Operation Moses
The Operation Moses , (designation of origin "The Lion of Judah's Cub"; German The Lion of Judah cub ) named after the biblical Moses was the secret evacuation of nearly 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel between 21 November 1984 and 5 January 1985 .
Starting position
During the famine in Ethiopia in 1984–1985 , thousands of Jews fled from Ethiopia to Sudan , where they were housed together with Muslims and Christians in refugee camps (so-called “hunger camps”). It is estimated that around 4,000 Falashes perished while fleeing as a result of civil war, hunger and disease on the long walk. The State of Israel decided to take in the Jewish refugees and evacuate them from Sudan. It began in the early 1980s with secret evacuation measures by the Mossad , first via ships and then via aircraft landings on remote desert runways. The headquarters of the Mossad was a tourist diving resort operated for camouflage in Arous, Sudan on the Red Sea. Due to the impending famine, it was decided to accelerate the operation and bribed the Sudanese president (there was also diplomatic pressure from the Americans), who allowed an evacuation via Khartoum on condition of complete secrecy. For this, Israel needed the support of a neutral airline. Contacts were made with the Belgian entrepreneur Georges Gutelman , who had the aircraft of his charter airline Trans European Airways (TEA) serviced by Israel Aircraft Industries and who had previously worked with the Israeli government. In the past, Trans European Airways had made several pilgrimage flights to Mecca on behalf of North African airlines , so the presence of TEA planes in Sudan would not arouse suspicion. Gutelman consented to the use of his aircraft. However, the flights could not take place directly to Israel, as in this case the Egyptian airspace would have had to be crossed and the secrecy of the operation would no longer have been guaranteed. Gutelman decided to operate the flights via Brussels-Zaventem Airport , the home airport of the TEA. The approval of the Belgian government was required for this. Gutelman found support in the Belgian Minister of Justice, Jean Gol , so that the flights could finally begin with the approval of the Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens .
execution
Between November 21, 1984 and January 5, 1985, nearly 7,000 bottles were brought to Israel by air on TEA aircraft. The flights allowed by Sudan were carried out in secret at night. For this purpose, the refugees were brought by bus to a disused part of a military airfield near Khartoum and from there flown to Israel via Brussels . After the former Israeli minister Arie Leib Dulzin revealed initial information about the flights in an interview, it was reported in the New York Times , among others . On January 5, 1985, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres held a press conference . He was approached by journalists about the secret flights and confirmed them. Under pressure from the Arab states, Sudan withdrew its landing rights from the TEA airline on the same day. At that time, the airline had operated around 35 flights and transported a total of around 7,000 refugees to Israel. After the operation became known, around 1,000 Falashes remained in Sudan.
The newcomers were initially greeted with joy in Israel. Operation Moses was a success in the face of an economic crisis, the military conflict in Lebanon, and declining immigration to Israel. Clothing, toys, money, free medical care and language lessons were donated by the Israeli people.
Further development
800 of those who remained were only brought to Israel in March of that year as part of Operation Joshua . It came about through the mediation of the American Vice President George Bush and was carried out by the CIA . The Ethiopian Jews were no longer brought to the airport in Khartoum, but to the abandoned Al-Azaza airport near al-Qadarif in eastern Sudan .
Even after this operation was over, there were still more than 1,600 orphans in Israel who had left or lost their families in Ethiopia or Sudan. Operations Salomon (1991) and Dove Wings (2011) completed the Falash immigration to Israel.
consequences
Although the rabbis in Israel declared the Falashes to be Jewish, they were initially not accepted by much of the Israeli population. It was believed that the Falashes were neither Jewish nor well educated and that they would bring dangerous African diseases into Israel.
A great difficulty for the Falaschers themselves was the sudden change from their accustomed agricultural life to a modern, developed city life. In addition, most of them found it difficult to learn the national language Ivrit . While integration was usually relatively easy for the younger people, the older people in particular often live more in the past than in the present. Pnina Tamano-Schata was elected to the Knesset in 2013 as the first Ethiopian Jew.
The integration of the Falashes has remained difficult to this day. There were and still are rabbis who question their being Jewish. Among the most prominent are or were: Elasar Menachem Schach , Yosef Shalom Eliashiv , Schlomo Salman Auerbach and Moshe Feinstein .
Movies
A film set against the background of Operation Moses is Go and Live ( Va, Vis et Deviens ; 2005) by Radu Mihăileanu . Yifat Kedar's documentary Code Name Silence ( Kod Schtika ; 2005) deals with incidents of abuse of refugees by Ethiopian helpers hired by the Mossad .
Web links
- www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org , accessed December 15, 2012
- www.jewishfederations.org , accessed December 15, 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ Raffi Berg, Red Sea Diving Resort: The holiday village run by spies , BBC, August 5, 2019
- ↑ Gad Shimron, Mossad Exodus. The daring undercover rescue of the lost jewish tribe, Jerusalem: Gefen 2007
- ^ Haaretz, The Making of History - Operation Georges [1]
- ↑ www.neunlindenhof.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg , Tzitz Eliezer , Volume 17 , subject 48, page 105 .
- ↑ Michael Ashkenazi, Alex Weingrod. Ethiopian Jews and Israel , Transaction Publishers, 1987, p. 30, footnote 4.
- ↑ Kod Sch'tikah (Code Name Silence) - Kinofilm - film.at
