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Mazi Melesa Pilip is not your typical Long Island Republican. She is not, in fact, your typical anything.
Currently serving as a Nassau County legislator from Great Neck, Pilip has been nominated by local Republicans to run in the February 13 special election to fill the congressional seat vacated earlier this month when the House voted to oust serial fabulist George Santos (R-Nowheresville).
Pilip might not bring much legislative experience to what’s expected to be a tight race, but she does bring the badassery.
Born into extreme poverty in Ethiopia in 1978 or ’79, Pilip emigrated with her family to Israel at the age of 12. It isn’t often appreciated but for all the talk of Israeli « racism, » Jerusalem has rescued tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from that country’s violent troubles over the last 40 years. She and her family were part of Operation Solomon, a clandestine airlift in 1991 that brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in a remarkable 36 hours.
Operation Solomon would make a helluva movie, and maybe sometime I’ll devote a full history column to it.
But back to Mazi Melesa Pilip who, when she came of age, served a stint with the IDF’s elite paratroopers. She told JTA back in January that as a college student, she headed up the Ethiopian Student Union for two years.
