The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 128 and, whatever the Abyssinian casualties, with a minimum ofloss to British and Indian troops in extremely difficult conditions. Lord Stanley, the Foreign Secretary, entered in his diary that it was 'a war on which we embarked with extreme reluctance and only from a sense of the impossibility of doing otherwise'. (1) There was, of course, a more romantic side to the picture which was not lost on Disraeli, who was then Prime Minister. In proposing a vote of thanks in the House of Commons to General Napier and his men for the successful conclusion of the campaign he proudly proclaimed that the standard of St George had been hoisted on the mountains of Rasselas.(2) Whatever his attitude may have been towards the object of a war to liberate missionaries who were intent on converting Jews, he was delighted by the outcome which gave his administration a much needed fillip. Criticism came principally from those who objected to the cost of the expedition which, as is in the nature of such operations, had risen steeply from the original estimate of £3 and a half million to nearly £9 million. This was one aspect which also worried the Jewish Chronicle, which, in a long leading article at the beginning of the war, inveighing against the missionaries, objected that British Jews, in common with their fellow citizens, would be called on as taxpayers to foot the bill for rescuing 'those whom they consider the enemies of their eternal welfare to recommence their detestable practices- of course, if not in Abyssinia, elsewhere'. (3) Even The Times allowed itself to refer to 'the Abyssinian missionaries to whose silly and misguided zeal the present trouble is in part owing'. (4) After the war was over the Alliance Israelite suggested that Sir Francis Goldsmid, one of the handful of Jewish Members of Parliament, should be asked to intercede with the British Government on behalf of the Falashas. It was a sensible suggestion for Sir Francis, like his uncle, the venerable Sir Moses Montefiore, took a keen interest in his persecuted co-religionists and assiduously advocated their cause in Parliament. It is unlikely that anything came of this proposal but it would have been ironical if Her Majesty's Government had found themselves at one and the same time rescuing the missionaries and succouring their victims. The death of Theodore and the aftermath of the war left Abyssinia in a state of great confusion with rival rases once again vying for supreme power. Eventually the question was resolved (1) Bates, The Abyssinian Difficulty, p. 213. |