After losing her Ethiopian-Israeli father, 8-year-old Geffen, who is an Israeli citizen, will be forcefully deported with her mother to Ethiopia whose residency’s status process was halted. The family is preparing to fight back to keep Geffen in Israel.

Geffen loves to study math and play with her friends. She lives in the central Israeli city of Rishon Letzion, is in second grade and has a captivating smile. In Hebrew, her name means “grapevine.” In July, after the school year comes to an end, Geffen is scheduled to leave Israel with her mother Maza, an Ethiopian citizen Israel wants to deport – even though her daughter is an Israeli citizen, because her father was too.

Geffen’s father, Natan Getahon, died in 2019 shortly after Geffen’s mother began the process for receiving legal residency status in Israel. The process was halted when Getahon died, and the humanitarian committee of the Population, Immigration and Border Authority in the Interior Ministry did not accept the mother’s request to remain in Israel with her daughter after the death of her husband.

“The damage that will be caused, as far as any will be caused, is small,” a Population and Immigration Authority representative told the appeal’s tribunal in the Justice Ministry that reviews decisions made by the Population Authority. Half of Geffen’s short life was spent in Ethiopia with her mother’s family, which raised her when she was an infant, said the representative. But Geffen also has a large family in Israel that warmly supports her and her mother, and who are prepared to fight to keep them in Israel.

“I’m shocked by the situation,” Atkacho (Aryeh) Getahon, Natan’s brother, told a judge on the appeals panel at a hearing held last year in Jerusalem concerning his sister-in-law’s deportation. “I ask myself, how are we treating this matter in general. The child has siblings, we are a family that lives together, I understand the state’s considerations, and I served the country. Now I feel

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Geffen’s story was first reported by Army Radio and since then the Israeli organization Zazim – Community in Action has begun raising awareness to put a stop to the deportation order. The group and the Getahon are hoping that the case of Danielle Lev, the daughter of an Israeli father and a Thai mother, will serve as precedent. Former Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked allowed Danielle’s mother, after her father died, to remain in Israel after a determined public struggle. The Getahon family also plans on sending Interior Minister Moshe Arbel a personal message on the matter this week.

Getahon told Haaretz that the humanitarian committee’s decision was like a punch to the face for him. “We are a down to earth family, we went through a lot on the way to our promised land, we walked hundreds of kilometers to get here. My brother, Geffen’s father, saved us from death in Sudan. I am obligated to do everything to help his daughter. But it doesn’t interest the state, and they didn’t give it any weight.”

Natan met Maza through mutual friends in Ethiopia in 2013 when he went for a visit. He was an activist in the Ethiopian community, edited a book on the immigration of Ethiopian Jewry and worked in the field of immigrant absorption. Natan went to Ethiopia a few times to visit Maza, and he found out she was pregnant when he was in Israel. Because he was helping to take care of his mother, who was ill with cancer, Natan was unable to travel to Ethiopia to be with Maza.