Born in Baghdad in 1923, Mordechai Ben-Porat (né Mordechai Qazzāz) immigrated to Palestine in 1945 following his family's migration two years earlier. In 1947 he joined the Hagana (the Jewish underground defense forces). He graduated the first officers-training course of the Israel Defense Forces in 1948 and fought in the War of Independence. In 1949, as persecution of the Jews of Iraq mounted, he was sent there by the Mossad la-ʿAliya to organize clandestine Jewish emigration.
Together with Shlomo Hillel and others, Ben-Porat was a central figure in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, als…