Munir Redfa

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Munir Redfa (1934 - 2000) (Arabic: منير ردفا‎) was an Iraqi Fighter Pilot, of Assyrian origin who defected to Israel in 1966 by flying a MiG-21 of the Iraqi Air Force. In what is considered as one of the Mossad's most successful operations, Redfa's entire extended family was smuggled safely out of Iraq to Israel. The hijacked MiG fighter was loaned to the United States for testing and intelligence analysis. Redfa's defection was the subject of the movie Steal the Sky.

Redfa was born Munir Habib Jamil Rufa (Arabic: منير حبيب جميل روفا‎) (sic) in 1934 to an Assyrian family belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church from Mosul. He was the second of nine children. Like many other Assyrians, his family fled to Iraq as part of the Christian migration from southeast Turkey and Iran's northwestern mountains (specifically Urmia, fleeing the upheaval of World War I in what is known as the Assyrian genocide).

At the time of Redfa's defection, a press conference was held during which he indicated that he had suffered from religious and ethnic discrimination in Iraq and that he did not feel that it was his home and requested asylum in the United States. Although he was reunited with his family in Israel he did not re-emigrate to the US, contrary to his declaration, and he received Israeli citizenship. He and his family shortly moved to another western country, where he died.[1]