Early on the chilly morning of Nov. 18, 1956, dozens of Egyptian Jews were huddled in two small French boats sailing from Port Said, moments away from being rescued by two Israeli fishing boats flying Italian flags that were awaiting them. "Stop! Where are you sailing at this hour-" a British officer called out from a military patrol vessel only a few meters away. "Why are the foreigners being evacuated so early and not in the afternoon, as regulations stipulate-" the officer continued. The passengers held their breaths. Operation Kadesh was underway, and Egypt was at war with Israel, France, and Britain. Just as they were about to breathe free air, they had encountered an obstacle that could ruin everything. "We were sure we'd been discovered," says Eli Mayo, 84, an Egyptian Jew who was born in Port Said and who was on one of the boats that morning. "Then a French officer who was accompanying us turned to the British [officer] and said apologetically, 'This is a misunderstanding. We didn't know that [we] were only allowed to leave the port in the afternoon.' "After a minute or two, which seemed like an eternity, the British officer was persuaded that it was a mistake. He turned and let us head for the fishing ships, which were waiting." Q: To which regulations was the officer referring? "That's what was so miraculous. In a rare coincidence, on that very day an Italian ship was due to enter the port to rescue Italian citizens from Port Said. The sight of our boats, with the Italian flags, confused the British officer and made him allow us through. If we'd been returned to Port Said and the Egyptians or the British, who weren't in on it, had discovered that we had tried to escape, it would have been the end of us. We were saved at the very last second," Mayo explains. The tense scene was the culmination of a daring, complicated rescue mission known as Operation Tushia ("Ingenuity") in which Israel brought 67 Jews from Port Said to Israel. The operation had been conceived more than two years earlier, in July 1954, when 13 members of Jewish spy groups in Cairo and Alexandria were arrested in the Lavon Affair on suspicion of planning to bomb movie theaters, post offices, and U.S. intelligence centers in those two cities. Egypt convicted them of acting on behalf of Israeli intelligence and attempts to undermine Egypt's relations with the West. Two of the group, Dr. Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar, were hanged. Others were sentenced to life in prison or other lengthy prison terms. Marcelle Ninio, then 26, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, at that time the most severe sentence ever given to any woman in Egypt. The cell had been established in 1951 by Avraham Dar, who now lives in Atlit on Israel's northern coast. Dar recruited the other members and was behind extensive espionage operations for Israel. "Let's just say that plenty of Arab countries have sentenced me to death," he says. Although he was no longer part of the unit that handled the cell, the capture of its members caused him great dismay. Two years later, he was called upon to help plan Operation Kadesh. "I knew about the cooperation between Israel and Britain and France, and the chance that the latter two would occupy Cairo, where the cell members were imprisoned," Dar says. "I started to think about how I could go back to Egypt to get them out. I knew that if I came to the IDF General Staff with too direct a proposal, they'd toss me out on my ear, because Chief of Staff [Moshe] Dayan and the rest of the top command didn't want anything to do with the prisoners. I think that [then-Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion didn't even know they were IDF officers," Dar continues. "On Nov. 1, a day after the parachute drop into the Mitla Pass, I went to the head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Yehoshafat Harkabi, and proposed that I and a small contingent of Israeli combat soldiers join the French military in Egypt. He said, 'Get out, do you want to cause a new scandal? They'll hang you!' "I decided I wasn't going to give up, and thought of a way. I put on a dress uniform, with all the commando insignia I had from previous operations with special units, and went to the Intelligence Corps headquarters in the Defense Ministry. Ben-Gurion was there, along with his military attache, Nehemia Argov, then-Director General of the Defense Ministry [and later President] Shimon Peres, and other senior officials. I said to Ben-Gurion, 'There were riots in Cairo, and the Jewish community there will be in great danger. I have an idea. I'll dress in a French uniform and join the French forces that are going to Egypt.' "I proposed that I be assigned forces to protect the Jews in Cairo, forces that would join the French as if they belonged with them. I preferred the French because I knew the British wouldn't lift a finger to help Jews. When Ben-Gurion heard that, he said, 'Call Harkabi at once and ask him why he isn't doing anything to prevent danger to the Jews in Cairo.' Harkabi picked up and said, 'What do you mean, not doing anything? Avraham Dar is going in.'" Dar, who was born into an old Jerusalemite family and spoke both French and Arabic, received authorization to contact French intelligence. He immediately flew to Cyprus and joined a French commando battalion stationed on the island and was about to be deployed to the French forces in Egypt. "Their cooperation was outstanding. They gave me and the 15 Israeli soldiers who would be joining the operation fake documentation as French soldiers, uniforms, even toothpaste," he says. "When I returned to Israel, I began recruiting soldiers from the [elite Israeli Navy commando unit] Shayetet 13. I gave them all the equipment I'd gotten from the French, and it turned out I'd forgotten one thing: their army footwear. In the end, we wore Israeli army boots, which more similar [to the French] than British boots. When we were in Egypt, a French officer who wasn't in on the secret noticed, but thought we'd stolen them from the British. He told me, 'I see that you took British boots, very good!'" To prepare for the operation, Dar needed a contact in the Cairo Jewish community. He reached out to Shaul Avigur, head of Nativ, an organization that maintained contact with Jewish in the Soviet Union and former head of the Mossad. Avigur referred Dar to Aryeh "Lova" Eliav, whom Ben-Gurion then put in charge of contact with the Jews of Cairo. "On Nov. 9, I left Cyprus with Lova and Tommy Arieli, the wireless operator, with the Shayetet commandos awaiting orders in Israel. We joined a French intelligence battalion as 'interpreters,' and the next day flew to Port Said with them. The rest of the French forces had no idea we were Israelis," Dar says. A French officer by the name of Duanne, who was in charge of French intelligence in the city, met the three at Port Said. Duanne and Dar already knew each other, and Duanne had been apprised of his arrival. The French officer took them to a villa in Port Fuad, across from Port Said on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Dar's original plan was that the moment the French forces approached Cairo, the Shayetet 13 commandos would join them on the ground. But then the Americans and the Russians intervened and ordered France and Britain to stop the fighting in Egypt. Dar realized at once what that order meant: His plan to reach the imprisoned cell members was down the drain. But his adventures in Egypt were not over yet. "Next to Port Said, we met a Jewish woman and her two children, and she told us that her husband and other people had been arrested, and that a British police officer had beaten her and caused her to miscarry. At that moment I decided to stay in Egypt and free myself as soon as possible to help the Jews of Port Said," Dar says. "By the way, later I went to my sources to find out who the British officer was who beat the woman, and I caught him. I brought him to a brutal French officer from Corsica, who beat him severely. The British soldier shouted: 'I'm not anti-French! I'm anti-Jewish!' And boom, he was hit again." Israel had three possible ways to rescue the Jews of Port Said: by land, air, or sea. After receiving intelligence from Dar, the land option was ruled out because the terrain was too swampy. The French vetoed an air operation, fearing that the British would discover it. Israel decided on a rescue by sea, out of Port Said. The moment the decision was made, the Israeli Navy began working feverishly. A decision was taken to outfit two small Israeli Navy vessels, the Ofhir and the Saar -- then anchored at Jaffa -- for the mission. The boats were loaded with equipment, food, and medicine and disguised as Italian fishing vessels. The Ofhir was re-named "Castella Mara" and the Saar became "Aphrodite." Italian flags were raised. On Sunday, Nov. 11, Dar, Eliav, and Arieli made their first tour of Port Said, along with a French officer who was privy to the operation. At that time, the city was occupied by the French and the British. Parts of it had been destroyed by the heavy shelling, and most of the residents were holed up in their homes. "At the entrance to the city we left him [the French officer]. We kept our weapons. And to get to the Jewish quarter, we walked around liquor stores and I would present us as French soldiers who were looking for drinks or as news photographers covering the war who wanted to document the horrors perpetrated by the English. We told them that we had lost our cameras." Within a few moments, Dar says, they were surrounded by an excited mob of Arabs, who claimed that the British were terrorizing the city. "I told the Arabs: 'You're complaining about how the English are treating you? You took part in the horrors and killed the Jews of the city.' They answered: 'No, we didn't, the Jews are alive. We'll take you to them,'" Dar says. The Arab guides led the trio the Jewish Quarter. "We saw the synagogue still standing, surrounded by destroyed homes. Suddenly, two guys appeared who said they were Jews. We told them that we were Jews serving in the French army, and that we wanted to know what had happened to the Jewish community so we could help them." One of the two was Eli Mayo, the son of Shmuel Mayo, the community leader. Mayo, who today lives in Azur, east of Tel Aviv, remembers his Egyptian childhood as "wonderful," at least until 1948. "My father owned a large shop and was one of the most respected men in the city. He was sometimes invited to events at the home of the governor of Egypt," he recalls. "My best friend was a Muslim named Jamal. Our families got along well. But when the War of Independence broke out, Jamal was the first to throw rocks at my house and shout, 'Death to the Jews.'" Mayo remembers that "on the evening Israel was founded, people from the Egyptian Bureau of Investigation came and arrested my older brother, Yitzhak, accusing him of spying and other things. We didn't know where he was taken and couldn't find out. Dad pulled strings through Coptic Christian officers, and after he paid bribe money we managed to get to Yitzhak in prison. I would bring my brother and other Jewish prisoners food in the morning and the evening. "After the War of Independence, life in the city was tough. We had money, we were business owners, but the Arabs abused us. They threw rocks at us in the street. In those years, I worked at a branch of Barclays Bank, and because I passed mosques on my way home, I would work late on Fridays, waiting until the [Muslims] were done praying, and only then go home. The Jewish community was forced to bribe the police so it would protect us," Mayo says. Mayo says that in 1949, another one of his older brothers, Yair, managed to reach Israel by ship, where he enlisted in the Israeli Navy. He would write to his family and let them know how he was getting on. Mayo says that on one hand, all the Jews in Port Said wanted to make aliyah to Israel, because their lives had become insufferable: "There was a kind of longing for Israel, and I remember that we would listen to the Voice of Israel [station] on the radio." On the other hand, he says, the community was well off, certainly in comparison to the rest of people in Egypt. "Despite the problems with the Muslims, we were a prosperous community. Jews held senior positions in banks, or owned large shops. Most of the Jews didn't want to give up their property. Beyond that, we didn't have the documents needed [to emigrate to Israel]. We weren't considered Egyptian citizens -- we were classified as 'local subjects' of Port Said. Each one of us had a paper that read, 'Jew, born in Port Said.'" When Operation Kadesh began, the Jews of Port Said found themselves between a rock and a hard place. "Along with the IDF operation in Sinai, the battles began in Port Said and Port Fuad, which had been occupied by the British and the French. Over 10,000 people were killed by the bombings on the city. I remember that they burned the bodies on soccer fields because there wasn't time to bury them," Mayo says. The British were the main occupiers of Port Said, then home to some 600,000 inhabitants. The city was divided into four quarters: British, Greek Orthodox, Italian, and Arab-Muslim, which was the poorest. The Jewish community comprised some 300 people who lived at the entrance to the Muslim quarter. Almost all its homes were hit by shelling. On the morning of Nov. 11, while Dar, Eliav, and Arieli were walking around, Mayo, then 24, left home at 6 a.m. to inspect the damage caused overnight. "I saw Dar and Eliav near the synagogue. I asked them who they were, and they said they were Israelis who had come to take the Jews to Israel," he says. "We broke down the iron door of the synagogue, which had been locked by the Egyptians, and went inside to talk. Avraham Dar, who spoke good, fluent French, explained the plan. We arranged to meet at the Barclays Bank building the next day." The Israelis asked Mayo to sound out who among the city's Jews might be interested in going to Israel. "My cousin Yehoshua Cohen and I went house by house, trying to convince everyone to go to Israel. Some agreed immediately, but most said they were afraid of losing their property. Some were afraid that we wanted to steal their property," he says. Eliav and Dar were handling another Jew named Jacques (Yaakov) Abbou, the son of the Port Said synagogue's beadle, who volunteered to provide lists of the Jews who wanted to go to Israel. Abbou, then 35, knew that he and his family couldn't go on living in Port Said after their home had been destroyed by the shelling. Eliav put Abbou in touch with the French who were privy to the upcoming operation and got him a special permit to move freely throughout the city. A phone was hooked up in the Jewish clubhouse. Eliav would later write that Abbou didn't seem "paralyzed by fear like the others.
He told us that he didn't have anything to lose, since his house had been burned down." After two days of efforts, 126 Jews expressed interest in leaving Port Said. Mayo says everyone who signed up to leave was instructed to gather at 5 p.m. sharp on Nov. 15 in the clubhouse or in the Jewish school next to the synagogue. They were told to bring small suitcases only. Luba and Dar were to pick them up in French army trucks. "In the end, only 65 Jews showed up at the meeting place. The others were afraid. Everyone came right on time, an hour before the curfew took effect," he says. At the same time, preparations for the operation were underway in Israel. On the morning of Nov. 14, Israeli Navy boats departed from Jaffa carrying 10 Shayetet commandos dressed as French soldiers. Israeli torpedo boats accompanied them half the way, then stopped to wait for them 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Port Said. A day and a half later, the boats reached the port of Port Said, arousing the suspicions of the British officers there. Dar says the Israelis had arranged with the French that they would respond to any question with the phrase, "We want to see the French admiral," and that is exactly what the commandos did when questioned. The Jews crowded outside the clubhouse were excited. The sun was about to set and neighbors were watching from their windows. The danger that a Jew might be caught outside after the start of the curfew at 6 p.m. was real and palpable. The fears became a reality when an Egyptian neighbor who noticed the odd activity went out and started shouting at the crowd. "I was armed with a pistol. So I stood facing the Egyptian and told him, 'If you don't go home now, I'll kill you and your wife.' He was frightened and ran back home, but I realized at that moment that we were in real danger. We got everyone inside, and I went over to the clubhouse via the back window to see if more people were coming," he says. "Suddenly I heard a shout behind me: 'Hold!' A British officer saw me and stopped me, because the curfew had started. "They took me into custody. I told the interrogators that I was Jewish and asked them to check it out with my manager at Barclays Bank. The manager told them he knew me and asked them to give me any help I needed. One of the British sergeants told me quietly, 'Gut Shabbes, I'm Jewish, too.' I told him that we needed protection because we were in danger," Mayo recalls. So in a surprising twist, the interrogators came to their aid. Ten soldiers accompanied him back to the Jewish club and school. That evening, the Shayetet commandos rendezvoused with Eliav, Dar, and Arieli and set out in a few trucks to collect the waiting Jews. At 1 a.m., they reached the clubhouse. "[Eliav] didn't like seeing British soldiers there," Mayo remembers. "I told him, 'I had no choice, the Egyptians would have killed us.' We put the people onto the trucks and drove to the Jewish school. We picked up the Jews who were waiting there, and they said that a mother and her daughter were waiting to be picked up from their house, because the mother was old, over 80. "We hurried to them, and carried the mother out to the truck. Suddenly, she said she wasn't going, because she'd forgotten to kiss the mezuzah. We brought her back, she kissed it, and we took her to the truck. From there we drove straight to the port." Two landing crafts from the French fleet were waiting for the 67 Jews at the port. Anyone who had ignored orders and brought more than one suitcase per person was forced to watch as the extra luggage was jettisoned into the water for fear the fishing boats couldn't carry the weight. The landing crafts, loaded with the Port Said Jews and their rescuers, started to pull away toward the Israeli boats, passing British and French vessels. That was when they were spotted by the British officer. But they continued out to open water to meet the Israeli ships. A few dozen miles off the Egyptian coast, the Italian flags were removed and Israeli flags were run up with pride. "How happy we were! But the sea was stormy, and the little boats were rocking the whole time. Some of the people were throwing up severely," Mayo says. "One of the mothers couldn't take care of her baby daughter, who was feeling poorly and crying. An Israeli soldier picked her up, made her porridge from military powdered milk and sugar, and calmed her down." At 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, the two Israeli Navy boats reached the Haifa Port. Eliav, who had flown back to Israel via Cyprus, welcomed them. Dar remained in Egypt for another month. Mayo was particularly excited. He was hoping to meet his older brother Yair, the Navy officer, whom he hadn't seen in seven years. "My father, who spoke fluent Hebrew, asked one of the officers, 'Is Yair Mayo here-' The officer answered, 'Unfortunately, he couldn't come, he's on the INS Eilat warship.' "We were really disappointed. Then we realized that Yair was a few feet behind us! The officer hadn't known that my brother had been given leave to attend the welcome ceremony. "I cried for almost half an hour when I saw him. It turned out that my mother had told a French officer at Port Said that she had a son in the Israeli Navy. The officer passed that information on, and my brother showed up. It was a miracle," Mayo recalls. The tired travelers were taken from the port to the Shaar Aliyah camp in Haifa, and began their new lives in Israel. "I used my connections from Barclays Bank in Egypt and for years worked at the [bank's] Israeli branch in Tel Aviv, as head of security," Mayo says. Shortly after the rescue operation, the French arranged to send the 170 Jews left in Port Said to France by sea. These included another of Mayo's brothers, who still lives in Paris. Some of them later moved to Israel, but most continued on to the U.S. or Brazil. Only a few Jews stayed in Port Said, and there is no Jewish community left there now. Dar, meanwhile, feels that an opportunity was missed. Although he oversaw the rescue of the city's Jews, he feels that he failed in the main mission to free the Lavon Affair prisoners. "It was important to me to be ready if there was a French-British attack on Cairo. The moment the forces stopped near Ismailia, I realized it was a lost cause. In any case, I stayed in Egypt for another month, with the Shayetet commandos, who were switched out every few days with the help of the French, who would fly them back to Cyprus. I was waiting for a scenario that might occur. Unfortunately, it didn't," Dar says. After he returned to Israel, Dar submitted a detailed report on what had taken place in Egypt to the head of Military Intelligence, and went on with his life. Dar says that year later, when the prisoners were returned, he took care that the state would acknowledge them as officers and promote them to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. "The head of Military Intelligence at that time, Meir Amit, allowed me to speak at an event in their honor, so they could understand how hard we had fought for them over the years," he says.
