Friday marked the 24th year since the beginning of the dramatic Operation Moses, the covert Israeli airlift of 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudan that continued for six weeks. Thousands of Jews fled Ethiopia on foot for Sudanese refugee camps. After a media leak, Arab countries pressured Sudan to stop the airlift, leaving some 1,000 Ethiopian Jews behind.

Most of the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel are immigrants and descendants who arrived in two main waves, the 1984 Operation Moses airlift and the 1991 Operation Solomon airlift.