Prime Minister of Ethiopia in Israel — ראש ממשלת אתיופיה בישראל

Of course, it's a power for Israel and of course it's it's great day that you are here in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel and we standing as the public, Jewish public with Ethiopian thousands of years together from King Solomon and twin bar till this time we are together we listening each other and we cooperate I want to thank you that you coming visit Israel it's great for the citizen of Israel and we hope that the relationship become more and more more hot we need from Ethiopia that help us Mr. Prime Minister to be part from the African Union. It's important for us that you could support with your government this process and this direction is important very much for Africa, for Ethiopia and of course for Israel. And the other things that important for us, I want you to help us to pushing Hamas in Gaza to bring us our son of Ethiopian Israel and to bring him back Abraham Mandiso. He's a citizen but very sick that he crossed the border and he did not come back. It's humanitarian situation that we need your government to push it to bring him back to his mother. The other thing that I want to told you maybe tomorrow also the prime minister Nata will say something about that Israel going to support in in the new direction every company that going to invest in this is different policy we need to make more the relationship between the two state more power more more closing and of course it's important for us. So the prime minister changed all the policy with Africa exactly with Ethiopian. So in this point I want to say God bless Ethiopia. God bless Israel. Thank you very much. [Applause] Excellency Minister of Communication and Excellencies distinguished guest together with us here very much privilege to be in the holy city of Jerusalem. It's uh really blessing to be amongst you in this historic uh city. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to be amongst you. Uh the prime minister has visited us recently in Ethiopia and East Africa and he has great ambition and motto saying that Israel comes to Africa and Africa comes to Israel. So I am also part of that vision and I promise that I will visit Israel as Africa coming uh to Israel. So I think uh Israel deserves to be engaging with Africa and you have our full support in uh bringing Israel to Africa and African people. Ethiopia will work tirelessly to engage Israel. We believe in engagement. Isolation is not a solution. We always believe that we have to work together for any problems to be resolved. There needs to be a civilized dialogue and Ethiopia stands uh firm in working with Israel to have a civilized dialogue so that we sort out our problems together and give solutions together. As you said, u Mr. uh minister, we in Ethiopia, we want to see more Israeli uh investors come to Africa and basically to Ethiopia because no other African country has uh you know joined citizens uh compared with us in Ethiopia. We have 140,000 Ethiopian Jews here in uh in Israel which is unique in its setting. So our ties goes back to as you said uh Solomon and Queen Shiva who invited people are questioning uh who invited Queen Shiva or Queen Shiva asked King Solomon to come. So we never know this is the we have we have to get big problem. Yeah, the researcher should get out uh the truth who invited or whom uh in this setting. But anyway, there is a history that joins us uh together. Uh I think that is uh a biblical history and many Ethiopians uh believe including even uh the Muslim community in Ethiopia, they believe that this kind of history was there and it the time for us to join hands on the recent modern history of Israel and Ethiopia. Uh I think we need more skill development and technology transfer and knowhow transfer to my country because Israel has abundant of uh that resource and uh this can happen if we can uh bring more investors to Ethiopia from Israel and also sending our uh technical people to study and make joint research together as we have done this morning. Uh we had a very good discussion with um uh Hebrew University of Jerusalem uh which has uh Albert Einstein as the founder. And so I think uh this is a great a great uh history in Israel and there are a number of Laurent award winners uh more than I think 10 now. This is also a great history. So I think we need to get this talent uh back in Ethiopia and uh we want to utilize this uh uh good relations. Besides uh both the Jews and other communities coming to Jerusalem should also visit the ancient land called Ethiopia uh where ancient Jews uh has begun and I heard that if you want to get some ancient Jew culture you have to go to Ethiopian Jews. This is a big history and uh I think that anyone who visits Jerusalem has to visit also Ethiopia. We are now building trying to build a museum for Ethiopian Jews, their origin, their culture and the way they like they live in that country before coming to uh Jerusalem. I mean Israel. So uh there is huge people-to-people relations awaiting us and we have to work very closely to uh transform our tourism sector. Uh I think Ethan Airlines is the only carrier uh which connects Israel to Africa and we have to strengthen that as well. So your excellency we are ready on humanitarian basis uh to ask Hamas to release our brother Abraham. Uh so uh I think you confused Abraham I confused uh Abraham Mangisu on humanitarian basis uh that they have to release him and we'll put all diplomatic pressure as far as Ethiopia is concerned and also the Africans. So we will we will combass and uh uh you know mobilize African countries to be on on our side to make Abraham to be released on humanitarian basis. So that campaign will will continue to uh for our benefit of our you know Ethiopian diaspora. So, thank you very much for this beautiful uh dinner and I look forward to work very closely with the Israeli government and its people and uh we all including all my delegation members. They are very happy on our today's visit uh since we came to Israel and we'll continue uh to strengthen this relationship uh in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you.