‘Even as Israelis, we are only a part of the Jewish people’

IDF releases footage of Ilan Ramon discussing Operation Opera

Forty years after Operation Opera, the Israeli air strike that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, new footage of the late Ilan Ramon, one of the pilots who took part in the historic strike, has been released.

In the rare video of Ramon that was released by the Defense Ministry’s IDF Archives, the fighter pilot and astronaut discussed the connection between the strike, his mother, who survived the Holocaust, and his mission to space.

The footage was filmed when Ramon returned to Israel from the US, where he was training for the 2003 space shuttle

Columbia flight. Ramon perished along with the entire crew during reentry.

Ramon was taking part in a meeting of senior IAF veterans to mark the 20th anniversary of the strike. It took place at the home of Iftach Spector and was also attended by Amos Yadlin,

Dobbi Yoffe and their families.

In his moving speech, which lasted several minutes, Ramon spoke about the feelings he had before the strike, the fear that he might not return from it and the connection between the operation, his Holocaust-survivor mother and his preparations for a space flight for which he trained during this period.

“I want to tie this into what I do today,” he said. “My mother is an Auschwitz survivor who escaped with her shirt on her back. A few days after I left [on the operation], I knew there was a chance that I would not make it back.

“I was living in Ramat Chen [a neighborhood in Ramat Gan] at the time... People were yelling and cursing on the street, and I thought, ‘What am I doing this for? So that people could yell and curse at me? What’d I do to them?’

“Then I remembered my origins and history and that of the Jewish people, and I thought, ‘There’s no way that I’m going to let that happen again, no matter what happens to me.’ That’s what helped me go on that mission.”

Ramon told the crowd a discussion with a group of Holocaust survivors made him realize that “we are only a part of a bigger story. Even as Israelis, we are only a part of the Jewish people.”

He asked a group of Holocaust survivors what they thought he should take with him into space when he goes. One of them gave him a letter.

“Here is my humble suggestion for you, Ilan, what to take into space: Bring my seven-yearold daughter’s dirty doll that she brought to Auschwitz, which is now sprinkled with her own ashes,” the letter said. “Since you will be close to the heavens, open them and let them apologize for not responding to our prayers. I still ask, ‘Why.’”

That is “what prepared me, in a certain sense, for the sacrifice I was willing to make,” Ramon said. “We are so entrenched in our own bubble here in Israel that we forget all the other stuff. I feel I was privileged to be part of a mission that connected me to the entire Jewish nation.”

Never-before-seen documents and photos from the operation, including written instructions by then-chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan and diagrams of the reactor from the operation’s intelligence file, were also released on Tuesday.

The strike at the heart of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program at Osirak outside Baghdad in 1981 was, and remains, one of Israel’s most daring raids. The raid was initially called Ammunition Hill. It was later changed to Operation Opera after then-prime minister Menachem Begin found out that opposition leader Shimon Peres had heard about it.

Eight IAF pilots were selected for the mission, Ze’ev Raz, Yadlin, Yaffe, Hagai Katz, Amir Nachumi, Spector, Relik Shafir and Ramon.

It was Ramon’s first operational mission, and he was tasked with preparing the maps and examining if the jets could make the return trip. And as a young, single navigation officer, his plane was the last.

The pilots flew F-16s that they had only recently learned to fly and achieved operational capability just months before. The fleet ushered in a whole new era for the IAF, and it continues to this day: the ability to carry out preemptive

strikes at enemies far from Israel’s borders.

Ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian were reportedly killed in the strike. All Israeli pilots landed safely at their bases.

But as the last plane, Ramon knew that there was a chance he could be shot down, Shafir told The Jerusalem Post.

“The chief of staff told us the most important thing would be to return home,” he said in a recent interview. “We thought at least two planes would be shot down, and Ilan and I both thought we would be shot down because we were last. It was a tough feeling that we couldn’t get rid of. But we knew it was a historical mission, and we knew that even if we died, it was a mission we had to do.”

When they all landed, “it was like I returned to life,” Shafir said. “Ilan and I hugged for a minute, without talking. When our feet touched the tarmac, the pressure we had on our shoulders for half a year had been lifted.”