Escape from Addis. As the rebels were closing in on the capital, 14,310 fleeing Jews were boarding planes to bring them to Israel.
As Jews throughout the world reflect each year on Pesach (Passover) on how their ancestors fled from bondage over 3000 years ago from Egypt, Israelis reflect too on a more recent mass flight to freedom of African Jews to Israel – the Jews from Ethiopia.
There is much speculation on the origins of this ancient African Jewish community. While some believe that they stem from the migration to Ethiopia of a section of the Tribe of Dan, perhaps at the time of the Exodus, others hold the view that they are the descendants of the relationship between the Queen of Sheba of Ethiopia and King Solomon of Israel.
Whatever the true facts of their past, their future lay bleak by the late 20th century – facing starvation and genocide.
In the spirit of Moses, it was time again to save a community of African Jews and return them to their ancestral homeland – Israel.
“OUR FINEST HOUR”
The journey to Israel of Ethiopia’s Jewry began in the early 1980s. Gad Shimron was a young Mossad agent at the time. While his colleagues were operating mainly in Europe, Shimron’s assignment was Africa – the Sudan – where Ethiopian Jews had been fleeing to in their thousands following the Eritrean conflict.
His mission?
To find a way of secretly moving these refugees – now stranded in camps – to Israel. The operation that was to follow – codenamed ‘Brothers’ – galvanized the entire Israeli defense establishment. In a 2007 interview with Reuters, Shimron – paraphrasing Churchill – described the mission as one of Israel’s “finest hours”.
“We’re the only Westernized country to have brought out Africans to liberate, rather than to enslave.”
With the blessing of the then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, himself a former refugee, Shimron and a small team of Mossad agents flew into Khartoum in 1981 posing as entrepreneurs from a Swiss travel firm.
However deceptive, there was no denying that the nature of the business was ‘travel’!
The Mossad had bought a defunct resort on the Sudanese coast. Renovated and staffed with locals, it served as a front, attracting foreign scuba divers and sport fishermen. The operation was exceptional in another sense noted Shimron with rye amusement: “Instead of typically losing money, we found ourselves making a tidy profit.” From the resort the Mossad team would travel at night, driving hundreds of miles over potholed roads deep into hostile territory to pick up Jews. They would then rendezvous on a beach, where the refugees were collected by Israeli naval commandos and ferried to Israel. “I still remember how they looked in those trucks,” Shimron would later report. “Emaciated, dressed in rags, the old and the infants. I remember how they gazed at us with complete trust.”
Modern Day ‘Exodus’. The regular seats in the planes had been removed to cram in as many passengers as possible.
FLIGHT TO FREEDOM
Over the ensuing years, tens of thousands were moved to Israel in operations so graphically epic in scope that they appropriately took their names from the Bible. Shlomo Molla, a former Member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), arrived at the age of 17 in 1984 in Operation Moses.
His long journey to becoming the second Ethiopian to be elected to the Knesset began with a grueling 800 kilometre walk from Ethiopia to Sudan. Living in a small rural village in Ethiopia’s Gondar province, Shlomo told the writer how in 1983 he heard rumors that Jews were secretly being taken to Israel from the Sudan. The problem was to get there. His personal saga is testimony to the grit of a community that had survived as Jews in isolation for millennia. “Jews lived as second class citizens. Why were we called ‘Falashas’? Falasha means ‘a stranger’. After 3000 years Jews were still being treated as strangers. We could not stand for parliament, could not hold top positions in universities and could not own land.” In the countryside, continues Molla, “we leased the land, paying 2/3rds of our produce to our landlord.”
Descendents of kings, this community was reduced to the life of serfs.
Setting off northwards with a group of friends, Molla began his 800 k/m walk. After being abandoned by their guide, they were attacked by bandits, “and left with only the clothes on our backs.” Wandering across the Ethiopian desert for days, they arrived at the Sudanese border, “where we were picked up by a border patrol on camels.” Kept in solitary confinement and beaten frequently, “we survived on bread and water.”
Four months later “we were dumped in a truck and taken to a refugee camp, where we joined up with other Jews.” Boarding then larger trucks, it took another 12-hour drive before they bade a final farewell to the ochre colored earth of Africa as the Israeli planes took off into the blue sky and freedom.
During the brief period of Operation Moses which began on November 18th, 1984 and ended six weeks later on January 5, 1985, some 8000 Jews were brought to Israel. Shlomo believes “there are approximately 130,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel today, 30,000 of them, native born Israelis.” Three of them are Shlomo’s children.
Mother And Children. On account of the size of the escape operation, each escapee received a sticker to easily identify them as well as to instruct what numbers had to embark on what designated plane.
On the Backs of Mothers
To meet the educational demands of this mass immigration that left rural life in Africa for a technologically and commercially advanced Israel, the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya launched a special program for Ethiopians, supported by Atidim, the Israel Student Authority and a cadre of philanthropists. Acknowledging the problems of integration, they faced in their ‘new world’, “We felt incumbent to ensure these students are placed in key positions to serve as role models for their community,” expressed Jonathan Davis, Head of the IDC Herzliya’s International School. “We looked to our Ethiopian graduates in the years ahead to be amongst Israel’s top leaders in business, law and politics.” In the ensuing years, this has proven to be the case.
One of these students was 26-year-old Edan Senai, who arrived in Israel aged six in 1989 with her mother.
“My father and my brother were already here having come via Operation Moses in 1984.” A diminutive child, Edan’s journey ‘out of Africa’ was almost entirely on her mother’s back. She relates a traumatic experience when they were robbed by brigands en route to the Sudan. “They started shooting and threatened to kill us but my mother pleaded for our lives and somehow, they let us go.” Arriving in the Sudan, they fell under the protection of a rebel militia.
“For four months while we waited for the trucks to fetch us, I was separated from my mother and the rest of the Jews. My mother was insistent; she felt that if the camp was attacked, at least I might survive.”
When the trucks finally arrived, “we climbed in and they covered us with straw in case we were stopped and searched. They drove us by night to the plane which brought us to Israel.” Arriving in Israel, “I was diagnosed as suffering with malaria and the doctors thought I had little chance of surviving.” Edan survived!
Following her national service, she studied law at the IDC, Herzliya. Her father, who died a few years previously, always impressed upon her the importance of education. He had been an operative in the Mossad, risking his life infiltrating back into Ethiopia and the Sudan to save Jewish lives. “He put his life on the line for his people. When I graduated at the IDC, Herzliya, I felt my Dad standing there next to my mother so proud and knowing that all he fought for was worth it.”
FINAL COUNTDOWN
In 1991, the remnant Jewish community of Ethiopia were once again in danger. With the country in the throes of a deadly civil war, the situation facing Ethiopia’s Jewish community was cataclysmic. With the rebels closing in on the capital about to topple the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, time was running out for the Jews who had gathered in mass, awaiting rescue. In these fluid situations throughout history, Jews invariable end up victims – whatever the nature of the conflict.
While the clock was ticking, Israel had not been idle. Already the previous year, the Israeli government together with the Israeli Defense Force had devised plans – all very covert – to airlift the Jews to Israel.
Airplanes had been stripped of their seats to cram over 1000 passengers per plane who would board with little more than their clothes they wore. As one passenger later quipped: “We left with less than our ancestors from Egypt!”
They may have carried less materially, but no less spiritually. Like their forebears in the Exodus, they carried the immense burden of the destiny of their people?
Mendel Kaplan Z”L
The South African Connection
A factor in the success or failure of Operation Solomon on that fateful Friday morning on the 26th May, 1991 was a little question of money – $35 million to be exact. Multiple forces were in play, requiring quick thinking. While Israeli Air Force planes were circling above the skies of Addis Ababa and some 15,000 Jews were circling the Israeli embassy waiting to be bussed to the airport, rebel forces were closing in on the besieged capital. Time was running out. Had these forces burst in before the rescue, there may well have been no Jews left alive to rescue.
Suddenly the plan began to unravel. Israel’s chief negotiator, Uri Lubrani was instructed by the acting Head of State, Lieutenant General Tesfaye Gebre Kidan – who was President of Ethiopia for one week in late May 1991 – to halt further action. “We had a standoff,” explains South African Mendel Kaplan, who was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency at the time – and a major player in the behind-the-scenes negotiations. “Kidan would not permit the Jews to leave until the money was paid into a bank account. We, on the other hand, were reluctant to release the $35 million before our brethren were airborne or we would have no leverage.” An astute international businessman, Kaplan came up with the solution. He suggested making payment at the closing time of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, which was way to the west of the east coast of Africa. “Because of the time difference, this would give us an extra seven hours,” explains Kaplan, calculating that by then, “half the Ethiopian Jews would be on their way to Israel.” Kaplan later revealed, “the idea came to me from Jules Verne’s Around ‘The World in 80 Days’. With the rebels closing in for the kill, there was not even a day to play around with, “only hours”, noted Kaplan.
No less under pressure, Kidan – reluctant to prolong the negotiations and jeopardize ‘the spoils of war’ – agreed. Over a total of 36 hours, 14,310 Jews, including eight babies born along the way were airlifted to Israel in 37 planes.
Twist In The Tale
For the late Simcha Dinitz, who was Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency at the time, the sight of hundreds of Ethiopian Jews pouring out of the planes in Israel was “one of the greatest moments in my life. The whole essence of Jewish history and Israel’s role in Jewish history came to life.”
“Every great story has an epilogue,” Dinitz would later relate. He received a call some months after the 1991 operation that the $35 million was still sitting unclaimed at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. There had been confusion following the president’s sudden ouster from power and the bank was inquiring as to who the legal heir was. Capitalizing on the situation, Dinitz agreed that the money should be transferred to the new government but only on ONE condition – that Israel be allowed to evacuate a further 3000 Jews who had been left behind. Over the next few months, several thousand more Ethiopians, including the Falash Mura (converts) landed at Ben Gurion Airport. Some of the children of these Ethiopians who would later study at the Interdisciplinary 
Center Herzliya, visited South Africa in 2013. A recent graduate, Samuel Tasema addressed a church in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha, where he said: “For me being back in South Africa is like completing a circle. I arrived in Israel as a baby on the back of my mother and returned this week to Africa employed in one of the most prestigious investment firms in Israel.”
Tasema was part of a delegation of Ethiopian students from the IDC Herzliya to counter the demonization of his country during UCT’s annual Israel hate week (IHW).
Food for Thought
Nothing could best illustrate this than when a young woman student at UCT from Saudi Arabia – all modestly covered up from head to foot in her burka – entered ‘Abraham’s Tent’ where the Ethiopian students were welcoming visitors to “eat and chat”.
The Saudi student immediately began demonising Israel calling it an apartheid state” adding, “please understand, I’m pro- Palestinian.”
One of the Ethiopian students, Dvora Desda, replied, “There is nothing wrong in being pro-Palestinian, so am I. However, before we continue, I have just one question to ask you, just one.”
“Yes, sure, ask away,” confidently replied the Saudi.
“Can you, as a woman, drive in your country?”
The Saudi stood speechless.
It was not only a face not to be seen but a mouth not to be heard!
“So,” asserted in Desda, “you are not permitted to do as basic a thing as drive a car in your country, which every man or woman, Jew, Christian or Muslim can do in mine and you speak to me about apartheid. It appears it is you and not I that live in an apartheid state.”
Having lost her appetite to engage in discourse, the Saudi student left the tent failing as well to avail herself of a complimentary pita with falafel and humous.
These are the new generation of Ethiopian Israelis whose destinies are tied up with the destiny of Israel.
From what was only a dream a century ago, Israel today is a thriving country, home to the majority of Jews in the world. Even skeptics of the Bible can look afresh at the words of Isaiah (11:12):
“….and gather the scattered of Y’hudah from the four corners of the earth”.
The Ethiopian Aliyah (immigration) may well be the final mass ingathering fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah.
