After decades of struggle in Israel, dozens of African Hebrew Israelites face deportation

By ILAN BEN ZION
Associated Press

DIMONA, Israel (AP) — The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem made their way to Israel from the United States in the 1960s. Now, dozens of their members are facing the threat of deportation. The Hebrew Israelites, as the spiritual community’s members are commonly known, do not consider themselves Jewish, but they claim an ancestral connection to the Holy Land. Over the decades, they made inroads into Israeli society, and most have citizenship or residency rights. But 130 members remain undocumented, and Israeli authorities have ordered them to leave. Around 3,000 Hebrew Israelites live in hardscrabble towns in southern Israel. The Village of Peace, a cluster of low-slung buildings surrounded by vegetable patches and gardens, is the community’s epicenter.