كيف كانت إسرائيل تخترق الأجواء السودانية في الشرق. (توجد رشاوي أيضا)

288 BY WAY OF DECEPTION
Many stories, even books, have documented Israel's daring and
covert airlift of the Falashas out of refugee camps in Sudan and
Ethiopia. A Belgian-chartered Trans-European Airways Boeing
707 was used to fly them on a circuitous route from either
Khartoum or Addis Ababa, through either Athens, Brussels,
Rome, or Basel, then to Tel Aviv.
The stories — all fed by Mossad disinformation specialists — claim
that 12,000 black Ethiopian Jews were rescued in this short,
spectacular operation. In fact, about 18,000 were rescued, and
only about 5,000 of those by way of the publicly celebrated Belgian
charter. The rest came through the Red Sea "tourist resort."

* * *

At the turn of this century, there were several hundred thousand
Falashas in Ethiopia, but by the 1980s their numbers had
dwindled to at most 25,000, scattered mainly throughout the
country's remote northwestern Gondar province. For two
centuries, the Falashas had longed for the promised land, but it
wasn't until 1972 that they were officially recognized as Jews by
Israel. Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef decreed that the
Falashas were "undoubtedly of the tribe of Dan," which made
them the inhabitants of the biblical land of Havileh, today's
southern Arabian peninsula. The Falashas believe in the Torah,
the basic Jewish scriptures; they're circumcised and observe the
Sabbath and the dietary laws. Ironically, one of the keys to the
rabbinate's conclusions that the Falashas are indeed Jews was the
fact that they do not observe Hanukkah. This festival celebrates
the victory of Judah the Maccabee over Antiochus IV in 167 B.C.,
after which the Temple was cleansed and Jewish worship restored.
But this was not part of the Falashas' history, because they had
left Israel with the Queen of Sheba long before, during Solomon's
reign.
As a result of the Chief Rabbinical Council's findings, a
government committee then decided that these Ethiopians were
covered by Israel's Law of Return, which allows all Jews
automatically to become citizens the moment they arrive in Israel
to live.