In May 1991, the Israeli government airlifted around 14,300 Ethiopian Jews into the country within 34 hours. “Operation Solomon” was a race against time, as the civil war in Ethiopia escalated dramatically.
Since the founding of the state of Israel it has been a policy that the state of the Jews should be open to fellow believers from all over the world. Part of the Jewish minority in Ethiopia had already benefited from this offer: in 1984/85 around 8,000 people were brought into the country in a secret operation. But still around 20,000 Jews who called themselves “Beta Israel” (“House of Israel”) lived in the African state. The civil war escalated there in the spring of 1991: A front made up of politically diverse rebel groups advanced on the capital Addis Ababa – the dictatorial socialist regime of President Mengistu Haile Mariam was on the verge of collapse.
In the previous years, US Jewish interest groups in particular had put pressure on Israel to finally evacuate all Beta Israel from Ethiopia. Eventually the government bowed – and started negotiations with Ethiopia. In the podcast episode 20, David Neuhäuser and Felix Melching talk about who was pursuing what goals, what problems arose and how a 13-year-old girl happened to pass on crucial information that was of great importance for the success or failure of the operation .
And here is the podcast: