Operation Solomon

"Operation Solomon" was one of the most remarkable rescue efforts in modern history, in which more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in little more than a day. In this riveting volume, Stephen Spector offers the definitive account of this incredible story, based on over 200 interviews and exclusive access to confidential documents. Written with the pace and immediacy of a novel, here is the dramatic story of the rescue of the dark-skinned Jews of Ethiopia. Spector recounts how 20,000 Jews were willingly lured from their ancestral villages to Addis Ababa, expecting to be taken quickly from there to the Holy Land. Instead, they became pawns in a struggle between the Israeli government and Ethiopia's repressive dictator, who tried to coerce Israel into selling him weapons he needed in a losing war against rebel armies. In the resulting stalemate, the Jewish community was forced to live for nearly a year in squalid hovels, vulnerable to the dangers of the city, including crime and HIV. Worse yet, the imminent collapse of Addis Ababa, with the rebels closing in on the capital, raised the threat of bloody street fighting or even a genocidal attack on the Jews, a small minority in a nation that is primarily Christian and Muslim. Spector describes the tense negotiations among Israelis, Ethiopians, and Americans, which became increasingly urgent as time ran low and the danger mounted. And he highlights the secret deals and sudden setbacks that nearly aborted the mission at the eleventh hour, even as Israeli jets sat on the runway in Ethiopia, waiting to take the Jews to the land for which they had yearned for generations. Recounting the full story for the first time, Operation Solomon is a stirring account of a heroic rescue achieved in the face of daunting odds.

"Operation Solomon" was one of the most remarkable rescue efforts in modern history, in which more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in little more than a day. In this riveting volume, Stephen Spector offers the definitive account of this incredible story, based on over 200 interviews and exclusive access to confidential documents. Written with the pace and immediacy of a novel, here is the dramatic story of the rescue of the dark-skinned Jews of Ethiopia. Spector recounts how 20,000 Jews were willingly lured from their ancestral villages to Addis Ababa, expecting to be taken quickly from there to the Holy Land. Instead, they became pawns in a struggle between the Israeli government and Ethiopia's repressive dictator, who tried to coerce Israel into selling him weapons he needed in a losing war against rebel armies. In the resulting stalemate, the Jewish community was forced to live for nearly a year in squalid hovels, vulnerable to the dangers of the city, including crime and HIV. Worse yet, the imminent collapse of Addis Ababa, with the rebels closing in on the capital, raised the threat of bloody street fighting or even a genocidal attack on the Jews, a small minority in a nation that is primarily Christian and Muslim. Spector describes the tense negotiations among Israelis, Ethiopians, and Americans, which became increasingly urgent as time ran low and the danger mounted. And he highlights the secret deals and sudden setbacks that nearly aborted the mission at the eleventh hour, even as Israeli jets sat on the runway in Ethiopia, waiting to take the Jews to the land for which they had yearned for generations. Recounting the full story for the first time, Operation Solomon is a stirring account of a heroic rescue achieved in the face of daunting odds.

This is a personal account of the coordinator of the Jewish Agency who helped thousands of Ethiopian Jews that were refugees in Sudan eventually immigrate to Israel during Operation Solomon in May 1991.

WOW! Last Journey of the Ark is an incredible read. Mr. Gainer has done a spendid job of engaging the reader in an intriguing story line involving a fascinating subject...The Ark of the Covenant. You will enjoy this colorful journey. Great Job!! REVIEW By DL Moody- President of Arlington Baptist Your book is absolutely wonderful. I loved every minute of it! I laughed. I cried. I learned alot. Set up, climax and follow through of the storyline are all excellent. I would make an excellent screenplay as well (something to thing about in the future. REVIEW by Sarajoy Porter--Editor Now available at authorhouse.com--Last Journey of the Ark (288 pages), a compelling action-adventure with a hint of romance, inspired by contemporay events that tell how the Ark of the Covenant went back to Israel in modern times. The heroine is a determined woman reporter from New York City who stumbles into love while entangled in dangerous and complex Israeli security issues. Ultimately she witnesses the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Israel in 1991. So why didn't the world hear about these events? Indeed, bits and pieces of the real story have leaked out over the years. Perhaps you recall a whisper of an announcement on world news in May 1991 that the Israel Security Service--the Mossad--had quietly transported 14,314 Ethiopian Jews back to Israel at the height of the Civil War in Ethiopia. Why would Israel believe that these modern Ethiopian Jews are truly descendants of the tribe of Dan? Why would Israel risk men and airplanes against a backdrop of civil war in Ethiopia to fly these Jews to Israel? Why would Israelis take 14,000 poor people to their tiny country and pay millions of dollars to Ethiopia for that privilege? Why would the Israelis name the operation after the very King of Israel who first placed the Ark in the second temple? Read this book to find out.

It's just another boring summer for our teenaged narrator — until Barbra arrives. An Ethiopian Jew, Barbra was brought to Israel at age five, a part of Operation Solomon, and now our narrator's well-intentioned father has brought her, as a teen, to their home for the summer. But Barbra isn't the docile and grateful orphan they expect, and soon our narrator, terrified of her and drawn to her in equal measure, finds himself immersed in compulsive psychosexual games with her, as she binge-drinks and lies to his family. Things go terribly wrong, and Barbra flees. But seven years later, as our narrator is getting his life back on track, with a new girlfriend and a master's degree in Holocaust Studies underway, Barbra shows up at our narrator's house once again, her "spiritual teacher" in tow, and our narrator finds his politics, and his sanity, back in question. Queen Solomon is another masterful take on the politics of sex, race, and power from the author of the Believer Book Award–winning Maidenhead.

This book tells the fascinating, millennia-long story of peoples around the world who have claimed an Israelite identity and history.

Their mutual interest in the Ethiopian Jews, as well as a series of unique circumstances, led them to join forces to produce this engrossing and handsomely illustrated volume. But this is not a book about the journey of the Ethiopian Jews; rather it is a chronicle of their experiences once they reached their destination. In Ethiopia, they were united by a shared faith and a broad network of kinship ties that served as the foundation of their rural communal society. They observed a form of religion based on the Bible that included customs such as the isolation of women during menstruation, long abandoned by Jewish communities elsewhere in the world. Suddenly transplanted, they are becoming rapidly and aggressively assimilated. Thrust from isolated villages without electricity or running water into the urban bustle of modern, postindustrial society, Ethiopian Jews have seen their family relationships radically transformed.

For more than a century Henry Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines has inspired generations of young men to set forth in search of adventure. But long before Rider Haggard's classic, explorers, theologians and scientists scoured the known world for the source of King Solomon's astonishing wealth. Taking his leads from a mixture of texts including The Septuagint, the earliest known form of the Bible, as well as using geological, geographical and folkloric sources, Tahir Shah sets out in search for Solomon's gold mines. For him the obvious place to look is Ethiopia, in the horn of Africa. On the ensuing journey Shah discovers a massive illegal gold mine, itself like something out of the Old Testament, with thousands of men, women and children digging with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the 'cursed mountain' of Tullu Wallel where legend says there lies an ancient shaft, once the entrance to Solomon's mines.