Oromia & Palestine: United in Struggle Against Twin Zionist Entities Ethiopia & Israel

Zionist Ethiopia as a Descendant of Ancient Israel

The Kebra Negast

In the 14th century, the ideological foundation for Ethiopia was written. This text, borne in the ancient clerical language of Ge’ez, was known as the Kebra Negast, or the Glory of Kings. The 900-page epic frames “Ethiopia” not simply as the highlands of Abyssinia but as a biblical and universal land of Cush, an ideological move that it would wield to justify its claims over the entire Horn of Africa. The Kebra Negast would become the pillar of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and the self-proclaimed Solomonic Dynasty that reigned from 1270 AD through 1974, facilitating the fusion of church and state and most notably serving as the basis for Abyssinia’s European-backed crusades at the end of the 19^th century that would lead to the official formation of modern Ethiopia atop a prison house of nations.

The Kebra Negast in essence names the leaders of “Ethiopia” as the direct descendants of the biblical Ancient Israel. The name Ethiopia was retroactively appropriated from the bible's Psalm 68:31 which proclaimed, "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." As the tale is told, on a delegation to Israel, Queen of Sheba of "Ethiopia" was wooed by King Solomon of Israel, and they had a night of passion. Back in Ethiopia, she had his child. She would name that child Menelik, and when he grew up, Menelik traveled to Jerusalem to meet his father, Solomon. Solomon recognized Menelik as his favorite child and tried to convince him to stay to be his heir. Menelik refused, opting instead to return to his mother. Resigned, Solomon sent Menelik away with a large company, including the first-born sons of his nobles and a congregation of Hebrew priests. Resentful of leaving Jerusalem, the priests smuggled with them the Ark of the Covenant, a gold chest that bore the very tablets that God himself inscribed the Ten Commandments in. When Solomon discovered the theft, he attempted to pursue them, but the ark’s divine power miraculously flew Menelik and his entire party to Ethiopia unscathed.

According to the folklore, since then, the ark has been held in the Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, located in modern Ethiopia’s Tigray province in the north. Today, within the cathedral, a constant stream of the devout huddle in the church or outside to bask in its glow. However, nobody besides the Guardian Monk, the highest ranking priest tasked with watching the ark for life, is allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, the room where the ark is housed. All others, according to the Hebrew Bible, are strictly forbidden from looking at the ark lest they be struck dead by God. [1] However, Ethiopian Orthodox churches across Ethiopia and throughout the world are constructed as models of Solomon’s temple and contain within them symbolic replicas of the ark.  

Thus, Ethiopia’s supposed relationship to Ancient Israel is consecrated through Menelik I, the Ark of the Covenant, its Orthodox churches made in the image of Solomon’s temple with replicas of the ark, and not to mention the distinctive Hebrew traditions, practices, and language imbued within Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity itself.

Placed alongside an excerpt from the Jewish text Midrash Tanchuma, it’s clear how Ethiopia proclaiming itself as the holder of the ark meant it could pip Israel to situate itself at the center of the universe:

As the navel is set in the center of the human body, so is the land of Israel the navel of the world; it is situated in the center of the world, and Jerusalem in the center of the land of Israel, and the Temple in the center of Jerusalem, and the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, and the Ark in the center of the Holy of Holies, and the foundation stone before the Holy of Holies, because from it the world was founded. [2]

The Ethiopian Jews

All of this is to say nothing of the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews who reside near Gondar in Ethiopia’s Amhara province in the north. The Beta Israel are both a source of legitimacy to Ethiopia’s claims to descent from Ancient Israel and a source of revulsion, given that Jews are seen by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians as the betrayers of Christ.

To the Ethiopian Zionists, the Beta Israel's habitation in Ethiopia, its possession of the ark, and the existence of Ethiopia as a bastion of Orthodox Christianity is proof that the Jews of Ancient Israel were 'restored' and perfected through its religion. So while European Christian Zionists such as Arthur Balfour and Reverend William Hechler, who played a crucial role in establishing 'Israel' in Palestine, believed the world's Jews must return to Israel to eventually convert to Christianity and usher in the second coming of Christ, Ethiopian Zionism already proclaimed itself the final, perfected version of Israel. Zion not in waiting but already fulfilled. Reads the Kebra Negast:

“The daughters of Jerusalem suffered disgrace, and the daughters of Ethiopia were held in honour; the daughter of Judah was sad, whilst the daughter of Ethiopia rejoiced; the mountains of Ethiopia rejoiced, and the mountains of Lebanon mourned. The people of Ethiopia were chosen [from] among idols and graven images, and the people of Israel were rejected. The daughters of Zion were rejected, and the daughters of Ethiopia were honoured; the old men of Israel became objects of contempt, and the old men of Ethiopia were honoured. For God accepted the peoples who had been cast away and rejected Israel, for Zion was taken away from them and she came into the country of Ethiopia." [3]

Yet, as the Beta Israel endured brutal conditions in Ethiopia, many of them looked to the Yishuv (early Jewish settlements in Palestine) and later a newly emerging Israel. Growingly, they saw it as their promised land and began to “make Aliyah” – to flock there – undermining the Ethiopian regimes’ narrative of being the perfected Zionist entity and bolstering Israel’s claims to being Eretz Israel, the land of return for the world’s Jews. Indeed, given the Beta Israel were widely seen as the world’s oldest practitioners of Judaism, their allegiance certainly lent gravity to whoever could win it.

On his first visit to Jerusalem in 1924, Haile Selassie, at the time Crown Prince Tafari Mekonnen serving under Empress Zewditu, rebuffed an inquiry by the Chief Rabbinate of the Yishuv into improving the lot of the Beta Israel. “The history of the Ethiopians and Israelites indicates that these two nations are similar in race…in regard to the Jews known as [Beta Israel] and located in Ethiopia, we will always try to give them our help and protect them from every evil,” he replied. [4] Holding fast to its Zionist claims, for many more decades, Ethiopia would refuse to give its stately blessing for Beta Israel migration despite ongoing Israeli pressure.

Simultaneous Crisis Draws Together the Twin Zions

Then in 1936, Emperor Haile Selassie, by then known as the “Lion of Judah,” fled Ethiopia in the wake of the Italian invasion. Oromos, conquered by Abyssinia (the entity before “Ethiopia” was officially created in 1930) at the end of the 19th century, seeing an opening rose up in revolt. In fact, Oromos in the west rejected both Ethiopia and Italy and proclaimed their own independence.[5] In his crisis, the first place the Emperor went was to Jerusalem. He arrived just as the Palestinians had initiated their general strike and began their armed struggle for the Arab Revolt.[6] Selassie, who only years prior had codified in the 1931 Ethiopian Constitution his descent from Solomon and Sheba,[7] arrived to a wave of sympathy from the Zionist press.[8] Evidently, the struggle of the Oromo and Palestinians had created their respective antagonists' crises and made their need for unity apparent. Even then, Selassie still held fast to Ethiopia’s ancient claims to the Beta Israel while casting the Yishuv as simply a nascent phenomenon. In a prepared speech to the Hebrew press, he asserted:

“I visited the Land of Israel in 1924, and I find that there is great progress in this country. I know that the Jews are quiet people and dedicated to peace. Of course it is also known to you that in Ethiopia there are Jews of an ancient race who live in complete harmony with all others. They preserve their religious traditions and no one hinders them. Please know that we appreciate the support that the Jewish people have expressed for Ethiopia, and we hope that the Jewish press will continue to support us.”[9]

Of course, such struggle between Zionisms co-existed with a necessary unity imposed by heightening struggle from without. David Ben-Gurion, later the first prime minister of Israel, could recognize that the crisis in Ethiopia was also a crisis for the Zionists in occupied Palestine:

“We knew that what is going on in the world has an impact on what we do in the Land of Israel. That beginning of the crisis should be seen not as April 19th [the outbreak of the Arab Revolt], but in what happened a few months earlier in Ethiopia.”[10]

A resolution would be worked out. It would be Orde Wingate, the same Christian Zionist British captain who formed the Haganah (the precursor to the Israel Defense Forces) that crushed the Arab revolt and who was the hero of architects of the Palestinian Nakba,[11] that would enter Ethiopia in 1940 to lead the force into Ethiopia that defeated the Italians and restored Selassie to the throne. [12] In Wingate's own words, it was "for the sake of Zion." [13]

The Beta Israel Exchange

Eventually, when the military government that deposed Selassie had its back to the wall owing to the national liberation struggles of the Eritreans, the Oromo, the Somali, and the Tigray, Ethiopia would begrudgingly use the Beta Israel as a bargaining chip. So long as it was done in secret to not tarnish Ethiopia’s Zionist claims or to undermine its credibility to the oppressed world that had taken up anti-Zionism, Israel could receive loyal new Black Jewish settlers. In the act itself, Ethiopia could launder the racial cover it received on the world stage to Israel – and conveniently at a time when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had made inroads into Black America[14] and Israel was facing the wrath of the world for its support of apartheid South Africa. The Beta Israel would then settle Palestinian lands, fill the ranks of the occupation army, and take up highly visible political and cultural posts. In return, Ethiopia could receive weaponry, security expertise, and economic aid to crush the rebellion of the oppressed nations within.

Ironically, the brutal, racist Israeli state would come to treat the Beta Israel just as poorly as the Ethiopians did. However, given that many of the Beta Israel were unquestionably loyal to the Israeli Zionist cause, it meant that even if most of them would come to face abject conditions – from forced sterilizations, to staggering poverty, and rampant police killings – their propensity for revolt was quite low. Thus, while Ethiopia could acquire from Israel the means to extinguish the oppressed — primarily the Oromo – the Beta Israel were a useful dumping ground for antagonisms borne from the struggle of the oppressed — particularly the Palestinians. The two entities quite literally reinforced each other.

Wielding the Kebra Negast

In the centuries following the Kebra Negast’s completion, the Abyssinian aristocracy, priests, and nuns saw themselves as the descendants of the Israelites. Kings and emperors saw themselves as Kings of Zion, and they invoked Solomonic descent through their names and titles. For example, Zara Yaqob of the 15^th century wrote theological treatises that framed Ethiopia as the Ark’s resting place. There was also Emperor Yitzhak (Isaac), a name taken from the Hebrew Bible where Isaac is a founding figure of Judaism. And centuries later, there was Menelik II, the emperor that carried out the European-backed crusades of the Oromo, Somali, Sidama, and others at the end of the 19th century to establish modern Ethiopia. The significance of him bearing the name of Menelik was that, while wiping out the people in the south and east,[15] sending Black settlers into their lands to enslave them,[16] carving out his gains alongside the European powers in the Berlin Conference, [17] and mass converting the survivors from their indigenous religions and Islam to Orthodox Christianity,[18] he was staking his claim to being the direct descendant of Menelik I, the prized child of King Solomon of Ancient Israel. Thus, alongside the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish Political Zionism was the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Oromo, Somali, Sidama, and others by Ethiopian Zionism. [19]

Tewodros’ ambition, Selassie’s Realization

The Deir-al-Sultan Monastery

Though Abyssinia had all the makings of Zion, the one thing it lacked was direct control over the holy city of Jerusalem, which it claimed to have been descended from. Since Christianity was embraced in Abyssinia as early as the 4^th century, Jerusalem held a special place in its heart, with monks and pilgrims flocking and dwelling there. In fact, in the late 12^th century, King Lalibela built his own version of Jerusalem in his capital of Roha. Exchange flourished for centuries until Abyssinia’s decline upon defeat by Ahmad Gragn of the east, who occupied its highlands beginning in 1527, as well as the rise of Ottoman rule in Palestine. It was in this period that Abyssinian presence in Jerusalem became reduced to one monastery known as the Deir-al-Sultan.

The Deir-al-Sultan sits on the roof of the Chapel of Saint Helena that was part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City. For quite some time, Abyssinia’s claim to the Deir-al-Sultan served as a powerful symbol of its historic ties to the city. However, in 1838, a plague wiped out its monks, and the Egyptian Coptic monks in the neighboring monasteries moved in and laid claim to the Deir-al-Sultan, with permission from the Armenian Patriarchate.[20] Three years later, a new group of Abyssinian monks arrived and accused the Copts of unfairly seizing the site. This confrontation would mark the beginning of a long-term conflict.

The Rise and Fall of Tewodros II

In this period, a man by the name of Kassa rose to power, inheriting a weak, divided Abyssinia. A 15^th century prophecy, known as Fekkare Iyasus (The Explanation of Jesus) foretold that a king named Tewodros would save Ethiopia from destruction and rule for around 40 years. Kassa, harkening back to this prophecy, took the name of Tewodros II, following on from Tewodros I who reigned from 1413 – 1414, and declared himself Emperor.

Upon taking power, seeing his divine mission, Tewodros revived vigor around the Kebra Negast and sought to reclaim the Deir-al-Sultan, to which the Egyptians refused. This was considered a great humiliation and drove Tewodros’ burning desire to take Jerusalem by force. While ensnared in war on all fronts, he sought sympathy from Queen Victoria in 1862 and wrote to her: “When I shall have conquered the Muslims… I will go to Jerusalem to restore the tomb of Christ to my authority.”

Before Tewodros could even dream of Jerusalem, he faced many obstacles, including Oromo militias in Wollo, rebellious nobles in Tigray, and Ottoman-Egyptian forces on the way to the holy land. He could not defeat them all. In fact, in the midst of his wars against them, he petitioned Queen Victoria for military assistance. He received no response as the Crown at the time sought appeasement with the Ottomans rather than enable him in eventual direct confrontation with them. To force their hand, Tewodros imprisoned missionaries and representatives of the British government. In response, a British expedition led by General Richard Napier faced Tewodros in the 1868 Battle of Magdala, to which it defeated his forces and freed the hostages by force. Rather than surrender, Tewodros committed suicide. His dream was to remain unrealized.  

In Lieu of Conquest

Licking their wounds, subsequent emperors and rulers would have to abandon direct conquest of Jerusalem and opt instead for shoring up its presence elsewhere in Jerusalem to lend credence to its claims of having direct, holy ties to the city. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Ethiopians acquired houses and lands in west Jerusalem. Meanwhile, a succession of kings built Solomonic churches and monasteries, such as the Debre Genet monastery, and many other buildings. By 1905, the Ottoman authorities designated this part of Jerusalem as Haret al-Habash, what is known today as the Ethiopian compound centered on Ethiopia Street, which is a lasting imprint of its claims to descendance from Jerusalem.

The fate of Deir al-Sultan's keys remained in flux for another century after Tewodros' death. Diplomatic struggle over the monastery was sustained throughout, including on Selassie's 1924 tour when in Cairo he submitted his request for the keys directly to the highest level of the Coptic Church and the Egyptian Prime Minister. [21]

Eventually, in 1967, Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and captured East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank in the Six-Day War. In 1970, Ethiopia, whose intelligence by that point was “literally run” by the Israelis,[22] had crushed the Macha-Tulama movement in the west by framing, torturing, and killing its leaders.[23] While with the help of the Israeli counter-insurgency and Anglo-American demolitions experts, it defeated the mammoth Oromo-Somali Bale Revolt in the east,[24] leaving over 700,000 dead.[25] That same year, the Israeli government marched in, changed the locks of Deir-al-Sultan, expelled the Coptic monks, and handed the keys to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, even defying a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court to return the key to the Egyptians.[26] That lock-changing would mark a resolution in Ethiopia’s century-long pursuit of the Deir-al-Sultan key that spanned multiple emperors and rulers. And by doing so, the two powers did not just merely resolve a monastic dispute, but they through conquest of Palestinian land on one hand and the defeat of Oromo revolt on the other, consecrated formal unity between the Ethiopian myth of Solomonic descent and the Israeli Zionist myth of Jewish return.

Of course, the driving force of their convergence was not conspiracy but was the struggle of the Oromo and Palestinians that drew them together in their crisis and forced a resolution that could accommodate both Zionisms. So while the oppressors achieved a necessary qualitative leap in unity, so too did the Oromo and Palestinians as their respective liberation fronts began to train with one another on the way to the 1973 founding of the Oromo Liberation Front. [27]

Meanwhile, capturing Jerusalem brought sheer ecstasy for the Israeli Zionist project and gave it a base to further expand its territorial ambitions. Meanwhile in Ethiopia, its access to the Deir-al-Sultan similarly brought celebration and helped cement its spiritual claims to being descended from Ancient Israel. With this arrangement, when Israel strengthened, it could only legitimize Ethiopia more. Evidently then, it would be in Ethiopia and the Israelis’ utmost interests to band together to crush the Oromo and Palestinians.

And in the diplomatic realm, such mutual interests of Ethiopia and Israel would be referenced through incessant overtures to a supposed historic relationship between the two stretching back to biblical times.

What then could Zionism be but the mythological ideology of settler colonialism? What then could support of Ethiopia be but Zionism?

References

[1] 1 Sam 6:19 (ESV).

[2] Midrash Tanchuma, Kedoshim 10, trans. in Midrash Tanchuma Buber, ed. Salomon Buber (Vilna, 1885), 78.

[3] The Kebra Nagast, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), chap. 87, 147–48.

[4] Haggai Erlich, Alliance and Alienation: Ethiopia and Israel in the Days of Haile Selassie (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2014), 28.

[5] Ezekiel Gebissa, “The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936,” Northeast African Studies 9, no. 3 (2002): 75-96.

[6] Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 32.

[7] “The Constitution of Ethiopia,” 1931, https://ethcln.com/system/files/ethiopian-constitution-of-1931.pdf.

[8] Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 35-40.

[9] Haaretz, May 19, 1936.

[10] David Ben-Gurion, lecture to the Council of the Histadrut, February 1, 1937, Ben-Gurion Archives, Item #88003.

[11] Ghassan Kanafani, *The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine* (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, 1972), 58-59.

[12] Simon Anglim, Orde Wingate and the British Army (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 57-144.

[13] Avraham Akavia, “Orde Wingate,” in The Friends of Israel (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1950), 94.

[14] "Jackson and Arafat Confer in Lebanon," New York Times, September 30, 1979.

[15] Harold Marcus, “Motives, Methods and Some Results of the Unification of Ethiopia during the Reign of Menelik II,” in Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Haile Selassie University, 1966), 269-280.

[16] League of Nations, “Perpetual Servitude Resulting from Defeat,” Report of the Committee of Experts on Slavery, C.240.M.171.1935.VI (Geneva: League of Nations, 1935).

[17] Bonnie Holcomb and Sissai Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1990), 103.

[18] Holcomb and Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia, 289.

[19] Holcomb and Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia, 71-125.

[20] Stéphane Ancel, "The Ethiopian Orthodox Community in Jerusalem: New Archives and Perspectives on Daily Life and Social Networks, 1840–1940," in Ordinary Jerusalem 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, ed. Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 50–51.

[21] Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 28.

[22] Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 137.

[23] Norma J. Singer, "Ethiopia: Human Rights, 1948-1978," in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, ed. Robert L. Hess (n.p.: [s.n.], 1978), 663-678.

[24] Mohammed Hassen, "Islam as an Ideology of Resistance among the Oromo of Ethiopia," The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26, no. 3 (2009): 104.

[25] Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-2004 (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005), 184.

[26] Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 189.

[27] Asafa Jalata, Baro Tumsa: The Principal Architect of the Oromo Liberation Front (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 131.