Seven years ago, when Israel airlifted 14,000 Ethiopian Jews from civil war-stricken Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv, it ignored the pleas of thousands of would-be immigrants who claimed Jewish heritage but whose ancestors had converted to Christianity.
Now, the Israeli government is quietly flying in hundreds of these Ethiopians, known as "Falas Mora," every month, and has taken to housing some of them in the occupied West Bank.
The Falas Mora were left behind in 1991 because Israel's Law of Return does not provide citizenship to those who have converted to another religion. The current Israeli government, which makes no secret of its desire to boost the Jewish population in the West Bank, has now reversed that decision and begun housing some of them at settlements.
Last weekend, about 60 Falas Mora were taken, directly on arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport from Addis Ababa, to the settlement of Ofrah, north of Jerusalem, where they are sleeping in a school building. One of the dazed new arrivals at Ofrah acknowledged that he knew nothing about the place, which he had only been told was situated close to Jerusalem, but that he had been touched by the warmth of the welcome.
Israel's Absorption Minister, Mr Yuli Edelstein, ironically himself the (Russian) immigrant child of a father who has converted to Christianity, is firmly defending the policy of housing the Falas Mora in the West Bank. But the Labour opposition's Mr Addisu Masala, the only Ethiopian member of parliament, has accused the government of making "cynical political use" of the immigrants.