The pro-Israel lobby went to the wall with the Reagan
administration in the fall of 1981 over the proposed sale
of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. The administration
won a narrow, bitter victory in the Senate, 52-48.
The war in Lebanon, which began in June, 1982, met
with military success but diplomatic failure, and split
Jews in Israel and around the world over issues of
Israeli security and foreign policy.
The Israeli rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from
November, 1984 to January, 1985, was an emotional
highlight of the decade, underscoring the fulfillment of
the Zionist mission and dream.
Senate Approves
AWACS
Israel Launches
War In Lebanon
`Operation Moses'
Rescues Ethiopians
11:1
n June 6, 1982, Israeli troops in-
vaded Lebanon in an effort to
destroy the PLO. But what
started out as quick military in-
cursion turned into an ugly lit-
tle war that would not go
away, a war that claimed thousands of
lives, bitterly divided Israeli sentiment,
rocked her government, and damaged the
Jewish state's image in the U.S. and
elsewhere.
At first there was strong support for the
military action, known as Operation
Galilee, as Israeli troops invaded southern
Lebanon. Their objective was to force the
PLO, which had launched terrorist attacks
on northern Israel from its strongholds, to
retreat to the north. But after the PLO
fled to Beirut, Israel surrounded and
bombed the city for weeks, incurring the
wrath of the world media and the Reagan
administration for the resulting heavy
civilian casualties.
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was seen
as the "heavy" of the war, particularly
after hundreds of men, women and
children were killed by Christian Lebanese
militia in the Palestinian refugee camps of
Sabra and Shatila, sparking the largest
demonstration — 400,000 Israelis — in the
history of the Jewish state.
When the war finally dragged to an end,
more than two years after it began, the
PLO had been forced out of Lebanon, but
Prime Minister Begin had resigned from
office, Sharon had been ousted as defense
minister, and Israel was deeply split over
policies resulting from the country's first
war of aggression.
espite a major lobbying effort
by the American Jewish com-
munity to defeat the Reagan ad-
ministration's proposed $8.5
billion sale of AWACS (Air-
borne Warning and Control
System) to
Saudi Arabia, the Senate, in a bitter
debate that featured intense personal
pressure from the President himself,
approved the sale by a vote of 52-48 in
October, 1981.
Israel and American Jewry, working
largely through AIPAC (American Israel
Public Affairs Committee), the pro-Israel
lobby in Washington, argued that Saudi
Arabia was a negative factor in the quest
for Mideast peace and that the sophis-
ticated AWACS planes could be used in a
war against Israel.
The debate turned ugly when ad-
ministration officials questioned the
"loyalty" of those Americans opposed to
the sale. President Reagan said "it is not
the business of other nations to make
American foreign policy."
The incident marked the most bitter
American Jewish showdown with a U.S.
administration, and AIPAC has not op-
posed subsequent arms deals to Arab
countries as strenuously. On the other
hand, U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation
has grown significantly in recent years.
The AWACS struggle taught both sides a
lesson in achieving goals by avoiding a
public battle.
0
I
t was called "Operation Moses" and
the proportions -of exodus were in-
deed Biblical. Thousands of op-
pressed Jews, abandoned in the
desert, taken from their deadly
misery in the dark of night and
delivered to a spiritual homeland they
knew only from their fervent prayers.
It was the stuff of miracles, the fulfill-
ment of Zionism: saving lives, providing a
haven for Jews in peril by bringing them
to Israel, re-defining the nature of
peoplehood.
During a three-month period, from
November 1984 to January 1985, some
7,500 Ethiopian Jews (more than 5,000 of
them children), were flown to Israel from
Sudanese refugee camps. The average age
of the immigrants was 14.
Later in the year, with the help of the
U.S., several thousands more refugees were
airlifted to Israel.
But there were tragic problems along
the way. At least 2,000 Ethiopian Jews
died in refugee camps awaiting their salva-
tion; thousands more remained behind, too
old to make the arduous trek on foot from
northern Ethiopia to Sudan; publicity sur-
rounding the rescue caused its delay; and
a controversy in Israel over religious
status brought pain and embarrassment.
Still, the rescue operation was an act of
bravery, defiance and pride that tran- .
scended the resettlement problems. The
world was shown that Zionism has
everything to do with Jewish values and
nothing to do with racism, and that for
the State of Israel, Jewish suffering is in-
sufferable. Here were people calling
themselves Jews and longing for Zion.
Reason enough to risk lives to save
thousands more.
As the decade drew to a close, Israel
and Ethiopia reached an agreement that
apprently pledges Israeli military coopera-
tion in return for the rescue of the
thousands of Jews still languishing in
Ethiopia — an opportunity to complete
the redemption of a lost tribe of Israel.
TH DE
T J