Former Minister and leader of the operation to raise Iraqi Jews, Mordechai Ben Porat has died at the age of 98

Ben Porat, winner of the Israel Prize and one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Iraq, was one of the leaders of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, in which about 130,000 Jews immigrated to Israel in the 1950s.

He served as a Knesset member and minister in the Begin government, as well as the first head of the Or Yehuda council

Eli Ashkenazi

03/01/2022

Monday, 03 January 2022, 15:55 Updated: 18:04

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Former Minister Mordechai Ben Porat, who was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Iraq and one of the leaders in the operation to bring Iraqi Jews to Israel, died this morning (Monday) at the age of 98.

Ben Porat, winner of the Israel Prize, was born in Baghdad in 1923.

Ben Porat was one of the graduates of the first officers' course in the IDF and participated in the War of Independence as a company commander. In 1949, he was sent to Iraq by the Mossad to work for Jewish immigration to Israel. Hillel, who died at the age of 97 last February, and others.

This group was one of the leaders of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which began in May 1950, during which 130,000 Jews emigrated from Iraq to Israel.

At the end of the operation, about 95% of the Jews who had lived in the area since ancient Babylon came out of Iraq.

As part of his underground activities, Ben Porat was arrested four times.

He later said: "I was severely tortured, my teeth were broken and for a long time I could not hear in one ear. For a long time the Iraqi police were following me. They were looking for Zaki and Moshe Nissim, my underground names. For several weeks I hid in the house of Naim Abodi and other good Jews. "Undoubtedly, thanks to their dedication and the great risk they took, I survived."

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Former Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel has died at the age of 97

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Graduates of the IDF's first officers' course. Mordechai Ben Porat, 1983 (Photo: Government Press Office, Nati Hernick)

When it became known that a death sentence was hovering over Ben Porat's head, he was rescued from Baghdad in a special operation. His underground friends secretly brought him near the airport. He crawled in the dark under the fences and waited for the moment when a plane with take-offs would take off. At the same time, Roni Burnett, a British Jew who, together with Shlomo Hillel, operated the airline that flew the immigrants, made sure that the guards at the field would drink to hire. There were already 120 immigrants on the plane and when he started traveling on the runway, a rope was thrown out of it, which Ben Porat grabbed and got into the plane.

Over the years, Ben-Porat has struggled in the face of an article in the weekly Ha'olam Hazeh that he has ordered bombs dropped on Jewish institutions in order to cause panic in the Jewish community and accelerate the rate of immigration. In an incident that took place in January 1951 in which a bomb was thrown at a synagogue, four people were killed.

Ben Porat filed a defamation suit and the court ruled that there was no basis for the claim raised against him.

The journalist, Baruch Nadel, retracted his remarks.

Ben Porat insisted that Nadel sign a document admitting he was wrong.

This document took effect in November 1981 and stated, among other things: "The immigration of Iraqi Jews as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah came from the longing of Iraqi Jewry for the Holy Land, and as a result of the unbearable repression by the Iraqi authorities that included persecution, imprisonment, hangings and the like. ".

Mordechai Ben Porat in the Knesset, 1974. (Back: Moshe Dayan and Pinchas Sapir) (Photo: Government Press Office, Saar Yaakov)

At the time, Ben Porat was also involved in a public and legal struggle in the face of the claim that the Jews of Asia, Africa and the Balkans were not adequately represented in the documentary series "Pillar of Fire" produced by the Broadcasting Authority and dealing with the history of Zionism. A group of Mizrahi activists petitioned the High Court, claiming that the producers of the series ignored facts that indicate the contribution of the Mizrahi community to the Zionist enterprise.

Ben Porat, who then served as a Knesset member, resigned To the contribution of the Jews of the Eastern countries to the Zionist movement, and also submitted an affidavit to the High Court in which he detailed his claims.

In addition, Ben Porat was a political activist for many years.

He was a member of the Mapai party and in 1955 was elected the first head of the Or Yehuda council, a position he held for 14 years. J. Three years later, he joined the Labor Party with his friends, and was elected to the Seventh and Eighth Knessets.

He later founded the "Movement for Zionist-Social Renewal" which did not pass the blocking percentage.

In the Ninth Knesset, he joined Moshe Dayan's TLM party, was elected to the Knesset and served as Minister without portfolio in Menachem Begin's government.

Swearing in Minister, 1983 (Photo: Government Press Office, Nati Hernick)

In 1975, when he was Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, he led a move to establish an umbrella organization of the various associations of Jews from Arab countries, the WOJAC organization. The organization claimed that Palestinian refugees should not be returned to Israel, since there was an involuntary population exchange in the Middle East. Ben Porat directed the organization to make a similar decision in relation to property, in a way that placed the responsibility for this on Arab governments.

He even joined the Israeli delegation to the UN and in a speech to the UN General Assembly in December 1977 said that "the problem of Arab and Jewish refugees in the Middle East can only be resolved within the de facto framework of de facto population exchanges that have already taken place."

On the eve of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, he was sent by Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the country to help save the Jews from the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The enterprise of Ben Porat's life was the establishment in Or Yehuda of the Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center.

He initiated and founded the center.

According to the center's chairman, Prof. Ephraim Tzedaka, Mordechai Ben Porat and Shlomo Hillel, who were partners in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, were also the center's living spirit. Tzedaka said that until last week, Ben Porat made sure to visit the center. He said that every time he enters the place, his heart expands with joy and he is proud to see the activity that is being done. "

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