عاجل لأعضاء المنبر بخصوص مذكرات اللواء عمر محمد الطيب عن ترحيل الفلاشا ..

Quote: Bush met with Weaver and the CIA station chief in Khartoum to discuss means for carrying out the president's order to rescue the Ethiopian Jews remaining in Sudan. To avoid the possibility of disclosure, Reagan wanted the operation carried out within three to four days. Weaver took an embassy plane to check out the runway of a remote airstrip near Gedaref,] midway between the camps where most of the Ethiopian Jews were living, and found that it would be acceptable for the operation. [/QUOTE Quote: On March 28, 1985, the operation, codenamed “Sheba,” began with Ethiopian Jews from Israel working for the Mossad identifying the Ethiopian Jews in the camps and taking them by truck to the airstrip. The airstrip itself was eight miles outside of Gedaref, just far enough so that it would be difficult to spot the planes from the town. Planes designed to hold ninety passengers each were prepared at the American base near Frankfurt, West Germany. Planes filled with food, water, and medical supplies were flown from an Israeli military base near Eilat to the airstrip in Sudan. These camouflaged U.S. Hercules transports landed at twenty-minute intervals to pick up their passengers. Sudanese security officers cordoned off the area and, by 9:00 a.m., all of the Ethiopian Jews were evacuated. Instead of going to an intermediate destination, the planes flew directly to an Israeli air force base outside Eilat where the passengers were greeted by Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The organizers had prepared to airlift as many as two thousand Ethiopian Jews from the camps, but they found only 494, so three planes returned from Sudan empty. At the end of Operation Sheba, Israeli officials believed that all of the Ethiopian Jews had been evacuated from the refugee camps in Sudan. In fact, a handful was left in the camps and anywhere from seven thousand to fifteen thousand are estimated to be still living in Ethiopia today. Those remaining behind were mainly the very old, the sick, the very young, and the women who, for one reason or another, could not make the arduous journey to Sudan. Quote: Soon after Operation Sheba, Numeiry was overthrown. The timing was largely coincidental, since his fall had been expected by U.S. officials for some time. Vice-President Tayeb and other Sudanese suspected of cooperating with the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews were either imprisoned or executed. The United States' role in Operation Sheba was significant in more ways than one. First, the operation was organized, conducted, and to some extent financed by the State Department, the CIA, and the air force. The CIA carried out this humanitarian mission with precision and in the clandestine fashion in which it normally operates. The US. government clearly risked security concerns for a purely humanitarian gesture. Despite the fall of Numeiry, U.S. interests in the Sudan have not been seriously hurt; moreover, the rescue operation was a stunning success, Although the U.S. government had nothing to gain, the responsible political officials, notably George Bush and Ronald Reagan, stood to reap some political rewards for their actions, at least from the Jewish community, but they have surprisingly eschewed the credit they deserve for making the decisions that led to the rescue of hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children. Perhaps they felt that the Jewish world would learn the truth one way or another and that silence would better serve America's relations with its moderate Arab friends. Regardless, the fact remains that hundreds of Jewish lives were saved through the direct actions of the Reagan Administration. History records that Franklin Roosevelt was a great American president but that, when he had the opportunity and authority to save more than nine hundred European Jews, he failed to do so. In 1939, the St. Louis, filled with men, women, and children who had escaped from Hitler's Germany, was prevented from landing in Cuba and sailed up and down the coast of the United States in the hope that the Americans would permit them to land and find refuge. Instead, President Roosevelt sent Coast Guard cutters to prevent the ship from landing and any of its passengers from making their way to shore. Forty years later, an American president once again had the chance to save Jewish lives and he took decisive action. Perhaps the American government has learned something from the Holocaust after all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: The Humanist, November-December 1987. The Jewish Virtual Library is a division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise و دى الحكاية ..........................................