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How the Mossad Rescued Oppressed Jews from around the World
(Jerusalem Post) Yonah Jeremy Bob - Israel is the only place "in the world to give the intelligence community the job of bringing large groups" of a specific population sector to another country to save them from persecution through secret dangerous operations, says Maj. (ret.) Yochi Erlich of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center. An up-coming exhibition at the center will tell the tale of the Mossad's clandestine role in saving Jews under oppression in foreign lands. Ibrahim Barzilai, now 93, was one of 20 Mossad agents brought in during 1955-6 to train and organize local Jewish communities in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. All of the Mossad agents were married and sent as couples. Barzilai said the Mossad ran two full-time laboratories for cranking out a massive number of forged passports. In 1957, when Morocco formally closed off legal aliyah to Israel, the Mossad exploited an area of Morocco which had remained officially part of Spain. Once they got the Moroccan Jews into the Spanish area, they would legally be in Spain and could make aliyah to Israel. Jews were also smuggled into France via Algeria, which was still officially French at the time.