When Anagu Walle, her husband and seven of their eight children fled clashes between armed militias and Ethiopian security forces in Gondar earlier this year, Israel provided a vital lifeline. But five months after immigrating to the Jewish state, they are once again embroiled in war.
“No one told us about the security problems,” said Walle, who was evacuated from an immigrant absorption centre near the Gaza border town of Sderot to the northern Carmel hills on October 8. “The first we heard about the rockets was from my husband’s niece, who immigrated six months ago, a month before us.”
The niece arrived in time for Operation Shield and Arrow, which Israel launched in Gaza in May with the targeted killings of three senior members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.
Walle recalled that when she heard the first siren on Saturday 7 October, she froze. “My 23-year-old daughter said, ‘Mum, it’s a warning. Let’s get the kids and go to the shelter.'”
Sderot, long a target of rocket fire from Gaza, has come under repeated attack since Hamas terrorists launched their bloody assault on Israel on 7 October. On Sunday, authorities began evacuating the remaining residents ahead of an expected Israeli ground operation in Gaza.
On 8 October, Walle’s family was among 531 new immigrants bussed out of the city’s Ibin Immigrant Absorption Centre. Of these, 451, including 120 children under the age of 12, were sent to a resort in the religious cooperative community of Nir Etzion, south of Haifa. The rest are in the nearby town of Zichron Yaakov or at the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya.
When this reporter visited Nir Etzion, children from the absorption centre were playing on the lawns or sitting in the lobby, doing puzzles and playing games, while two groups of fathers were playing cards.
A 12-member team from the Jewish Agency has been with the new arrivals since their arrival.
Team coordinator Turu Dabasu, 27, who herself immigrated from Ethiopia 20 years ago, noted that immigrants who had been in Israel for some time had become accustomed to the sirens and rockets from Gaza.
But the surprise infiltration of Hamas and the bloody massacres the terrorists carried out in Gaza communities were beyond anyone’s imagination, no matter how long they’ve lived in the country. These new immigrants are now in a state of shock.
With the help of volunteers from Nir Etzion and surrounding communities, “we try to do two activities a day,” says Dabasu. “We did puppet and laughter workshops for the adults. We’ve had giant inflatables, a magician and a juggler for the children.
On Thursday, the team marked the day a group of children would have had their bar and bat mitzvahs.
They brought hairdressers for the girls and organised the boys to sing in memory of the late Ofir Libstein, head of the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council, who was killed in a shoot-out with terrorists on 7 October.
Israelis of Ethiopian origin brought traditional food to the hotel and held a coffee ceremony. “It opened up a conversation about some of the more complex issues,” Dabasu said.
Embet Chekol, who works at an absorption centre in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Yam, was sent to help in Nir Etzion. She said: “Ethiopian women are very reserved. The culture is not to show emotions. During the laughter workshop, they laughed. It’s so important for them to open up.
Some of the emotional scars are already visible, especially among the children.
Since the war began, 12-year-old Mrte and 7-year-old Ermes have refused to go to the toilet without a parent or sibling accompanying them.
Many of the new immigrants have recently left their homes, where the violence has intensified.
“We felt very threatened in Gondar,” Walle said in Amharic, as Embet Chekol translated. “We stayed in the apartment around the clock. Economically, it was very hard.”
Walle and her farmer husband had waited 11 years in their hometown of Ismala in west-central Ethiopia, and another nine months in Gondar in the northwest, before getting the green light to join their extended family in Israel.
Walle left behind her elderly, ill parents and her mother-in-law. The hardest part, she says, was leaving her 26-year-old daughter, who is married with two children and not yet on the list to fly from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv.
Asked if she regretted coming to Israel now that the country was at war, Walle replied: “Not for a minute. Our family is here. And besides, we are Jews.
