On This Day in History: May 24

Rescue of Ethiopian Jews

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Six years after Bob Geldof’s white-savior clusterfuck of a mega concert called Live Aid gave money to an Ethiopian dictator to finance his ongoing civil war in which he used famine as a weapon, that dictator was about to be toppled. And this presented Israel with an opportunity to sneak thousands of Jews out of Ethiopia. 

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 24, 1991--

Wait. Live Aid was bad? The music was good, but read the July 13 entry from Volume 1 of my On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down book. Anyway, Jews had been living in Ethiopia, which is almost two-thirds Christian and one-third Muslim, for centuries. And, big surprise, these Ethiopian Jews weren’t treated so well. During the famine of 1984-85 many fled to refugee camps in Sudan, with thousands dying along the way from violence and sickness. Working with the CIA, which I guess doesn’t always suck, Israeli Defense Forces airlifted more than 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Six years later, it was time for an even larger rescue effort. In the chaos of the Ethiopian government’s impending fall, a covert mission began to evacuate over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. 

It’s important to note that not everyone in Israel wanted them. There were plenty of people who didn’t want any Jews in the region, wishing death upon them all, but that’s another story. There were Jews in Israel who were all nah fuck those Ethiopian Jews leave them there. But the Israeli government said shut the fuck up we’re getting them out. And with help from the American Association of Ethiopian Jews, that’s what they did. 

Called Operation Solomon, for months it was preceded by Ethiopian Jews traveling by bus, truck, car, horse, and even on foot to the capital of Addis Ababa to board the planes. Beginning on May 24, 1991, the evacuees were loaded onto aircraft that had been stripped of seats to cram as many on board as possible. One 747 carried over a thousand people and holds the world record for the most people on a single flight. Two babies were born in the air on that flight, and three more were born on other flights. 

Most arrived in Israel with nothing but the clothes they wore, and were greeted at the airport by thousands of cheering Israelis. But due to language and education barriers, it was not an easy transition for most to Israeli society, and 15 years later 80% of the adult immigrants from Ethiopia were unemployed. A decade further on, however, that figure dropped to under a quarter unemployed as the children of these immigrants entered the workforce. And while their religion gives those of Ethiopian descent—which make up 2.3% of Jews in Israel today—a level of acceptance in Israeli society denied to Muslims and especially to Palestinians, they still experience much racism. They are disproportionately harassed by police, as well as discriminated against in the workforce and Israeli society in general. 

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.

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