A Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft used in the 1947 clandestine Operation Michaelberg, during which 100 Iraqi Jews were rescued and brought to the then British Mandate Palestine, will soon return to Israel after being saved from a scrap yard in Argentina. During the mid-1940s, concerns grew for the fate of the Jews of Iraq, with reports of increasing persecution by their Arab neighbours. The British refused the Jewish community's petition to allow Iraqi Jews to enter Israel legally, and so it was decided to mount a top secret rescue mission and smuggle them into the country. The operation was designed by the Aliyah Bet group, which was part of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organisation that worked in Israel in defiance of the British Mandate.
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