‘Black Hebrews’ a problem for Israel

Press, 21 April 1984, Page 7

‘Black Hebrews’ a problem for Israel

NZPA-AP Jerusalem Israel has asked the United States to take back stateless black Americans who renounced their citizenship as part of their membership in a cult calling itself the Black Hebrews. The Black Hebrews are a group of roughly 1000 American blacks who say they are descended from the original Jews and have settled, most without official consent, in southern Israel. As far as the Israeli Government is concerned, most of the Black Hebrews have no legal status in Israel, since they entered on threemonth tourist visas and simply stayed, and they have no rabbinically recognised connection to Judaism. An Israeli Interior Ministry official said that to make them citizens would contradict both the letter and the spirit of Israeli law; to expel them, he said, would be awkward and perhaps logistically impossible because the United States could put non-citizens back on to a plane to Israel. The United States has taken the position that these stateless , Americans must go through normal immigration procedures as aliens, regardless of whether they were once American citizens. The Interior Ministry

official said in an interview that Israel also wanted the United States to make extradition requests for Black Hebrews sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and to guarantee that it will take back any Black Hebrews that Israel decides to expel. “After all, they were born in the United States, they came from the United States, and even if they renounced their citizenship, the American Government cannot ignore them,” the official said. According to Mr Melvyn Coleman, a former member of the cult now trying to return to the United States, he and about 80 other Black Hebrews renounced their American citizenship to prevent deportation from Israel and to “prove our dedication to our roots.” Mr Coleman came to Israel from Chicago’s South Side when he was 19 and a leading member of the. Black Hebrews. Today, at 32, he has left the cult after a dispute with its leader, Ben Ami Carter, and wants to leave the country as well, but as a stateless person with neither a United States nor an Israeli passport, he cannot even board a plane.

“I have not been out of Israel in 12 years and T want to go home,” he said in a telephone interview.