World
Benjamin Netanyahu leads Jewish leaders' tributes to former US President George HW Bush
America's 41st President, who passed away on Friday night, played a key role in helping persecuted Jews escape oppressive regimes
December 2, 2018 10:28
America's 41st President, who passed away on Friday night, played a key role in helping persecuted Jews escape oppressive regimes
December 2, 2018 10:28Jewish leaders and organisations have paid tribute to George HW Bush, the 41st President of the United States, who died on Friday night at the age of 94.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent “heartfelt condolences… on my behalf and on behalf of the citizens of Israel.
“The people of Israel will always remember his commitment to the security of Israel, his important contribution to the liberation of Soviet Jewry and his efforts to promote peace in the Middle East.”
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin described President Bush, who was also the father of 43rd US President George W Bush, as a man who “led his country with skill and wisdom at the end of the Cold War, and under his leadership our strategic relationship evolved into the strongest of alliances.
“The Jewish people will always remember his help in bringing the Jews of Ethiopia to Israel and his determination to ensure the Arab world recognise the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.”
President Bush, who had previously served as US ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA and then as vice president to Ronald Reagan, served one term as president, from 1989 to 1993.
In 1991, the Ethiopian government allowed more than 14,000 Jews to leave the country and emigrate to Israel, which they did via Operation Solomon, an airlift which took place over 36 hours.
President George HW Bush’s intervention via a letter to Ethiopia’s dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, is widely considered to have been a key reason the regime agreed to the mass emigration.
Before that, an increasingly embattled Mengistu was considering only allowing Ethiopian Jews to leave the country in exchange for weaponry.
President Bush also intervened with Hafez Al Assad, the dictator of Syria, to allow Jewish Syrian women to leave the country for America.
He also supported the efforts by his Secretary of State, George Schultz, to pressure the Soviet Union to free ‘refuseniks’ – Russian Jews who had been imprisoned or mistreated by the state for the ‘crime’ of wanting to leave the Soviet Union for Israel.
In 2013, Abraham Foxman, then the national director of the Anti Defamation League, an America antisemitism watchdog, said he believed George HW Bush would “go down in Jewish history as the president who was engaged in more initiatives to save more Jews in countries where they were being persecuted.
“When you add up the Jews he saved, he will be a great tzaddik [righteous man].”
