page_title: Vietnamese refugees in Israel
hierarchical_section_title: Vietnamese refugees in Israel
caption_attribution_description: Vietnamese refugees happily waving to the welcoming crowd at Ben Gurion Airport, via lufthansa, after rescued by Israeli freighter in Southeast Asian Waters.
context_page_description: From 1977 to 1979 the State of Israel permitted approximately 360 Vietnamese boat people fleeing the 1975 Communist takeover of Vietnam to enter the country. The most well-known rescue operation took place on June 10, 1977 in which an Israeli freighter ship called the Yuvali, en route to Taiwan, sighted the passengers.
  Prime Minister Menachem Begin was quoted as having compared them to Holocaust refugees:
  "We never have forgotten the boat with 900 Jews, the St. Louis, having left Germany in the last weeks before the Second World War… traveling from harbor to harbor, from country to country, crying out for refuge. They were refused… Therefore it was natural… to give those people a haven in the Land of Israel."
  An Associated Press broadcast from October 26, 1979 covered one of the arrival flights in which a refugee stated he would like to thank the government of Israel and Prime Minister Menachem Begin "to give us a homeland while the other countries were still reluctant to take us when we left our country to flee from the barbaric regime of communism."
context_section_description: From 1977 to 1979 the State of Israel permitted approximately 360 Vietnamese boat people fleeing the 1975 Communist takeover of Vietnam to enter the country. The most well-known rescue operation took place on June 10, 1977 in which an Israeli freighter ship called the Yuvali, en route to Taiwan, sighted the passengers.
  
  Prime Minister Menachem Begin was quoted as having compared them to Holocaust refugees:
  "We never have forgotten the boat with 900 Jews, the St. Louis, having left Germany in the last weeks before the Second World War… traveling from harbor to harbor, from country to country, crying out for refuge. They were refused… Therefore it was natural… to give those people a haven in the Land of Israel."
  An Associated Press broadcast from October 26, 1979 covered one of the arrival flights in which a refugee stated he would like to thank the government of Israel and Prime Minister Menachem Begin "to give us a homeland while the other countries were still reluctant to take us when we left our country to flee from the barbaric regime of communism."
  The Times of Israel, in a special report in 2015 quoted the Vietnamese Embassy in Israel that approximately 150 to 200 former Vietnamese refugees and descendants were still in Israel while about half have left Israel mainly for the USA and France.
  
  Prominent Vietnamese Israelis include: Vaan Nguyen, and poet and actress and subject of an award-winning documentary The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, Dr. Sabine Huynh, a translator, sociologist and author who fled Vietnam for France in 1976 and has lived in Israel since 2001, and Dao Rochvarger-Wong, who headed Bank Hapoalim in Singapore.
caption: Vietnamese refugees happily waving to the welcoming crowd at Ben Gurion Airport, June 26, 1977. Credit: Israeli Government Press Office.
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