Having traveled to the Ethiopian village of Ambover—once home to a significant Jewish community—accompanied by Jews who left the country for Israel as children or teenagers, Miriam Seiden describes what she learned and saw:

Our [group’s] introduction to Ethiopia was the Red Terror Martyrs’ Museum in Addis Ababa, a memorial to the victims tortured, imprisoned, and killed for their political beliefs under the Marxist Derg regime, which overthrew Haile Selassie and ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987. Here we began to learn about the struggle of the Ethiopian people and the cruelty they endured. . . .

In the Ambover synagogue, which remains intact thanks to private donors, we were spellbound by the emotional story that Belaynesh Zevadia, [who left the village for Israel when she was thirteen], shared of her brother Yosef’s three-year imprisonment for teaching Hebrew. Her father, the village kes (the Ethiopian Jewish equivalent of a rabbi), lived in the synagogue most of that time, sleeping on the floor and praying that his son would be released.

[We also attempted] to walk in the footsteps of those who escaped through the Semien Mountains to Sudan [in 1984, from which they were airlifted to safety by Israel]. Children and elders had marched alongside their families, trying to avoid loose stones on the trails. Some died over the course of their long journey, a proper burial all but impossible, and babies were born in this rugged but stunning mountain range.

Most likely, it was the Israeli Air Force that attacked eastern Syria Monday night, apparently destroying a convoy carrying Iranian weapons. Yoav Limor comments:

Israel reportedly carried out 32 attacks in Syria in 2022, and since early 2023 it has already struck 25 times in the country—at the very least. . . . The Iranian-Israeli clash stands out in the wake of the dramatic events in the region, chiefly among them is the effort to strike a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and later on with various other Muslim-Sunni states. Iran is trying to torpedo this process and has even publicly warned Saudi Arabia not to “gamble on a losing horse” because Israel’s demise is near. Riyadh is unlikely to heed that demand, for its own reasons.

Despite the thaw in relations between the kingdom and the Islamic Republic—including the exchange of ambassadors—the Saudis remain very suspicious of the Iranians. A strategic manifestation of that is that Riyadh is trying to forge a defense pact with the U.S.; a tactical manifestation took place this week when Saudi soccer players refused to play a match in Iran because of a bust of the former Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Suleimani, [a master terrorist whose militias have wreaked havoc throughout the Middle East, including within Saudi borders].

Of course, Israel is trying to bring Saudi Arabia into its orbit and to create a strong common front against Iran. The attack in Syria is ostensibly unrelated to the normalization process and is meant to prevent the terrorists on Israel’s northern border from laying their hands on sophisticated arms, but it nevertheless serves as a clear reminder for Riyadh that it must not scale back its fight against the constant danger posed by Iran.