Raffi Berg
Red Sea Spies
Raffi Berg and Dani Limor | Red Sea Spies | 04.20.22
- Okay well, good evening everyone, and we’re in for an absolute treat tonight. I’m going to start with a review of Raffi Berg’s book. “In the early ‘80’s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, a new luxury hotel resort opened, catering for divers. Guests came from all over the world, but the reality was, all the staff worked for Mossad. And what they worked on was the secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who were at that time languishing in refugee camps.” And to tell the story we have Raffi Berg, who wrote the book. He is the Middle East editor of BBC News website. He’s been a journalist for over 30 years, radio, television and now digital journalism. He’s studied both in England and at the Hebrew U, and the person he’s interviewing is Dani Limor.
Now Dani Limor, 25 years he worked for Mossad and he was in charge of the operation that I’ve just described. So it’s such a great pleasure not just to have Raffi, but to actually have the Mossad operative who ran the organisation. And before Mossad, he was an officer in the Israeli paras and he’s fought in four Israeli wars. He’s also done something I think, quite extraordinary. He’s founded something called the National School for Social Leadership, which is a pre-military academy which equips young people with skills that will enrich Israel itself. And at the moment, he’s mapping emergent Jewish communities around the world for the ministry of the diaspora. So it’s with huge thanks and my honour to welcome both Raffi and Dani, over to you guys.
- Hello everybody, thank you ever so much Trudy for the introduction, and it’s a great honour for me and I’m sure for Dani, to be here, to have the opportunity to speak to you about these extraordinary events. As Trudy said in her introduction, I’ve been a journalist for 30 years and this particular story is by far and away the most spectacular that I’ve come across. And it’s been to me, it’s been like a special treasure to have the honour and the privilege of conveying it. What’s important to me when I get these opportunities is to inform and educate people who want to know about these extraordinary events. The reason for that is because what happened, and Dani was the driver of the mission, what happened is such an important part of our shared Jewish heritage and it’s a little told story, it’s, until now it’s been very little, little known.
There was a film, a Netflix movie, which was inspired by the true story and the book, which is the first full account, first full true account of what went on. And it just so happens that we are talking to you about this in the period of Pesa, Passover. And there’s real parallels between the story of this operation and the story of the Exodus. Because really at the heart of this story is the exodus of a part of the Jewish people who lived for centuries effectively in exile. And they returned to the promised land. And this was a fulfilment of the prophecies of the Jewish prophets.
Now Dani, let’s start by asking you, how did it all begin for you? Because it was never an obvious thing at all that Ethiopian Jews, that an operation would be mounted to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In fact, just the opposite.
- Well as you say it, normally, once the decision was made that the Ethiopian Jews should return to Zion and they might have go and buy tickets for take, you know, get a ship from one of the harbours or take a plane or whatever. But the problem is that borders were closed in Ethiopia because there had been a coup, a military coup. And the army and, I would say extremist elements of the army took over the government in Ethiopia. And they by the way, demoted and assassinated the last emperor, the last king of Ethiopia, was, who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon. And he belonged to the called, the so-called Solomonic dynasty. And the old relationship between Israel and Ethiopia had been cut, so there was no way that some negotiations could have made, could have been made, some negotiation was made at a certain time.
But it was cut because it leaked and it created a lot of pressure on the Ethiopian government not to allow the Jews to go to Israel, pressure by the Arab countries. So now there is a decision made by the prime Minister at the time, Menachem Begin, was ascended to the post of prime Minister in 1977. And one of the first orders that he issued and gave to the head of the Mossad, was to do anything and everything to help to bring the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, back to Israel where they belong. And of course when you receive such an order, first thing is you are going to survey and to check and to make sort of a feasibility study in Ethiopia itself, to see how it can be done. So I’ll make it short because it’s a long story and you know it, I made two trips to Ethiopia, already this was undercover because as I said before, there were no diplomatic relationships between Israel and Ethiopia and even the relations between services had been stopped.
So when you needed a cover story and a different identity to enter Ethiopia, that was arranged. And I made two trips, two separate trips, one to the area of Gondar, Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, where there was the biggest concentration of Jews, of villages and around that lake, around the city of Gondar. And I spoke to leaders, spiritual and leaders of villages. And then I went back to Israel to report and to assess the information. And the second leg was down to the province of Tigre which is in the northeast, near what today is the border with Eritrea. And there is the second largest, there was the second largest concentration of Jews. That was very difficult to access because there was no infrastructure at all. No roads, no, even no dirt trucks.
You could not reach those villages, most of them, by car. You had to be mounting something like, you know a donkey or a mule or whatever. And I had a guide, otherwise I would’ve never, never found those villages. 'Cause there were no signs, there was nothing. I mean, you just, you know, went riding something and until you saw a few hats and the guide was a young Jewish guy from one of the biggest villages, he took, he led me to all those places, which was, you know, impressive, impressive how Jews survived in those areas. Some of them totally isolated, but the synagogues and they, you know, they were having a Jewish life, which they had for millennia. And of course all of them were awaiting the moment when they could return to Zion.
So I again, I met leaders and so on, but when I went back home and we are, you know, we assessed all the information that I gathered in both trips, we came to the conclusion that it was almost impossible or very dangerous to move people in an organised way from one place to another in Ethiopia. We did not have access to the sea, which could have been of course, a good solution as it was later on in Sudan. And it’s the same sea, it’s the Red Sea. But the access to the Red Sea in Ethiopia was blocked by liberation in Eritrea, three Eritrean liberation movements that were controlling the land. And they were fighting against Ethiopian army and sometimes fighting among themselves. So you could not risk, you know, go there and be on crossfire with the civilians.
With the access, the possibility of landing planes clandestinely at night was, when you look at the topography of Ethiopia and you see that it’s like a fortress, you know, mountains and valleys and it’s crowded. You know, there are certain conditions that you need to fulfil in order to land a military plane in the middle of the night without any lights and nothing, you cannot do that in Ethiopia, now -
So there was no obvious way to extract or exfiltrate Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia itself. You went, you did this feasibility study and you reported back and effectively said, you know, it’s just, it’s not realistic for those reasons.
[Dani] Yes.
But then the story took a turn with the advent,
[Dani] That’s right, right.
of a particularly special Ethiopian Jew by the name of Ferede Aklum.
[Dani] Yes.
Can you tell us a little bit about his role in the story and how that took it on a particular path?
Yeah well, I didn’t know him at the time, but he was known by some people that visited Ethiopia when it was still possible to go there freely. And he had been, he was was a teacher and he had been the, directed, he created and directed the school in Tigre, then he moved to the area of Gondar where he was teaching also. And yeah, he was an educated man, spoke English perfectly and he was considered, you know, like a leader, social leader as an activist, a Zionist activist you could call it, okay? You know the Ethiopian Jews, they are a Zionist before Theodor Herzl even thought about creating the Zionist movement. Because their Zionism comes from the word Zion, and the word Zion is Jerusalem in the Bible. And they always dreamt of returning to Zion. So they are Zionist.
Anyway, this guy who was in his early thirties, married and had a small baby. He had to flee Ethiopia because of his activities, his Zionist activity. He got noticed at the Secret Service, Ethiopian Secret Service was going to arrest him for interrogation about his activity. And that is not something that is recommended. So if he just left the area of Gondar where he was living with his wife and he went towards the Sudanese border. You might ask, why Sudanese border? Sudan and Ethiopia are not, you know, enemies in the sense that they’re not fighting each other, but they are adversaries, they’re rivals. On the question of the Nile and a different kind of thing, Sudan is a Muslim extremist country. Ethiopia is mostly Christian. And so they were never good friends. And it’s not obvious that any Ethiopian should seek asylum in Sudan, but the fact is that actually, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans and Somalians, all those people, the Horn of Africa that were involved in all kind of conflicts, internal, external, they went to Sudan because in Sudan, the United Nations for refugees was there building, or building, was creating some refugee camps.
And so they fled to that area and he, Ferede, actually, he joined one of these columns of people going to Sudan. And so he reached the first Gedarif, which is the area, was at the time a small city around which most of the camps were created. Then he went on to Khartoum, went to the, he went to the central post office and he sent a telegram to a Jewish organisation, which was not known as such in Geneva. And were, he knew the person that was in charge of that office because he had visited him in Sudan. And he said, “My name is so-and-so, Ferede Aklum and please send me a ticket, 'cause I would like to go home.” Home means Israel, of course. He is sending this telegram from the capital of a sworn enemy of Israel, he cannot say things clearly.
But that telegram reached Geneva and was sent by the guy in Geneva to Tel Aviv, to the representative of that organisation in Tel Aviv, who also knew personally Ferede Aklum, and he knew me personally. So he came to see me with that telegram and telling me, I know this guy. And he knew what my mission was. So he said, “If this guy could make his way from Ethiopia, from Gondar to Khartoum, maybe it could be interesting.” So we decided in headquarters, that instead of sending a ticket, they would send someone. And I had the privilege and the luck of being that someone. And so I had to make a very, very hasty preparations.
Usually to carry out a mission in an enemy country, it takes a longer time to prepare, much longer, but we had not enough time because we didn’t know what will happen with Ferede, and we send him a telegram by the way. Saying to that post office, P, O, B. we send him a telegram saying “Someone is coming, wait for him.” He never received it, which means that probably if he, we would’ve send a ticket, he probably would not have got it, but he was there. He had no place, no other place to go. And so when I finished my preparations, I managed to get the visa, which was not easy because the Sudanese did not approve, by the way, did not give visas, tourist visas. There was no such a thing.
Sudan, although they have many things to show, like any African country you know, they have all these, they have no reservations. I mean they don’t look, they don’t have safari parks, but they have the animals. And it’s a huge country with all kind of, it’s very, it’s a beautiful country, parts of it. But they don’t take in tourists, so yeah, you needed another story, so my story was that I was an anthropologist and I was charged by my university, which was a French university. So that’s what they wanted them to believe. They would charge me researching some tribes in the area, which happened to be the same area where the refugee camps were. And after some haggling and negotiating, I got the visa. And then I went, I flew to Khartoum.
And of course it was not easy to find Ferede, because he was not living in that P, O, B. It’s a bit small and I had no address for him. I didn’t know even how he looked like. So I took me a few days, almost a week or a week, something like that. And I went to the area in Khartoum where most of all the refugees were living. And so I went street by street by street. I managed to meet someone who knew him. And so I passed a message and I was waiting for him in a certain hotel where they were, I was the only white man, so you could recognise me. And that’s how we met, actually he came there and we finally met and well, we had to break some ice between us, was not obvious that we could get along with each other because there were many differences between us. The colour of the skin not being one of the differences, was different, but that was not the problem.
Problem was you know, different mentality, different life was moral, you know, came from military service from Mossad, you know, and he was a free man. He was like a really, a free spirit and, but didn’t take much time and we found out that we, there were more things that, there were more common denominators between us than differences, and we came to the conclusion that if we wanted to do something, we had to really cooperate and forget about who is the boss, who is not the boss, you know? So we put our egos aside, both of us had, and the fact that we were both Jews and both wanted the same thing, actually did the trick. And from then on we started working together. We went back to the area of the camps, because he thought there were other Jews in other camps. And so if you want me to describe the whole thing, just tell me. But if you -
Well, you bring the story actually onto an important moment, which is the beginning of the operations to exfiltrate the Ethiopian Jews secretly. And I mean, there’s too much ground of course, but too much ground to cover in the time available.
[Dani] Yeah.
Based on, of you permit me to say so, we, encourage and.
[Host] Wait Rafi, can you just repeat that? You froze for a bit.
Yeah sure, so the way the operation to evacuate or exfiltrate the Jews from Sudan began was, between you and Ferede, encouraging members of his family to begin with, to make this arduous trek by foot from their homes in Northern Ethiopia and arrive at the refugee camps in Sudan, where you would begin with just a small number, taking a small number of Jews, refugees, clandestinely under the cover of darkness and evacuating them through to begin with, through Khartoum Airport. And the actual, the story of the Red Sea Resort, which is kind of what’s made this whole story famous, that’s, how did that come into the picture? Because it only began partway through as a parallel operation. So, how did you come across the resort?
Well you know you are talking now, you are jumping from the early 1979 to actually almost two years later at the end of 1981. Up till then as you said we were, we found a way to transport the people, take them from Khartoum, from Gondar to Khartoum and hide them in safe houses that we rented. And then I found a way to get them passports, UN passports. This is a photograph that was brought to me by, Ferede is the guy smiling on the back of the Land Rover. And he brought it to me not long before he passed away. And this was one of the first groups that we took to Khartoum when we were waiting for the night to fall, because we only operated by night, because we didn’t stop in those military checkpoints. But that’s a long story, to cut it short, we did evacuate hundreds of people that way.
But it became very dangerous because those guys in the checkpoints were armed. I mean the military Sudanese soldiers. And they didn’t like very much, people don’t stopping. We were not the only ones not stopping because there were other smugglers, we were smuggling Jews. They didn’t know that, there were others were smuggling, you know, arms and drugs and whatever. So they started shooting at vehicles that didn’t stop. And on the other hand, the numbers of Jews arriving from Ethiopia into the camps was growing all the time. So this kind of exit that we were using, small groups, you know, many trips back and forth did not, was not enough. So we always knew that the Red Sea was there, right? It was like, it is like a highway you know, getting us straight from Sudan to the south of Israel. The problem was the distance.
We had trouble, as I said, we worked at night, so you can do 400 kilometres in one night and we did it, but then if you want to go to the Red Sea, it’s 900 kilometres, so more than double, you cannot do that distance in one night. So that meant that we had to find a place hide during the day and do it in two nights. And there were also checkpoints in that direction. So first of all, the first thing to do was to make reconnaissance trip along the coast, from Port Sudan northwards to the Egyptian border and see, and find places that would be appropriate to, for a combined operation with the Navy Seals, with Israeli Navy Seals. I had some experience of being a troopers officer. I had some cooperation with them and also with me, there was a teammate of mine that was earlier, had been a Navy Seal himself before he joined the Mossad.
So while doing this reconnaissance trip with a Jeep, was no roads, no paved roads, almost no dirt tracks. You had to go along the coast and look for places. In a very, very hot day. And we had no air conditioning in the vehicle. We saw some, a group of houses with red tiled roofs. So we thought we were dreaming, you know, this, the heat and so on, but it was there, it was like, they’re under the sun just waiting for us. And well you know, once you see the place and there was a guy, bedoin, a local bedoin that was guarding the place and he explained to me the history of the resort that had been built by Italians and operated by Italians and they had failed economically. So they left it about two years earlier and it was lying there, you know, it was no maintenance but all the equipment was there.
He made the tour, he showed us everything from speedboats to engines and diving equipment and rooms with the showers and the toilets and the kitchen. Fully equipped kitchen and the generator not working, but you know, everything was there including a tanker that they used to go to get water from wells. Because of course there was no running electricity. There was no electricity, no running water you know, I mean you had to get everything, including, you had to get food from Port Sudan, which is about 70 kilometres, but you have the magnificent sea and we eventually isolated one reef for food. All the others we didn’t touch, anybody, any fish we took the tourist to, 'cause there was beautiful, beautiful places in my opinion. And I’ve been some places and I have dived in some places from Hawaii to the Caribbean, probably the most beautiful place in the world. And virgin, I mean the fish don’t know that the man is the worst enemy.
So they are not afraid, they don’t run away. And so we are isolated one reef and there we hunted to eat, not for fun, just for food. So when I saw that place, it was clear that if we could get it somehow it would be the perfect cover, you know. And so he explained to me, the guy, the guardian. He explained to me that the one who was in charge was the director general of the Ministry of tourism in Sudan. Who had been a former brigade general in the Army. And so I went to, I flew there to Khartoum and I went to see him, unannounced. Not looking very businessman but you know, there was a moment where I thought, I need to get it. Maybe someone else is interested and will take it or something. Actually, nobody was waiting.
There was nobody in the waiting room you know, so you know, you spoke about that film, the Netflix film, “Red Sea Diving Resort.” And they show this guy in the film as being corrupted and the meeting between, you know, the actor and the, in the film is always asking about his commission and you know, and handling and so on. And actually we became one, first of all, he never asked anything for himself. We negotiated the price or the, for leasing it annually. And we reached the sum of $250,000. He began with a half a million, I began with 200,000. And so we agreed on 250 and we sort of shook hands because I, at the time, at that moment, I didn’t have a company and I didn’t, could not sign a contract.
But we filled up the sort of a paper, shook hands and I said, he asked me, “Are you a businessman?” 'Cause I was not very businesslike, I said, “Look, I just finished my work as an anthropologist and now I want to make some money. I saw that place and it looks like a place that we could open, I know people.” “Do you have a company?” “Of course I have a company.” Of course I didn’t have. But we got a company. I became CEO and I came back after everything was approved in Israel, both by the Navy and my headquarters, the Mossad. I went back as the CEO of that company, European company, and I signed the contract properly and we operated that village, that resort for five years.
And of course it provided us with a, with really the ideal cover, because first of all, because we knew that we were going to deal with larger number of Jews coming in, we needed a bigger, yeah that’s the resort. That photograph, I took it from the helicopter of the chief of the Sudanese Navy, who was of course our neighbour, 70 kilometres to the south. And we became very close, not only me, but the lady that was running the village was part of my team and another guy was the head diving instructor. We had a very good relationship with that guy, he was an admiral, he was in charge not only of the navy, but also of the army that was patrolling between the Egyptian border and the Ethiopian border. So what else do you want to know that you don’t know yet?
So what was it like as a place to stay? Because you know, the Mossad was effectively, or your team were operating as hotel staff by day, catering for guests and diplomats and visitors from, you know, enemy Arab countries. And by night your team would go off in convoys of trucks and operate as, effectively as people smugglers. So there was this dual existence, but for visitors, what was this resort like? And there were one or two moments where the cover was almost blown. I’m thinking about the instant where there was a Jewish guest who spoke some Hebrew and cottoned onto what was going on. And you had to dissuade him from speaking about it.
Before that jew, one of our staff, local Arab staff, was a driver in the resort. And he was aware that at night we disappeared with all the vehicles available, trucks and Jeeps and so on. And so we went out, six or seven guys, each one driving, almost each one driving a vehicle. So once he came to me, he spoke with me in Arabic of course. And he say, ask me, “Chief, can you tell me how come you always leave at night with all the vehicles and you return empty?” 'Cause you know, we returned empty. So I told him, you know Kassala? Kassala is the district capital, the city between Gadarif and Port Sudan. And it’s about I dunno, 300 kilometres no, more, 500 kilometres from Port Sudan or 400, I don’t remember now.
Anyway I say, he says, “Yes of course, Kassala.” I said, “Well you know that there are lots of Europeans, there are medical teams you know, , I mean Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, many. So there are doctors, female doctors and nurses. And I said to him, "Hali, you have, if I am not mistaken, you have two wives, right?” So he says, “Not two, three.” I said, “Okay, so you are already all set, but we are here alone, so we need, you know, we have our needs. So if we have to travel 400 kilometres to spend some time and have fun, and so that’s what we do. And we take the vehicles because each one goes to another place.” “Ah, okay.”
The story about this guy, he had been in Israel several times and he noticed that when he came through for breakfast, the salad that was put before him was cut in small, you know, the cucumbers and the tomatoes were cut very, very small pieces like they do in Israel, but not only in Israel by the way, in Lebanon also, but it doesn’t matter, he knew from his work or something that there were Ethiopian Jews disappearing from camps, from the refugee camps. And now he sees this result and he sees this. And then I think it’s also because we taught the chef in the kitchen how to prepare challah, you know challah, we are Jews we, Friday evening we like to eat challah and we taught him how to do it, you know, this special shape of challah. And then I dunno, he suspected whatever. And he caught one of my guys and they came up from a long dive. And then he spoke to him in Hebrew, asked him, asked him in Hebrew a question. And the guy answered in Hebrew, oh, he blew his cover.
So he came to see me, he tell me that he had spoken in Hebrew and that he, I mean, his cover was blown. So I went to see the guy in his room. I told him I’m the CEO of the company and I want to make sure that everything’s okay. I first of all, I saw in the log book that he was, he had booked a night dive. The night dives is a beautiful thing. And so I thought he was, night was falling. I took him to the shore, so I told him, “Come with me.” And we went to the shore and I showed him some point in the distance and I said, “You know, that’s the reef where you are going to dive tonight. It’s a very special reef.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because these, the sharks there, they love kosher food.” So you know, he started saying, “Ah.” He understood, he started saying, “No listen, no, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, I don’t know anything.” So I said, “Yes, you better don’t know anything because if not a shark, something else will reach you.” Something like that, I told him.
So well, he cancelled the night dive anyway. And he left early in the morning. Yeah we had, you know, there were all kind of questions, you know Yola, the lady that was actually directing the resort, and lots of, she had to, right, as you see, she’s sitting at the head of the table. She was the boss on the spot and she got us everything that we needed. Not only the team, as a team, we needed lots of benzine, you know, gasoline, but all the supplies and you know, these people, they came from Europe and they wanted to have the three meals every day, especially they wanted to have beer whenever they wanted, you know, and now this is a Muslim country, you cannot serve beer openly or you cannot buy beer openly. And she managed to get it from the duty free in Port Sudan. And she was, she had some situations to deal with.
Suddenly the army came to make, to check around if everything was kosher. I mean, we were not doing some monkey business there, but some people thought that maybe we are smugglers. 'Cause in that area there were real smugglers like pirates, you know, armed guys with boats. They went from Sudan to Saudi Arabia, back and forth. And so they, some people thought that maybe we are also because they knew, for example, part of the fact that we went out with the vehicles to take, to get the Ethiopian Jews to the meeting place with the Navy Seals. Some of my team members went out at night with our boats, not only for diving with the tourists, but also because we needed the boats, anyway. So you know, they would question us.
But all in all you know, the most, actually the most dramatic event that we had was in March of '82. We had a direct encounter with the Sudanese army. And they, we were in the middle of an operation. Were about 180 Jews and there were 32 Navy Seals and about 10 Mossad agents, and all this in a quite narrow beach, about five kilometres to the north of the village. And I had a lookout with the night vision equipment that warned me that he saw some people coming. There were soldiers there, there was an incident that developed and it ended very luckily, there was some fist fight and there was shooting by the soldiers, the soldiers, but nobody was hurt. And all those who needed to be evacuated from the beach were evacuated and they never knew who those people were, because we were talking moonless night. And in a moonless night, you cannot discern the colour of the skin of anyone.
You see a dark figure, you don’t know it’s black, white. So from the distance that they saw those Ethiopian Jews that were on the Zodiacs and in the distance what they saw the soldiers, they could not say if they were black or white, they could say that we were white because we had a very close encounter with them, including fighting and whatever. And that admiral that I spoke about before was a very good friend of the resort. And even mine, personally of the lady, the director of the resort, paid off, this relationship paid off because the guy in charge of the Sudanese unit, and himself was from the Secret Service. But he was commanding, actually the thing, what happened is that they were doing an operation, their annual operation where they arrested real smugglers.
The rest of the year they were paid off, the smugglers could operate freely, but once a year they did it, you know very, with a lot of noise and helicopter and on in the air and many army units and so on to show that they were still in charge. And the, so it happened, but this same night we were also operating. And so he wanted to arrest me. And he, when I said to him, “Listen, I am going to complain to the admiral about your attitude and your fact that you are opening fire on tourists.” 'Cause I said there were tourists, those people on the beach, well, it ended against all odds. It ended by a, I wrote a letter of excuses signed by the admiral that he said that this will never happen again and so on and so on. Because I am actually, after that incident, I went to Port Sudan to see the admiral and tell him that I was closing down the resort and leaving with my team. And we cannot continue working like that, because if some people are trigger happy, I cannot be responsible for people, tourists that come and may, they might be hurt.
So I don’t want to be responsible for that. So he said, “No, no, this was what, whatever.” They never knew what happened, maybe they suspected things, but they never knew, they never had any evidence. And I asked for a letter of, what do you call it, excuses, because I knew that I would have to show that back home in headquarters in Israel so that they would accept the fact that even though there had been an incident with shooting and so on, we could continue stay in Sudan, you know this type of incident, usually in any agency of the type of the Mossad, it will end in actually closing down the operation and retreating and then look for other solutions. But you know that letter had nothing, yeah.
- Dani, so I mean we, I want to allow time for people to ask questions. So I’d invite anybody who wants to ask anything, to put the questions in the Q and A box. And I’m going to wrap up our conversation with one last question to you, Dani, and just to kind of to conclude the story, and again, it’s just far too much ground, it’s all told in full in the book. But ultimately the result was, there was a revolution in Sudan in 1985, you, the president was overthrown when he was out of the country, a new leadership took office and the order came for the team who were operating the resort to evacuate.
And they hung on for about a week longer because it was Easter time, the resort was full, but then they made their excuses and disappeared off into the desert and they were dramatically airlifted by a special flight sent from Israel. In all, in the operation that you led and instigated Dani, over 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought out, which is an extraordinary number. And in the space of about, if you could sum up in, in perhaps just 60 seconds, what’s the situation like these days for Ethiopian Jews in Israel? We’re kind of one or two generations on. And although there were significant challenges for them in terms of integration to begin with, how integrated are they these days?
- Well, just one short sentence to close down the former chapter. After that incident with the, we had with the navy, with this Sudanese army, we stopped navy operations and we begun airlifts, so the resort continued to be the base and the cover for operations or airlifts that we did deep inside Sudanese territory at night, clandestinely, but anyone wants to know about that can read your book, to answer your question, you know, one of the things that happened, I think, me and many others that participated, is that once the, all those Ethiopian Jews were in a, safely in Israel, I thought that that was not the end of things.
I mean, this was only the first chapter. Now there is the question of integration in the Israeli society. And I mean, once I retired from Mossad and return to civilian life, one of the things that I thought was that this had to be, there had to be a participation, because for them, the integration is not easy. You know, we Israelis are people who are not very tolerant, to say the least. And they are not, the Ethiopian Jews, they had to change a lot of things in order to be really accepted by society. And this is still happening, you know, I’m talking 40, more than 40 years later.
But you can see a second generation, a third generation of Ethiopian Jews that are breaking all kind of, you know, glass ceilings. And in any profession that you might think, from doctors to engineers to officers in the army, to whatever, lawyers, judges. So they, there is nothing, there is no profession that is closed for them. And once they can, they receive the tools that anyone else is entitled, they reach the same results. And it’s a process, it’s not easy. There are still you know, some problems between the young and the police and the, I don’t want don’t want to go into this, but you can see that the graph is going up, I mean, more and more Ethiopian Jews are reaching the economical status and the social status that they are entitled to. And maybe they have to work sometimes twice as hard then any other Israelis to get the same results, but with the time is becoming easier.
[Raffi] So.
I’m very optimistic.
Yeah so, a little note to end upon, Lauren, I’d invite you back to field some questions.
[Host] Great, first question is, “What was the name of the Sudanese resort, again?”
Arous.
A, R, O, U, S. Arous.
[Host] Thank you.
And if I could just show off, let’s use, so to disguise the fact that the book is called “Red Sea Spies” and it is the full true story of the operation, the entire operation, it was written in collaboration with Dani and the members of his team who carried out this extraordinary, you know, series of events. And Dani visited the set of the movie, the Netflix movie and as I said, part of me, in writing the book. And I think Dani would be the first person to actually emphasise that the book is the full, true account. But let’s take it, let’s take another question.
[Host] Great, “How many Ethiopian Jews were rescued at the end of the operation?”
Well you know, there about, I would say 18,000 Jews left Ethiopia to go to the Sudan and about 16,000, 16,500 reached Israel in all kind of operations and 1500 lost their lives on the way or in the camps. And maybe this is the opportunity to say something that we have not mentioned but it’s written in the book, that is that the Ethiopian Jews themselves were an integral part of the operation, not only as people that were brought to Israel, but participating really in the operation and taking risks and you know, sometimes being arrested and tortured to give information about people leaving. So without their participation that, the whole thing would never, never happened, okay?
[Host] Great, another question, “Did you have an accent that either did or did not give you away during the operation?”
Again?
The accent, the question is, Dani, was your accent noticeable? Wasn’t it a bit of a giveaway? It’s, you know, it’s clearly a foreign accent.
I never introduced myself as an American or a British or being of English origin. My original language is Spanish, my second language is French and I was operating there as a French man. So you know, my English can have lots of accents. The accent is not the question to them, I speak Arabic too, so.
[Host] Thank you, someone’s asking, “How many tourists wound up being entertained at the resort during those five years?”
You know, on the third year of operating, we made more, we had income bigger than the sum that we paid for the lease, so over $250,000. When there were times when the resort was full, you know, 32 rooms full, sometimes two people have a room. So and there were times, yeah, but it is like, Club Med type of entertainment. There were times when we had not enough, so I would ask headquarters to send us some retirees from Mossad, you know, people born in different countries, and they would come as tourists just to have, you know, to show some movement. So some people were waiting with impatience to be called to participate in the operation as tourist.
[Host] Thank you, another question about the resort, “Was it ever financially profitable?”
Nah, I said one year, yeah, dunno. That was, it was impossible, you know? We could understand the Italians, why they failed because too many difficulties and you could not fill up the resort all year long. And no, without the subsidising of the Mossad, we will have failed. But we had our good periods.
[Host] Great, someone’s asking if anything is being done to enable Ethiopian Jews to get to Israel today?
Well, that’s a very delicate question. First of all, I’m not in government and I’m not dealing with immigration, but I know that the Minister of Immigration in Israel, she’s Ethiopian born and, Pnina Tamano-Shata, she’s doing a very, very you know, hard, she’s working hard to allow those who still are still in Ethiopia, who are actually people who had converted into Christianity and returned to Judaism, you know, under pressure of the church.
You could compare that to what happened 500 years ago in Spain, Portugal. And so there are several thousand people, that at least 5,000 have been already approved by the government and they are coming in groups, I don’t know exactly how many and there are some other people out there that claim they are also, they used to be Jews. Look I’m not, you know I’m not, I don’t have enough information to give you really a proper answer, but approximately what I said.
[Host] Thank you, someone’s asking if the Mossad group who worked together during that time ever maintained contact in the following years?
Well yes, not only Mossad by the way, there is, as much as I know about 50 individuals, men and women during all those years operated in Sudan. Shorter time, longer time I would say about 50 people had walked on the Sudanese soil, and pilots and the Navy Seals and Mossad and many of those still meet from time to time. And of course those who like us were long time and we worked together for a long time. We are in very, in very close relations, not only among my team, but also with the Ethiopian Jews that work with us.
We still have, you know, there’s lots of guys, young Ethiopian Jews that were part of the operation. They would, we relied on them to bring us the groups that we wanted to evacuate, you know, on a certain night from one point to another through areas that were patrolled by the army at night. That was really, really, really dangerous work. Those people now they are, they are in their fifties and I just, you know, I just yesterday was invited to a party where there were lots of them. Yes, we keep in touch. They’re brothers, we are brothers, operation brothers.
[Host] Perfect, a couple people are asking if there is a connection between this operation and Operation Moses?
Yeah, the link is that both operations took place on, in Sudan, but Operation Brothers was totally undercover, clandestine and Operation Moses was, there were at least two important people that were aware, not only aware, they allowed the whole thing to happen. One was the president of Sudan at the time, Jaafar Nimeiry, and the second one was the Minister of Interior. He was in charge of the Secret Service and they were paid off in their private accounts outside Sudan. And so they allowed a private aeroplane that belonged to a Belgian Jew, his name was George Guterman.
He passed away, I mentioned his name and he allowed, I mean he contributed a jet plane that flew back and forth from Brussels to Khartoum, evacuating people on a daily basis during five weeks. So more than 6,000 people were evacuated in five weeks until some politician in Israel spoke too much. So Nimeiry was accused of cooperating with the Zionists and so the operation was stopped and after that the Mossad continued the clandestine operations.
[Host] Thank you, well I am cognizant of the fact that it is getting late in Israel, so if it’s okay with you, we will wrap up there and I’ll hand back over to Trudy.
Well, what an incredible evening, let me thank you both for giving us such a treat, an adventure story and of course a great heroic event, so thanks for everything and I hope to see you back here again soon.
[Dani] Okay.
Goodbye.
[Raffi] Pleasure.
[Trudy] God bless. Lovely to meet you both, bye.
[Raffi] Thank you, Thank you very much, thank you.