30 years on, Defense Ministry releases Operation Solomon footage - Watch

Thirty years after Operation Solomon, in 1991 when close to 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel, the Defense Ministry has released rare footage of the operation that has sat in the IDF archives.

The video footage from the operation and recordings made by the elite Shaldag unit's commander at the time, Benny Gantz, now the defense minister.

Israel Air Force personnel, including Shaldag commandos under Gantz's command, who secured the Israeli planes used in the airlift, videotaped parts of the operation, which included preparations for takeoff, landing in Addis Ababa and the moment when Amnon Lipkin Shahak, at the time the deputy chief of staff who commanded the operation, announced that the first immigrants were at the airport and had begun boarding.

The video material was recently found during a comprehensive digitization project in which tens of thousands of hours of IDF archive footage is being converted from video and film reels to more durable digital media for posterity.

The Defense Ministry also unveiled original planning documentation, details from the de-brief that followed, assessments of the processing of immigrants at the airport and their transfer to integration centers, and an intelligence briefing on then-Ethiopian president, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who fled abruptly to Zimbabwe after he was ousted, the catalyst for the launch of Operation Solomon.

In recordings, Gantz can be heard talking about a number of operational challenges, including providing water, a woman who went into labor during the operation and various communications-related challenges. He concludes by saying that “during the operation there's never time to waste, you're working under constant pressure. But then, on the flight back home, you have a chance to watch the elderly and the children. You know the elderly are fulfilling a dream, and the children will need 30-40 years of integration, but afterwards it will be okay." 

"After I returned and it was all over the news, my mother, who is a Holocaust survivor from Bergen-Belsen said to me, 'are you aware of the honor this is?' do you know what kind of honor this is?' It's not something that you think about during the operation and you realize that you were part of a historic event. The Ethiopian community can be expected to go through decades of difficult integration but we did the first 24 hours as best as we could.”

The release of these materials comes shortly after some 4,000 Ethiopian Jews who died on their journey to Israel were honored during the last official Jerusalem Day events., 

In March, the last flight of Operation Rock of Israel to bring the remainder of the Falash Mura community in Ethiopia landed in Israel.

Diplomatic ties between Israel and Ethiopia were renewed in 1989 after a 16-year cut and Mengistu allowed several hundred Jews to immigrate to Israel each month as part of a family reunification program. At the beginning of 1991, the security situation in Ethiopia deteriorated as conflicts between the central government and Mengistu’s opponents intensified. With tensions increasing, there was growing concern for the fate of Ethiopia's Jews and it was decided to evacuate them to Israel in a swift operation. Israel paid about $35 million to the Ethiopian government, including donations from American Jewry, for its consent to allow the Jews to be flown to Israel. The evacuation was named “Operation Solomon,” after King Solomon, who according to the bible, met the Queen of Sheba, who was thought to be from what is now Ethiopia, although some scholars say that she was actually from Yemen.

Tobias Siegal, Jeremy Sharon and Carmit Sapir Weitz contributed to this report.