CASE STUDY
Moshe Operation
INTERACTIVE STORY / DATA 2026
An interactive data story about the 1984 covert airlift that carried thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel — a piece of history rarely discussed in Israeli culture.
ROLE
Concept, UX/UI,
visual design
BRIEF
Interactive story
(7 weeks)
AUDIENCE
Teens to adults
with a taste for history
FORMAT
Scroll-driven site,
nine chapters
TOOLS
Figma, Illustrator
01 / THE STORY
A rescue that had to stay
invisible to work
Between 21 November 1984 and 5 January 1985, a joint Israeli–American–Sudanese operation moved Ethiopian Jews out of Sudanese refugee camps, through Brussels, and into Israel on civilian charter flights disguised as ordinary passenger service.
Israel and Sudan had no diplomatic relations. The agreement was unwritten. Refugees were collected under cover of darkness and forbidden to say they were Jews. The operation ended the moment it became public — and roughly 2,000 people were left behind.
02 / STRUCTURE
Nine chapters, one scroll
The story is told in sequence, one chapter per scroll section — so the reader moves through the operation the way it actually unfolded, without being able to skip the cost.
01
Who are Beta Israel?
02
The Dream
03
The Decision
04
The Operation
05
The Journey
06
The Rescue
07
The Landing
08
The Price
09
The New Life
03 / NARRATIVE ANCHORS
Four moments the story
turns on
01
A dream unbroken for generations
Beta Israel were cut off so completely they believed they were the last Jews left alive — and still kept First Temple-era observance, waiting to return.
02
An Exodus without a Moses
Whole families folded up their lives overnight and walked into the desert toward Jerusalem. No prophet leading them, no sea parting.
03
The heavy price
Roughly 4,000 did not survive the Sudanese desert and the camps. Contemporary reporting counted 10 to 15 deaths a day. This is the number most retellings leave out.
04
An ending nobody chose
The airlift stopped the moment it became public. Around 2,000 people were left behind, evacuated only months later in a separate operation.
04 / THE DATA
Every statistic is a person
6,364
people carried out
(sources vary up to ~7,000)
46
days, start to abrupt finish
21 Nov 1984 – 5 Jan 1985
~4,000
did not survive the journey
or the refugee camps
7,645
children later born
in Israel to those families
SELECTED SCREENS
IN CONTEXT
Macbook Pro
© 2026 Benaya Amar.
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