42 years ago, at the convening of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federation in North America, the late Yona Bugla took the stage and delivered a speech that was a turning point in the story of Jewish immigration from Ethiopia to Israel. The possibility of fulfilling their dream and doing it too, "Bugla said to the applause of 3,000 people." Today we are hated because of our religion, and we are in suffering and at risk of death.
If the Jews of America, Israel and the other Jews of the Diaspora do not help us to immigrate soon, I am sure we will become extinct within five to ten years. "
After that speech, Operation Brothers began secretly raising Jews through the sea and air from Sudan, including through the Red Sea Dive Club.
In 1984, Operation Moshe began, and one of the Mossad agents who helped raise the Jews in this way was Zacharias-Yona, Bugla's son.
His picture is not allowed to be published to this day, since until 2010 he worked in the Prime Minister's Office, and some of the activities he carried out are still secret.
In a new book, Bugla Jr. first tells the story of his father's life and work - one of the most significant people who led to Ethiopia's immigration to the State of Israel, the mythological leader of the Beta Israel community. He is one of the most fascinating figures among the members of the Ethiopian community, and while he was active he was offered to serve as President of the State of Israel. For decades he ran around the African country, setting up schools and clinics, and at the same time flew to Israel and various countries to lobby on his own behalf for the Jews left behind after the return of the people of Israel to their land.
Yona Bugla was born in 1908 in the Jewish village of Wolka, near the town of Gondar, and as a child was a shepherd.
One of his brothers is the grandfather of model Tahonia Rubel.
When he was 13 years old, he joined Dr. Yaakov Feitlowitz and Prof. Tamrat Emanuel, one of the main figures who shaped the image of the Beta Israel community in the 20th century, and began studying at the Hebrew school in Addis Ababa. And at Heidelberg University, then returned to Ethiopia and served as a teacher in the Hebrew school - then began his first steps in the enterprise of his life, as an educator and leader of the Jewish community in Ethiopia.
"Dad was the only one there for them."
Zacharias Yona, Photo: Brandt Alpern
Golda ignored
In 1936, with the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy, Yona was drafted into the Medical Corps and served as an interpreter in the Ethiopian Red Army, and in 1941 became director of the translation department at the Ethiopian Ministry of Education thanks to his command of no less than 12 languages.
"The emperor was assisted by him, and in practice he was his chief translator," says Zacharias.
"All political correspondence was through Dad."
The Jews in Ethiopia lived in the Gondar area and suffered severe anti-Semitism, as it was a very Christian country, which believed that they should be punished for the death of Jesus.
"A Jew was not allowed to own land, and they were not considered citizens of the state," says Zacharias, "they had no rights and if they came to court they would encounter hostility, and the support of the judges on the other side, even if he was guilty."
In one of the documents that his son located, Yona recounts before King Haile Sailais I the brutal murder of 72 people in the Israeli cell between 1947-1941 on the charge of "Buda" - the evil eye and witchcraft.
About a decade later, in 1958, Yonah said that the Jews had been accused of killing a church leader who had died of an illness.
In protest, the nearby Jewish village burned down.
But unlike the Jews of Europe and even the Jews of the Eastern community, the Jews of Ethiopia had almost no representatives to push and help bring them up to the State of Israel.
They were second-class residents of a Third World country, persecuted and oppressed, and did not know how to fight.
Bugla set himself the goal of establishing Jewish schools to improve the education of the community and at the same time began to work for aliyah.
"In 1948, when the members of the community heard that the State of Israel had been established, they all migrated to Addis Ababa with the intention of immigrating to Israel, but this was not in the minds of the country's leaders. There were many excuses, He wanted to tell them all the reasons. He did not want to tell them that the State of Israel did not want them. He corresponded with Jewish leaders, not only in Israel but also in the United States and Europe, and recruited them as partners in the struggle.
Although he established educational institutions, the whole idea was immigration to Israel.
He did not want the children to develop and remain citizens of Ethiopia, but to immigrate and become citizens of Israel. "
At the height of its power, the education network founded by Yonah numbered 33 schools, all for the education of Jewish children.
The struggle he waged as the unofficial leader of Ethiopian Jewry was twofold: on the one hand against the Ethiopian authorities who posed enormous difficulties for Jewish activity in the country, and on the other - against the Israeli elements who refused to help bring the Jews to Israel.
Zechariah relates: "Golda Meir came to Ethiopia in the 1960s and met the emperor. She was in Gondar, 20 km from the center of the Jews, and said she did not have time to visit them.
Went to the Nile Falls, to see animals, it had time for that.
Yona begged to meet her and she refused.
It is inconceivable - a leader of the State of Israel who refused to meet one person and hear what he wants to say. "
Sanbeto, Photo: Brandt Alpern
The choke ring tightens
Zacharias says that his father was not present much in his childhood, because he devoted his entire life to the Ethiopian Jewish project, smearing his feet from village to village, sometimes arrested for his activities by the authorities but continuing tirelessly.
In 1971, Zacharias immigrated to Israel and began pressuring with his friends the government to expel the Jews in the first demonstrations, while his father worked for aliyah in Ethiopia, which at the time was already in a difficult civil war.
"We told the shocking story of what is happening in Ethiopia. Landowners expelled and murdered Jews, and even turned them into slaves in some cases."
Yona, for his part, refused to immigrate to Israel as long as his people were in sight.
In the late 1970s, the situation of Ethiopian Jews deteriorated and they were in real danger.
In 1977, one of the most daring operations of the State of Israel to raise Jews began.
Farda Aklum, one of the educators who worked with Yona, contacted Danny Limor, a member of the Mossad, and the two together began to raise Jews through the Red Sea Dive Club - the fake dive site under whose auspices many Jews immigrated to Israel with the help of Squadron 13. Air to raise Jews using Hercules planes.
Thousands of members of the Ethiopian community left their homes and set out on a dangerous journey in the deserts of Sudan in order to reach the State of Israel.
Yona Bugla was an integral part of the aid, having established an agricultural colony on the Ethiopian-Sudanese border whose disguised and strategic goal was to pave an escape route.
But his vigorous activity endangered his life.
In February 1978, Bugla wrote to his friend Haim Halachmi: "In recent weeks, I feel that my security is in danger. I have decided to leave Ethiopia and immigrate to Israel."
But the task was not easy because Jonah was a well-known public figure.
Attempts were initially made to fly him to Romania under the guise of labor affairs, but Ethiopian security officials refused to approve his flight.
Afterwards, former Israeli ambassador Hanan Einur tried to bring him to Israel with the help of the head of the Ethiopian Church in Israel, but this initiative also failed.
He finally managed to ascend through Athens, and upon his arrival met with then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin and other public figures, and reported to them on the plight of the members of the Beta Israel community.
A year after his immigration, in 1978, a real possibility of bringing Jews to Israel began to develop for the first time.
In November 1979, Bugla delivered his inspiring and groundbreaking speech to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federation of North America.
Thanks to his speech, a historic decision was made that day to recognize the rights of the people of Beta Israel as other Jews in the Diaspora.
Jonah saw his dream come true before his eyes.
He lived with his family in Petah Tikva and helped the new immigrants who flowed to Israel to be absorbed, promoting each and every one of them with a smile and help.
In 1987, a decade after immigrating to Israel, Yona Bugla passed away.
Zacharias: "All his work in Ethiopia was not healthy for him. He would walk for hours, visit all the villages, without tidy meals. Already when he arrived in Israel he was ill, and eventually died as a result of his illnesses."
The problems are many more
Bugla, probably the most senior Jew in Ethiopia, was buried on Mount of Beatitudes near the plot of President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who helped him over the years.
His teacher, Prof. Tamrat Emanuel, is also buried next to him.
His memory was commemorated in the streets named after him in Netanya and Rishon Lezion, and in the square in Ramla.
Bugla's story is largely the story of the Beta Israel community in the 20th century.
Dealing with anti-Semitism, the strong desire for education, and especially the desire to immigrate to Jerusalem - the same 2,000-year-old dream.
About 20,000 people entered Israel via Sudan during the 1970s and 1980s, and 4,000 of them perished in the grueling march and waiting to immigrate to refugee camps.
The other 16,000 immigrated to Israel.
In Operation Moshe, which Bugla was privileged to see in his life, more than 6,300 Jews immigrated within a month and a half, among other things with the help of his son.
In Operation Solomon, which lasted 36 hours in May 1991, the remaining 14,000 Jews from the Beta Israel community who remained in Ethiopia were brought to Israel.
Zacharias flips through the old documents excitedly.
For many years he worked in the service of the State of Israel, and even before his retirement he began collecting material, including from the Zionist Archive.
The original plan was to publish a pamphlet in 2008 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his father's birth, in conjunction with a huge event held in his memory at the nation's buildings in Jerusalem with the participation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
"On the Wings of a Dove", recently published by Tzameret, is indeed the story of his father's life, but in practice it is the first book that to some extent summarizes the history of the Beta Israel community by backing up documents.
Zacharias does not hide the fact that the book criticizes the attitude of the State of Israel since then to the community: "In my father's letters from those years there was great frustration. Brought up Jews from Yemen, Cochins from India, but why not the Jews of Ethiopia? If they wanted to save refugees from the Far East, everyone would enlist, but ignore a people who was four hours away by flight. There was disregard, neglect, and my father was the only one there for them. "Not yet at the same level, all the problems have not yet been resolved."
"We are here thanks to Yona's dream, because the State of Israel did not want us," says Ainao Farda Sanbeto, an activist in the Ethiopian community from the list of the Religious Zionist Party, who helps Zacharias preserve his father's memory. "For me he is the Holy of Holies, a model of determination and a role model. For us he is like Moses, a man who was offered to be deputy emperor of Ethiopia and he refused, said he wanted to save his people. The aim of the book is to reveal the historical identity of the community. "Past, we have a connection to the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. This is the first opportunity for Israeli society to get to know Beta Israel, to get to know one person with a big dream, who brought us to the Land of Israel."
Zechariah says that unfortunately, today the younger generation of Beta Israel does not know one of its founding fathers, which is another important reason for publishing the book.
"The young people of the community today are imitating blacks in the United States - walking, behavior, haircuts.
it's a shame.
We have an amazing history and we have something to be proud of.
Most of the older generation is no longer in this world, and those who are already 80 or 90, but they know what it was - they dreamed of coming to the Land of Israel but did not know how to fight, and Jonah was there for them.
Maybe when the younger generation reads the book they will understand.
He was Moshe Rabbeinu who led us to the Promised Land. "