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  • Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews
  • Michael Galchinsky (bio)
Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. By Stephen Spector. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xv + 279 pp.

Stephen Spector has produced a meticulous, well-written account of the events leading up to and including the Israeli airlift of 14,310 Ethiopian Jews (also called Beta Israel) to Israel on May 24–25, 1991. Spector spent eight years researching and writing the book. He was given access to the confidential archives of the Joint Distribution Committee, a humanitarian organization which organized schools, clinics, and other social services in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. He also interviewed many of the key actors from the Joint, the U.S. and Israeli governments, the Jewish Agency, and the American Association for Ethiopian Jewry. The book has the ring of authority, and reads like a novelistic thriller.

Spector sets Operation Solomon among numerous overlapping contexts: the Ethiopian civil war and the fall of the Mengistu regime; the backroom negotiations for arms, economic assistance, and face-saving support among Ethiopian, U.S., Israeli, and Russian government representatives; the planning and technical know-how of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Mossad; the "who is a Jew?" controversy; the cooperation [End Page 522] and conflict among American Jewish defense and humanitarian organizations; the agitation by Ethiopian-Israeli civil rights groups and West Bank settlers; and the attempts to repeal the UN's "Zionism equals racism" resolution. He depicts the operation as a key moment in the Zionist narrative of "the ingathering of the exiles" and successful, if often chaotic, Israeli cooperation with the U.S. and with American Jews. Yet Spector also shows that the ingathering and cooperation narratives imply a story more harmonious than was actually the case. In many instances, he highlights unresolved competing accounts about the same events from different institutional representatives.

Because each of the actors had different agendas—even those ostensibly working toward the same goal—the road was not always smooth. The White House of George H.W. Bush, the Senate, and the State Department were not always on the same page. The Israelis and the American Jews often clashed. The narratives of the Israeli officials often differ from those of the qessotch, the Beta Israel's spiritual leaders. One of the most interesting examples of conflict concerns a key actor who, until now, has received little attention: Susan Pollack, the representative in Addis Ababa of the grassroots and somewhat maverick American Association for Ethiopian Jews. Pollack precipitated the crisis leading to Operation Solomon when, in February 1990, without consulting any government, she arranged to transport the majority of Beta Israel from the remote Gondar province to the capital. Within weeks the Israeli embassy became a refugee camp for thousands of Ethiopian Jews, where hunger, HIV, and tuberculosis spread rapidly, and the agricultural villagers had to confront the temptations of hard currency, alcohol, and prostitution. The Joint and the Jewish Agency were at the time furious with Pollack for bringing the Beta Israel before proper social service accommodations could be made. Yet Spector demonstrates that, while critical of Pollack in public, they nonetheless acknowledged privately that she had been able to do precisely what no elite NGO or government agency could have done—create what one calls "a fact on the ground"—and that, if it had not been for the AAEJ, the evacuation might never have taken place.

This tale of conflict and cooperation among the network of organizations working on behalf of Ethiopian Jews might be the basis for a comparative study of Jewish international politics. Spector's narrative exemplifies the ad hoc, informal structure by which political actors on international Jewish issues have usually operated—e.g., with regard to Soviet Jewry, UN reform, even the formation of the State of Israel itself. The informality of the collaboration makes it possible for each of the actors to operate independently, according to the mission of their organization, yet to participate in time-limited strategic coalitions among public and [End Page 523] private entities. Spector's example yields insight into the often Byzantine, delicate, and dynamic workings of this kind of politics...

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