JERUSALEM – Jewish Agency representatives in Ethiopia yesterday located the daughter of an Ethiopian immigrant who was killed by her husband in Or Yehuda over the weekend. Agency officials said the organization was working on getting her a permit to move to Israel to take care of her orphaned siblings.
Witnesses said Ilu Beja, 46, fatally stabbed his wife Adelu, 42, in front of four of their seven children on Friday night and then killed himself with the same knife.
Jewish Agency officials have spent the last two days looking for Adelu Beja’s daughter from a previous marriage – Abtam, who is in her 20s and lives in the Ethiopian region of Gondar – to tell her what happened to her mother. The officials also suggested that Abtam, who is married and has a child, move to Israel and take care of her younger siblings. Jewish Agency chairman Zeev Bielski is personally involved in the effort to bring Abtam to Israel, and the organization announced at the beginning of the week that it would give the family NIS 10,000 in immediate assistance.
Jewish Agency officials said they would try to bring Abtam and her husband here under the Law of Return, but that if that doesn’t work due to quotas currently limiting the immigration rate of the Ethiopian Falashmura community, it would ask that she be allowed to immigrate for humanitarian reasons.
“She may be married to a man who could potentially have the right [to immigrate], since he is a Falashmura and therefore they will be able to move to Israel,” an agency official said.
Uri, a member of the bereaved family, said the Beja family had not really maintained contact with Abtam. Nonetheless, he said, “We hope that within a few days the eldest daughter will come from Ethiopia and will be able to raise her younger siblings here in Israel.”
“I don’t know how we’ll cope with the penetrating questions these children will ask,” he added.
Since the murder, the Beja children have been under the care of the Or Yehuda municipal welfare authorities and groups that assist Ethiopian immigrants. They are living with their father’s sister in the same city, in a house that has become the focus of mourners from around the country. Some of the mourners have never met the family, but offered their condolences and assistance once they heard of the family tragedy.
“If they immigrated to Israel, we must unite with them and help them integrate in society,” said Miriam, who came from Hod Hasharon yesterday to visit the mourners even though she never met them. “I couldn’t be exposed to this murder in the media and continue to sit at home as though nothing had happened.”
Members of the Bnei Akiva youth movement also came to Or Yehuda to help the Beja family, including the friends of one of the recently orphaned children, a 17-year-old boy who studies at a yeshiva high school in the Golan Heights.
On Sunday he wasn’t feeling well and required medical treatment, and yesterday he stayed in his room, having a hard time digesting what happened to his family.
“He’s not communicating and not sharing what is happening to him,” said one of the teen’s friends. “He’s completely dazed, withdrawn into himself, and isn’t leaving his room. He doesn’t understand what happened Friday night at home or what caused his father to do what he did.” (Haaretz).
