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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-06-13/ty-article-magazine/.premium/under-pinochets-nose-the-secret-israeli-rescue-of-hundreds-of-dissidents-from-chile/00000181-487a-d953-a585-7d7ffb0a0000
Under Pinochet’s Nose: The Israeli Diplomats Who Rescued Hundreds of Dissidents From Chile
The remarkable story, told for the first time, of how Israeli ambassador Moshé Tov helped save some 300 enemies of the Augusto Pinochet regime in 1973, following the military coup against President Salvador Allende, smuggling them to the airport in the trunks of embassy cars and even sheltering them in the embassy itself
For nearly half a century, this Israeli rescue mission was kept largely under wraps.
In late 1973, an estimated 300 dissidents with ties to the political left were taken under the wings of Israeli diplomats based in Chile and thereby saved from the hands of the military junta that had just seized power.
Deemed enemies of the dictatorship led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, they were picked up from secret hideouts, smuggled in the trunks of Israeli Embassy cars to the airport, where they were put on planes and flown to safety.
The Israeli Embassy provided them with airline tickets, passports and other necessary travel documents, often under false names. At least 30 of these dissidents found shelter in the offices of the embassy itself, where desks and typewriters were moved aside to make room for cots and cribs. In several cases, they were put up in the private residence of the Israeli ambassador himself.
Were it not for the intervention of Israeli diplomats, these enemies of the regime would most certainly have been doomed to life in prison or worse.
Most of them, but not all, were Jewish. “We provided refuge to those who asked for it – Jews and non-Jews alike,” recalls Ruth Tov, the 90-year-old widow of Israel’s then-ambassador to Chile, Moshé Tov, during an interview at her home outside Tel Aviv. “There was no discrimination.”
Her husband would personally escort dissidents to the airport, she recounts, to make sure they were not intercepted and executed on the way.
The rescue operation lasted for several months following the military coup of September 11, 1973, when the socialist government headed by Salvador Allende was overthrown.
It was spearheaded by Tov, who had assumed his post at the embassy in Santiago two years earlier, and Benjamin Oron, the first secretary at the embassy. The two Israeli diplomats carried out the operation with the full cooperation and blessing of Abba Eban, who served as foreign minister at the time of the coup, and Yigal Allon, who would replace him a few months later.
Some of the refugees, though not the majority, would end up in Israel. Most of them relocated to neighboring Argentina and further north to the United States.
When it became known that Israeli diplomats were harboring political dissidents, the military junta tried to stop them. A few days after the coup, secret police were dispatched to the embassy and demanded to be shown inside so they could search the premises.
Tov refused, blocking the entrance of the embassy with his own body. “This is an extraterritorial space,” he told the heavily armed men, as his widow recalls. “You cannot enter.”