On 24 May 1991, families who had waited for years in Addis Ababa were told to get on a bus with almost nothing but the clothes they wore. Within about a day and a half, some 14,000 of them had landed in Israel.
Buses to the airport
The people at the centre of this story were Beta Israel, as Ethiopia's Jewish community is known. By the spring of 1991 thousands of them had been brought from the Gondar region in the north to Addis Ababa, hoping to follow relatives who had already reached Israel.
When the order came, they gathered at the Israeli embassy and were taken to the airport by bus in groups of about 200, each bus escorted by an Israeli soldier who had himself been born in Ethiopia. Doctors and paramedics were on hand throughout. Most left almost everything behind. As one new arrival, Mukat Abag, put it: "We didn't bring any of our clothes, we didn't bring any of our things, but we are very glad to be here."
Why it had to be fast
The urgency came from events around them. Ethiopia was in the final stage of a long civil war, the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was close to collapse, and rebel forces were advancing on the capital. Israeli officials warned that the community's situation was getting worse and recommended an emergency evacuation.
Diplomacy opened a narrow window. A letter from United States President George H. W. Bush helped persuade the Ethiopian leadership to let the community leave at once, and a team of American diplomats led by Senator Rudy Boschwitz worked on the arrangements. About 35 million dollars, raised by Jewish communities, was paid to the Ethiopian authorities. Israel's government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the Israel Defense Forces planned the airlift itself.
A sky full of aircraft
Operation Solomon began on 24 May 1991 and ran around the clock. Dozens of aircraft took part, Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules transports and El Al passenger jets, with seats removed so that as many people as possible could fit on board. The first aircraft touched down in Addis Ababa at about ten in the morning, the first loaded plane took off around noon, and by five that afternoon the first arrivals were landing in Israel. Some 400 buses shuttled families between the embassy and the runway. At one point, 27 planes were in the air at the same time. In about 36 hours the airlift carried roughly 14,300 people to Israel; the official count most often given is 14,325.
One El Al Boeing 747 entered the record books. Planners had expected each jumbo jet to carry about 760 passengers, but many of the travellers were thin from hardship, and far more fitted on board. Guinness World Records credits that flight with about 1,088 people, the most ever carried on a single aircraft, while contemporary reports gave counts as high as 1,122, partly because small children were tucked into their mothers' robes. Two babies were born on that flight, and several more during the airlift as a whole, though sources differ on the exact number.
The scale astonished even those who ran it. Before Operation Solomon, Israel had brought Ethiopian Jews home in two earlier airlifts, Operation Moses in 1984 and 1985 and the smaller Operation Joshua. Operation Moses, which ran from November 1984 to January 1985, had flown people out of camps in Sudan over about seven weeks. Solomon moved almost twice as many people as Operation Moses, in a small fraction of the time.
“Never before did so few pilots transport such a great number of people in such a short time.”Maj. Gen. Avihu Ben-Nun, commander of the Israeli Air Force, Jewish Virtual Library
Families together again
For many passengers the flight was also the end of a long separation. During Operation Moses, about 8,000 Ethiopian Jews had been flown to Israel, but around a thousand were left behind, and more than a thousand children who reached Israel lived apart from parents and relatives still in Africa. Some waited years. Operation Solomon brought many of their relatives to Israel at last.
The welcome began on the tarmac. Ambulances met the planes and about 140 frail passengers received medical care as soon as they landed. Prime Minister Shamir and other officials greeted the arrivals, and the newcomers were taken to absorption centres around the country, from Hadera to Kfar Tavor, where children received new clothing soon after they arrived. Passengers cheered as they arrived.
A community that grew
The years that followed were not easy. Learning a new language, finding work and adapting to a very different society took time, and the community has spoken openly about the challenges it faced. But it has grown and put down deep roots. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Ethiopian Israeli community numbered about 177,600 people in 2024, and nearly half of them, some 84,200, were born in Israel. In 2024, 93.7 percent of Ethiopian Israeli students in the twelfth grade sat the national matriculation exams, close to the rate of 95.1 percent for all students in Hebrew-language schools. That same year Ethiopian Israeli mothers welcomed 4,010 babies. The community lives across the country, with its largest concentration in the city of Netanya, home to some 13,300 people of Ethiopian origin.
Operation Solomon still holds a world record, but its true measure is in ordinary lives: the parents and grandparents who made the journey, and the children and grandchildren who have grown up in Israel since. A community that once waited at the edge of a runway is now part of the life of a country, and its story, full of courage and hope, is still being written.
Sources & further reading
- Operation Solomon, Wikipedia
- Operation Solomon (May 24-25, 1991), Jewish Virtual Library
- Most passengers on an aircraft, Guinness World Records
- This Week in Jewish History: Operation Solomon, World Jewish Congress
- Operation Solomon: a Look Back in Photos, eJewishPhilanthropy
- Operation Moses, Wikipedia
- Israel's Jewish Ethiopian population reached 177,600 in 2024, JNS
Researched from the sources above and checked against them. Spotted an error? Tell us.
Tikkun olam in action. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.
