In the early 1980s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, Arous, a new luxury resort, opened for business. Catering to divers, it attracted guests from around the world. The patrons, however, had no idea that the resort staff were undercover spies working for the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Arous provided a front for the agents’ covert nighttime activities, enabling them to carry out an operation unlike any other. What began as one cryptic message pleading for help turned into the secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, rescuing them from refugee camps and spiriting them to Israel.

Longtime BBC Middle East correspondent Raffi Berg and Dani Limor, the Mossad agent who led the covert operation at Arous, will join us to discuss the true story that was the subject of Berg’s book, Red Sea Spies, and the inspiration for the recent Netflix film The Red Sea Diving Resort. Written in collaboration with agents involved in the top-secret, hazardous mission known as “Operation Brothers,” the book has been endorsed as the definitive account and includes an afterword from its overall commander, Efraim Halevy, who went on to become the head of the Mossad.

Raffi Berg is the Middle East editor of the BBC News website and has extensive experience reporting on Israel and the wider region. His article, which scratched the surface of this story, was the most-read original feature in the history of the website and has attracted more than five and a half million readers to date.

Dani Limor served 25 years in the Mossad, during which he led the secret operation that evacuated Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel at the command of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Before joining the Mossad, he was an officer in the Israeli paratroopers and fought in four of Israel’s wars. He is a founder of the Nachshon School for Social Leadership and is currently mapping emerging Jewish communities around the world for the Ministry of the Diaspora.

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Presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Council.

Sponsored by: Everett & Marian Gordon Scholar Series Fund.