded, bewildered, horrified and angry — but  what I can say is that with the heartfelt support we have received, I feel a little less lonely than I did before.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

Illustrative: The remains of a fortress destroyed by the Hasmonean rebels during the Maccabean revolt, Lachish Forest, Israel. Photographed in 2021. Photo: Twitter.

Archaeology rarely makes headlines. But every so often, a discovery surfaces that does more than illuminate the past — it clarifies the present.

The newly uncovered Hasmonean wall beneath Jerusalem’s Tower of David is one of those finds. It is not simply another artifact to be cataloged and displayed. It is a stone witness — silent but immovable — to the long and relentless Jewish struggle for sovereignty in this land. And at a time when Israel’s legitimacy is contested, distorted, or denied outright, its discovery could not be timelier.

The wall dates to the Maccabean period, an era historians often reduce to a footnote and schoolchildren remember as the backstory to Hanukkah.

But the Hasmoneans were not cartoon heroes resisting cartoon villains. They were political actors navigating the brutal geopolitics of their age — Judeans wrestling for autonomy against a Hellenistic empire, fighting over the right to govern themselves, to worship freely, and to determine their own future.

Now, we have physical confirmation of one of their defensive fortifications in Jerusalem: a wall built by Jews to defend Jewish Jerusalem — before Rome, before Byzantium, before the Caliphates, before the Crusaders. A wall predating every empire that later claimed this city while attempting to erase, reinterpret, or overwrite the people who first built it.

Archaeology vs. Historical Denial

What makes this discovery especially resonant is that it arrives amid a renewed wave of historical denial. Those who insist the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is a modern fabrication — colonial, foreign, or imposed — must now deny a structure that predates Islam by seven centuries and the Arab conquest by nearly a millennium. 

The Hasmonean wall does not tell the whole story of Jerusalem; no single find ever could. But it does something powerful nevertheless: it joins a growing archaeological record that makes historical erasure impossible without embracing absurdity.

Modern Zionism did not arise in a vacuum. It was not conjured only out of poetry, yearning, or trauma — though it contains all those things. It emerged because the Jewish people, after millennia of statelessness and persecution, sought to restore something they had already built before.

The Hasmoneans were the first Jews in recorded history to achieve independent governance in Jerusalem after exile. Their reign was imperfect, but imperfection does not negate legitimacy. The point is not to romanticize them; the point is to recognize them.

The core struggle of the Hasmoneans — to maintain Jewish self-determination amid hostile regional forces — is the same struggle Israel faces today. The enemies have changed in name, flag, and rhetoric, but their aims are eerily familiar: to sever Jews from their homeland, define Jewish identity as illegitimate, and deny Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel and Jerusalem.

Archaeology as a Battleground

Archaeology has become one of the most contested battlegrounds in the war over historical narrative — not because the artifacts are ambiguous, but because they are inconvenient. Every discovery that affirms Jewish antiquity threatens ideological projects built on the absurdity of denying it.

That’s why the politics around archaeology in Jerusalem will only intensify. Every trowel of earth is now an act of testimony. And every stone uncovered has the potential to expose those who insist — against all evidence — that Jewish sovereignty here is a colonial intrusion rather than the restoration of indigenous rights.

The Hasmonean wall does not resolve today’s political conflicts. But it does something essential: for those who don’t embrace the absurd, it places today’s debates within the only frame that makes them intelligible — the long arc of Jewish peoplehood in this land.

Jewish sovereignty in Judea is not new. It is the restoration of something ancient and indigenous. And Jerusalem is not simply the symbol of that recovery; it is the evidence of it.

As more sections of the city are excavated, they continue to tell the same story: the Jewish return to Zion is not an invention of modern nationalism. It is the latest chapter in an ongoing project — undertaken by ancestors who built walls to defend their freedom and by descendants who must still do the same.

And there is no time of year when this truth resonates more clearly than Hanukkah, a holiday too often reduced to merely candles and gifts. Hanukkah is, at its core, the celebration of Jewish sovereignty reclaimed, defended, and rededicated. It commemorates a people who refused to surrender their identity, faith, or homeland. The Jewish presence in Jerusalem is not a modern miracle, but an ancient one — rekindled across millennia.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.