Munir Redfa

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

Born Munir Habib Jamil Rufa (Arabic: منير حبيب جميل روفا‎) (sic) in 1934 to an Assyrian family beloning to the Syriac Orthodox Church from Mosul, 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 discrimination in Iraq and that (perhaps because of his family's forced migration there) 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 received Israeli citizenship.