THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

where I was asked to state my occupa
tion, I had been instructed to write
"housewife." Not journalist. Not editor.
They are barred from travel in Ethiopia.
There were six American housewives in
our group. And the men with us were
mostly teachers and social workers ac-
cording to their documents.
The Israelis hoped to clear all the
Jews out of the Sudanese refugee camps
in about ten weeks. No easy task. First
the 10,000 Jews scattered among
600,00 or so Ethiopian refugees would
have to be identified — mostly by each
other, and by Israelis like Aharon. Then
they would be guided out of the Sudan
to airplanes and flown over neutralized
airspace into Israel. The guides would
also be Israelis. Like Aharon. It would
be a daring venture.
Sudan is a member of the Arab
League. Its ruler, Gafal al Numeiri, is
a fundamentalist Muslim heavily depen-
dent on Saudi Arabian largesse. He may
dislike the recent influx into his coun-
try by refugees from the sub-Saharan
famine and from the various Ethiopian
civil wars, but he is no friend of Israel.
Certainly the Marxist government of
Ethiopia, led by Lt. Col Mengistu Haile

Mariam, is violently opposed to emigra-
tion by Jews or any of their people, and
Mengistu'is no friend of Israel either.
There have been reports — denied by
the government of course — of army
troops actually opening fire on the
steady stream of Ethiopians crossing
into the Sudan.
With luck, with time, and with
secrecy, the Israelis hoped that they
might even be able to revive the now
moribund movement of Jews from
Ethiopia into the Sudan. The under- .
ground railroad had halted as word got
back to the remote Jewish villages of
the Gondar province that people were
stalled in the camps and starving, not
moving on to the promised land of Zion.
With enough time, luck and secrecy,
the Israelis had visions of possibly pull-
ing off a transfer of the entire Jewish
population of Ethiopia. They called
their plan Operation Moses. A modern
exodus.
Clandestine rescue operations tend to
have similar scenarios. Some people
have to help the movement actively,
others have to be convinced to look the
other way. Money changes hands. Peo-
ple risk their lives, others may lose

them. Always, though, money changes
hands.
The Jews stalled in Ethiopia needed
to be reassured that movement out of
the Sudanese refugee camps was indeed
being speeded up, and dramatically.
They needed to be told when they might
risk the journey over the border. They
needed money to help buy their way
out. Someone had to go to them.
Someone they could trust.
Aharon claimed he had nothing to do
with that. He gathered native herbs in
the leather pouch he always kept with
him. He translated for our group. And
he visited relatives. Aharon seemed to
have relatives everywhere. In every lit-
tle village.
No journalist wants to sit on a story
like this. Reporters are in the business
of reporting news, not supressing it.
But it was as a Jew, not a journalist,
that I promised Aharon not to publish
all that I learned through him. I agreed
not to print anything that might en-
danger Operation Moses. Not while
Jews were still trapped in Ethiopia and
vulnerable to reprisals from Mengistu's
bloody government. Not while Jews still
huddled among the hundreds of thou-

Continued on Page 18

Friday, January 11, 1985

A Jewish girl grinds grain to make
ingira, Ethiopia's spongy, crepe-like

bread. Handprints on but wall are
decorations for good luck.

15