Sword and Shield of Zion by David Rodman

Author:David Rodman [Rodman, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, Israel & Palestine, Military, Aviation
ISBN: 9781845195830
Google: cxrUAQAACAAJ
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press
Published: 2013-01-15T03:37:19+00:00

A Summary and Assessment of IAF Activity in Humanitarian Operations

A basic principle of Israeli foreign policy holds that the state has an obligation to rescue Jewish communities in distress around the world. In the early decades of statehood, endangered Jewish communities in Arab and East European states were brought to Israel via covert operations. The IAF did not play a role in these early rescue operations. To the extent that these operations involved flying refugees to Israel, they were brought in on chartered civilian aircraft.

This situation changed in the 1980s, when the air force played a significant role in bringing thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel via a covert airlift from Sudan. IAF C-130 Hercules aircraft landed clandestinely at makeshift airstrips in the Sudanese wilderness, where Jewish refugees were awaiting them after long treks from their home villages. Agents of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, MOSSAD, as well as members of Shaldag, assisted in getting the refugees onboard the aircraft.18 The airlift went on until it received exposure in Israel. This publicity prompted Sudan, which had tacitly cooperated with the operation, to shut it down. Over 8,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel during Operation Moses.19

By no means did this operation rescue the entire Ethiopian Jewish community. Indeed, the majority of its members remained behind to confront continued economic privation and political oppression. In 1991, the civil war then raging in Ethiopia presented an opportunity to bring the rest of the community to Israel. As one of its final acts, the dying Communist regime, with the tacit cooperation of rebel forces rapidly closing in on the capital of Addis Ababa, permitted Israel to mount an airlift. Employing its own sizable fleet of transport aircraft, as well as a number of commercial aircraft conscripted from El Al, the national airline, the IAF mounted perhaps the most spectacular human airlift in history, flying over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in a day and a half during Operation Solomon.20 One El Al Boeing 747 carried over 1,100 refugees to Israel, setting a record for the largest number of passengers ever carried on a single flight. Collectively, Operations Moses and Solomon transplanted most of the Ethiopian Jewish community to Israel.

On a much more modest scale, Unit 669 has also engaged in humanitarian operations since its creation in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.21 During peacetime, its teams of highly trained special operations troops routinely rescue stranded hikers, climbers, and sailors from their predicaments across the Israeli landscape, and its doctors and medics transport the sick and injured to hospitals via specially equipped helicopters, treating them along the way. Pregnant Bedouin women in remote parts of the Negev Desert are said to prefer Unit 669 medics to hospital doctors and nurses when giving birth. Unit 669 looks upon these civilian rescue operations as supplementary training exercises that are useful to sharpening its wartime skills.

With the vast majority of the world’s Jewish population residing in democratic and stable states, Israel’s humanitarian operations have increasingly focused on helping non-Jews to recover from natural or manmade catastrophes.

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