The Commando Heading the Jewish Agency
Almog in 1982
Doron Avrotzky Almog (b. 1951) was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel. He went to a military boarding school and eventually joined the Paratroopers Brigade. He became an officer in 1971, and served as a company commander during the Yom Kippur War, in which his brother Eran lost his life. In 1976, Almog was one of the company leaders of Operation Thunderbolt to save Israeli hostages in Entebbe. In fact, he was the first commando to disembark at the Entebbe airport runway, and led the way to capture the control tower. Almog fought in the 1982 Lebanon War, too, and later commanded Operation Moses to airlift over 7000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In 2000, now with the rank of major general, he was appointed to head the IDF Southern Command. Almog had a son with severe disabilities who died young, and a daughter born with a heart defect that ended her life after just a month. Sadly, a devastating suicide bombing in a Haifa restaurant in 2003 took the lives of five more of his family members, and left another severely injured. These horrible tragedies motivated Almog to devote the rest of his life to helping people with disabilities. He retired from the military that same year, and founded the village of Aleh Negev (also called Nahalat Eran, both after his son and fallen brother), a 40-acre rehabilitation and living centre for people with severe disabilities. Today, the village cares for 150 residents, and provides services for another 12,000 patients across Israel. Almog was awarded the Israel Prize in 2016 for lifetime achievement. Last week, he was appointed as the new head of the Jewish Agency. His most pressing task will be settling new Ukrainian and Ethiopian refugees in Israel. In his first speech, he said his mission would be “To reach the heart of every Jew on Earth. To instill pride in our Judaism and the State of Israel, the most important enterprise of the Jewish people since 1948. To instill pride in this one miracle called the State of Israel and its extraordinary achievements in science, technology, culture, agriculture, medicine, society, economy, army, aliyah, and more.”
Words of the Week
“They called me a wiseguy. I won ‘Italian of the Year’ twice in New York, and I’m Jewish, not Italian… I was denied in a country club once.”
– James Caan (1940-2022)
Pnina Tamano-Shata (b. 1981) was born in Wuzaba, Ethiopia, the granddaughter of a renowned Ethiopian rabbi. When she was three years old, her family fled Ethiopia due to civil war and famine. Israeli Hercules planes rescued her family in Sudan and brought them to Israel in a secret mission known as Operation Moses, which brought 8000 Ethiopian Jews back to their ancestral home. (Another 14,000 were brought in 1991 through Operation Solomon.) Tamano-Shata and her family spent several years in an immigrant facility before settling in Petah Tikva. From age 11, she worked to support her struggling family, and in high school was placed in the gifted program. After completing her military service, Tamano-Shata enrolled in law school. She was the president of the school’s Ethiopian Student Union, and was a noted social justice activist. After graduating, she became a reporter for Israel’s Channel 1. Five years later, she was covering a protest by Ethiopians in Israel and instead of reporting with the bias that her bosses asked for, joined the protesters herself. This inspired her to quit the media and enter politics. She joined the Yesh Atid party. When the party won a surprising 19 seats in the 2013 elections, Tamano-Shata became a Member of Knesset. This made her the first Ethiopian woman to hold a Knesset seat. She worked tirelessly for equality and affordable housing in Israel. Although she lost her seat in the 2015 elections, Tamano-Shata is still a vocal activist, role model, and an important leader for the 150,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel.