“Pompeo’s Other Historical Move & Israel”

Pompeo’s historic flight from Israel to Sudan, reminds us of the historic flights carrying Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel

By Moshe Phillips, HERUT

While many critics of the Trump administration were laser-focused on the second day of the Republican National Convention in their criticism of Secretary Mike Pompeo for speaking to the convention from Jerusalem, part of his own focus seemed to be on a different historical aspect of the day.

The secretary tweeted on August 25th that he was “Happy to announce that we are on the FIRST official NONSTOP flight from Israel to Sudan!”

The word that may have stood out to some readers of the tweet was “official.” When were there any “unofficial.” flights? Were there any illegal flights?

The very popular and star-studded Netflix movie The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019) featured just such a Sudan to Israel flight at its dramatic conclusion.

The Chris Evans / Ben Kingsley film reveals the amazing true story of the 1984-1985 covert op when Mossad agents with members of the Israel Defense Forces rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews. The Ethiopian Jews had sought shelter in Sudan from both a devastating famine and a bloody Marxist insurgency that ravaged Ethiopia leaving over a million dead. Sudan itself was in the midst of a Civil War.

The Mossad op was called “Operation Moses” and between 6,500 and 8,000 Jews were smuggled out of East Africa to freedom in Israel, their home.

At the end of the movie, there is remarkable, authentic news footage of the Ethiopian Jews jubilant in their arrival at the airport as they bent down to kiss the tarmac and celebrate the fulfillment of their dream of getting to Israel.

The same trip Secretary Pompeo just took: Sudan to Israel.

But there is more to unpack here. Much more.

The IDF airlift was historic and it’s more important now than ever to remember why.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin tasked Mossad with the mission to rescue Ethiopian Jewry. And they did.

By 2010, over 110,000 Jews of Ethiopian descent had made their home in Israel. Now the community is estimated at 150,000.

The efforts continued under Yitzhak Shamir and under Shimon Peres. But, Begin initiated it.

Just as he had approved the rescue of non-Jewish refugees from Vietnam several years before in 1977. This dedication to color-blind human rights and lifesaving were lessons Begin had learned directly from his mentor, the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin was quoted as having compared the Vietnamese boat people to the Holocaust refugees that Franklin D. Roosevelt had refused to save: “We never have forgotten the boat with 900 Jews, the St. Louis, having left Germany in the last weeks before the Second World War… traveling from harbor to harbor, from country to country, crying out for refuge. They were refused… Therefore it was natural… to give those people a haven in the Land of Israel.”

But the epic rescue of Ethiopian Jewry by the government of Israel is and was about more than just providing a safe haven for Jews. Israel is about more than that. And this is among the many things that comedian Seth Rogen got horribly wrong in his July tirade on Israel. “You don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place.”

Israel is not just a safe haven. It is the one nation on earth that is the Jewish homeland. Where Jews can set an agenda that is focused on what is best for Jews, wherever those Jews may be.

Ethiopian born Israelis have served as cabinet ministers, members of Knesset, and ambassadors. They are fully integrated into society. This is Zionism. This is the dream of 2,000 years.

Menachem Begin, the Mossad, and the IDF showed the world that black lives matter decades before the current rallying cry. That so many activists on the American left seek to portray Israel as racist is more than just false, it is a damned lie and a dangerous one at that.

What other nation in history ever went into Africa with the sole purpose of bringing Africans out to freedom, honor, and safety. Israel did that. And, as “The Red Sea Diving Resort” showed, the US government helped.

What’s worth mentioning is that this cooperation was not when Jimmy “Peace Not Apartheid” Carter was president. Carter has never liked Begin and prefers to see Israel maligned as the aggressor and not the hero.

Daniel Sahalo, an Ethiopian Jew who was a historical consultant for The Red Sea Diving Resort film told Time Magazine that Mossad rescuers “risked their lives every day for almost three years.” This is Zionism. This is Israel. This is the love of a brother being responsible for a brother. And this is beautiful and it is eternal.