Original subtitles

Every covert operation needs a watertight cover story.

On a top secret humanitarian mission in the 1980s,

One small group of deep cover operatives

Lived their lie so convincingly, their cover became reality.

This is the story Of how mossad sent undercover agents into enemy territory

To secretly repatriate the lost tribe of israel.

It's one of the most daring rescue missions In the history of espionage.

I was an officer in the paratroopers brigade.

They are a fighting unit.

I took part in four wars.

And one day, I got a letter asking me for a interview.

I got caught in this trap that is called intelligence work.

In the late 1970s, A former captain in the israeli army, dani limor, Was recruited by mossad.

Meaning the institute in hebrew,

Israel's national intelligence agency Had built a formidable reputation

For its global covert operations.

I wouldn't do it today probably.

But at the time, I was young,

And you know, join the mossad and see the world.

So, that's the thing, I saw the world.

To this day, Virtually all of limor's undercover assignments

Remain classified, but their successes

Made him one of mossad's most highly regarded field agents.

Dani was what we used to call in the mossad mavericks.

In other words, they didn't always work by the book.

He got latitude which I didn't give others.

In 1980, efraim halevy, the man who would go on

To become the ninth director of mossad, was a rising star,

And had been promoted to head up limor's division In tel aviv.

Halevy had just taken command of an extraordinary mission:

To repatriate a community of jews known as the beta israel, Or israel's lost tribe.

Ever since israel came into being, It became part of the mandate of the mossad

To be ready to enter an operation with very short notice

In order to save communities of jews Who are under threat of annihilation

Wherever they might be on the globe.

This ancient tribe of over 80,000 jews Were the descendants of those who had fled jerusalem

More than 2,500 years ago.

Now they were over 1,500 miles from israel, In an enclave of around 500 impoverished villages

In a remote area of ethiopia in east africa.

Until 150 years ago, They believed that they were the last surviving jews.

They didn't have any contact with other jewish communities

In the world.

In 1977, israel offered the lost tribe The automatic right of return to the jewish state.

But very quickly, It became clear that they were not going to be allowed

To leave africa peacefully.

By the late 1970s, The brutal civil war that had erupted in ethiopia

Would take the lives of almost 1.5 million people.

Desperate refugees fled north to united nations' camps

That had sprung up along the border with neighboring sudan.

Among them was a small group of the lost tribe of israel

Determined to reach the promised land at any cost.

Mali fadela fled her home With her pregnant mother, stepfather, and brother.

As they traveled hundreds of miles From the ethiopian interior to the sudanese border,

Approximately 1,600 people lost their lives From illness or exhaustion,

Many at the hands of thieves and robbers.

Sudan was an enemy country.

As a member of the arab league, The hard-line islamic sudanese government

Had sent troops to support israel's enemies.

Simply being jewish was risky here, And more and more jews were arriving by the day.

There were close to more than A million refugees in sudan.

We had to do things quickly.

In the spring of 1980, Efraim halevy made his move.

He turned to a man he believed had what it took

To set up an undercover mission in hostile territory:

Maverick multilingual undercover specialist, dani limor.

Okay, for us to operate in an arab country can be done.

But we are talking about moving ethiopian jews.

It's a very difficult and dangerous situation.

So when dani limor entered war-torn sudan, He used the cover of a french speaking anthropologist,

An identity that would allow him Through countless military checkpoints

And on to the refugee camps.

I had to play my cover, you know.

If you get caught and they find out who you are really Behind that passport that you using,

If they find out that you are an israeli, well, probably,

they will hang you from the highest tree.

At the border camps, Limor discovered the united nations

Wasn't just dealing with those fleeing a civil war.

A bitter drought had triggered the worst famine In living memory.

I mean, they called it camp, But actually it was some huts or tents

With no drinking water, healthy, no food, no hygiene.

People were actually really starving.

More than a repatriation, This was now a humanitarian crisis.

Limor believed the safest way To transport potentially vast numbers of ethiopian jews

To israel would be by sea.

Sudan has a coast on the red sea and we too, israel too.

So, once you reach the sea, you can go up to israel.

Mossad code - Named the mission Operation brothers.

It would need to be timed to perfection.

The israeli navy would anchor the bat galim In safe international waters off the sudanese coast.

Mossad's undercover agents led by dani limor Would secretly transport thousands of jews

From the sudanese refugee camps to the coast.

Israeli navy seal teams would transfer them From the shore to the vessel, and on to israel.

It was an audacious plan

That would require approval at the highest level.

We had to speak not just to the navy.

This needed to be presented to the prime minister.

But we did, and we were all sort of fired By this very, very deep and very, very basic, I'd say,

Urge to save human lives.

Secretly repatriating the jews of ethiopia To israel would be mossad's most challenging

And dangerous mission yet.

Dani limor's first challenge Was to find a way to transport the ethiopian jews

1,750 miles along the meandering desert roads To the coast, undetected.

Of course I was excited by the idea.

But I didn't yet know exactly how it was going to work.

Now limor needed a base, A place where his team wouldn't attract attention,

Where trucks and boats wouldn't raise suspicion.

Scouting for potential landing sites For the israeli navy seals, something caught limor's eye.

It was very hot, maybe 50 degrees in the shadow, But there is no shadow.

It seemed to us like a mirage, you know, Some houses lying in the sun, near the water.

But actually it was a hotel.

There was a guy, a local bedouin, And I started asking him, "what's this?"

He explained to me the whole story.

The remote arous holiday resort, With its 15 or so beach houses overlooking the red sea,

Was a scuba diver's paradise.

But with poor road access and lack of running water, The resort had lain abandoned for years.

Immediately it was clear

That was a solution for our problem.

Because if we can use that hotel, The whole team would be diving instructors.

Now, these diving instructors, they can be at the same time

Driving the vehicles, protecting the people

That we are transporting, and so it's the perfect cover.

Limor had found the most precious asset Of any secret operation, a watertight cover story.

Mossad was about to branch out into the hotel industry.

By the autumn of 1981, Dani limor was deep into the transformation

Of the abandoned arous holiday resort Into the israeli intelligence agency's undercover base.

You know, you would need to repair some things, But still it was in pretty good shape.

Now I have the perfect cover, I needed to recruit a team.

The challenge was to find personnel Who had the expertise Not just to run a hotel,

But you had to have a qualified diving instructor.

And there was nobody in the mossad Who was a diving instructor.

And we needed a diving instructor Not in a couple of years, We need a diving instructor now.

Halevy considered an unprecedented step.

We needed to approach people outside the mossad And train them.

So he turned first To israeli special forces operatives.

In the early 1980s, Retired navy seal rubi viterbo was running a dive school

In the resort town of nuweiba on the sinai peninsula.

He received an unexpected call.

Dani approach me and he told me a funny story About saving jews from africa.

I never ever participated in a clandestine operation.

But we are not going to kill anyone.

We are not going to plant any bombs.

We are going actually to save people, So I had a good feeling about it.

By the end of 1981, Viterbo was in the sudan as a mossad clandestine operative.

Over the next few months, limor recruited his team, Men who would need to abandon

Their former lives and identities And take on entirely new ones.

But he realized a resort staffed exclusively by men Would arouse suspicion.

I had the idea to look for a female member of the team.

A woman gives you legitimacy, the presence of a woman.

When you are doing this type of operational activity, Which of course is very sexist,

But that's how people look at it.

Viterbo suggested limor contact a former pupil From his sinai dive school.

She is a woman of the sea.

She was like the perfect person for the job.

When mossad made their approach, Yola reitman was leading a jet set lifestyle.

I was working for el al, the airline, Which took me all over the world of course,

So this was my life.

And I was spending a lot of time in eilat, I was diving.

I had a boat there, sailing a lot, having a great time.

It fell to efraim halevy To assess whether reitman had what it took

To become an undercover intelligence agent Almost overnight.

I met her at a cafe in tel aviv and I spoke to her,

And she impressed me as a very, very complex character.

And then I had to say yes or no.

And I said yes.

The identity I got was a german,

Which was natural because my mother tongue is german.

You know, it is like playing in a movie or something.

You have to assume a role, You have to assume somebody else's personality, identity.

I felt confident that I could play a part.

In 1982, Yola reitman became a mossad undercover agent

And manager of hotel arous, mossad's scuba dive resort.

We made a brochure, we advertised in magazines, And we approached some diving groups.

And people came, and they loved it.

They were excited Because they had no other place like that in the sudan.

And they started coming very often and regularly.

Yet behind the scenes, The resort was a fully functioning Mossad undercover unit

With a daunting secret mission to undertake.

We had, of course, our special radios To communicate with headquarters.

All our hiding places were ingenious, you know.

There was radio hidden in one of the oxygen tanks.

I mean, imagine, you're in a movie.

Wow, james bond, that was like it.

Privately, many in mossad had deep reservations At the idea of involving civilians

In such a crucial and dangerous operation.

This was unheard of.

We gave them very superficial training and we sent them off.

I realized that if people were caught, We would never get back alive.

There's no halfway here.

Either you do or you don't.

By now, The camps on the sudanese border with ethiopia Were overwhelmed by thousands of people

Fleeing famine, war, and persecution.

Meanwhile, dani limor and his team Of deep cover agents waited at the resort for the go-ahead

To exfiltrate the lost tribe of israel back to tel aviv.

Timing would be everything.

Once the agents at the hotel received word

That the israeli warship had set sail for the rendezvous,

They had just three days to initiate operation brothers

And smuggle their jewish brethren from the refugee camp To the sudanese coast.

Under the pretense of collecting supplies,

Limor lead a convoy of trucks on a 1,100-mile round trip To the refugee camp.

We'd drive the whole day.

We would reach the camps at night.

And at the prearranged place, We would meet some of the jews.

At dusk, mali and her family received word.

It was time to go.

It was incredible.

You really felt that something big is going on here.

They trust you completely, you know, They really, they put their lives in your hands,

And that's not an easy feeling.

But almost immediately, There was a problem.

Far more refugees had gathered Than the 200 spaces that were available on the trucks.

I felt bad because I knew that some people Are not going to be evacuated,

And they'll have to stay to the next pick up, And god knows when this opportunity will come.

The team now had to smuggle their human cargo For a journey of 560 miles

Across a heavily militarized country In the throes of a brutal civil war.

The head of the mossad said, "you are going to do the most difficult job.

"it's not smuggling money or weapons or drugs.

"it's smuggling people.

"it's really, really dangerous."

We had to pass about five road blocks Which were actually meant to stop any such activity.

So I knew that I have to be sharp.

The sudanese security services were very sensitive

To what people are doing inside sudan.

They had orders to intercept, to stop any and every vehicle.

If the army guards at any one of the roadblocks Suspected something wasn't right,

Then not only would everyone on board be slaughtered, But the entire operation would be blown.

But dani limor had a plan.

I developed a system.

When I reached the checkpoint, And start chatting with the guards.

I don't offer any bribes, but they are there.

If you want it, you can take it.

Some cigarettes if they wanted, or some biscuits.

And then they see one of the lorries coming.

And then they want to go to the road to stop them.

I said, "no, no, this is my people."

"oh, okay, is your people, okay."

At the dive resort, Yola reitman waited for confirmation

Limor was through the last of the roadblocks Before signaling the israeli naval vessel

They were ready to go.

I would make the radio connection Between the coming cars and the ship.

You hear nothing, but you see those shadows approaching

Because our navy seals have this way of approaching Very quietly, it was incredible.

More than 2,000 years After their ancestors had fled jerusalem,

Around 200 members of the lost tribe of israel Were returning to the holy land.

I felt so good.

I knew that I'm giving these people hope.

I knew that they are longing many, many, many years To go to jerusalem, and now I'm their chance.

It was mind-blowing.

It's like, you know, you are looking at a piece of history.

Six months and four missions later, Mossad had smuggled 800 men, women, and children

To the safety of the navy's warship, and on to israel.

But their mission to evacuate the rest of the tribe by sea Was about take a dramatic turn.

By spring 1982, dani limor and his team of mossad operatives

Under the cover of running a scuba diving resort Were preparing for their fifth exfiltration

Of ethiopian jews.

The arous resort was now such convincing cover

That mossad was making a hefty return on its investment.

I remember vividly, the money started pouring in.

I sent a telegram to headquarters, "we're in the money!"

I was completely excited about it, you know, How successful we are.

The profits had gone up, but so had the risks.

There was a lot of smuggling going on From sudan to saudi arabia.

And we knew there were some sudanese army patrols, So we had to move very quickly.

We started as usual, like every other operation.

It was a big one.

I think we had almost 200 people we had brought at the time.

There were two navy seals on each boat

Armed to their teeth.

We had no weapons at all.

Suddenly the lookout said, "we've got company."

I see a group of people, very clearly armed, approaching.

It was a sudanese army unit Patrolling the shoreline for smugglers.

We decided to get the hell out of there.

15 of the 16 boats were already in the water, But one boat got stuck on the beach.

The soldiers were really getting nearer.

And then one of them saw the boat.

And he shot with his kalashnikov.

We heard gunshots and people shouting in arabic.

"hands up, hands up."

To gain some time, to let the boats evacuate the beach, I ran towards them.

And then I started shouting.

What are you doing? Crazy?

Are you crazy?

These people are tourists.

The whole thing was not very convincing, The shouting, but he understood I was in charge.

In those conditions, the best defense is offense.

Limor's bluff had worked.

That night, more than 170 ethiopian jews Escaped to the israeli vessel unharmed.

But mossad was shaken by the narrow escape.

I had a radio communication With somebody from the mossad

On the boat and I heard an order to evacuate the hotel.

I told dani, "look, I heard evacuation, evacuation now."

He said, "I heard it too."

Headquarters were worried that we had been exposed And that we might be arrested, interrogated.

I thought that if we follow orders to the letter And we evacuate, abandon the hotel,

Then we would have to wait now Until a new operation is formed and a new cover is made.

That is not done in 24 hours.

That takes time.

It had taken limor almost a year to set up the hotel As a viable cover for the operation.

And he wasn't about to give up it up now.

Dani limor stood his ground And defied a direct order to close down the operation.

24 hours later, limor was at the mossad headquarters

In tel aviv making his case to efraim halevy.

The only strategy in cases like this, We are talking professional people, head of the mossad,

Head of the division, They either trust you and your judgment or they don't.

I didn't decide to stop the operation.

But I decided to wait a little.

Take shall we say pause for reflection.

The agents and the resort could stay For the time being.

But there would be no more evacuations by sea.

Mossad would have to think of another way To get the lost tribe of israel home and fast.

They opted for a new and daring strategy:

To get them out in larger shipments by air.

The new plan was to deploy c-130 transport planes

To secretly airlift the lost tribe from the sudanese desert Direct to tel aviv.

131 squadron had earned a fearsome reputation, Flying israeli paratroopers in to kill terrorists

Involved in the air France hijacking of July 1976.

As a former paratrooper, I used to jump from those planes, And I was excited by the fact

That we could really move a lot more people.

The aircraft could land much, much nearer the camps And we wouldn't have such a long drive,

A dangerous drive to the shores.

And this was a huge advantage For the aircraft over the boat.

The hostility Between israel and muslim-majority sudan Meant the pilots of 131 squadron

Would be flying directly into enemy airspace.

To avoid being shot down, They would have to fly below the radar And in the dead of night.

Eden attias was one of the crack pilots Selected for the mission.

Almost 2/3 of it is above hostile territory.

And we needed to do it without being exposed Not on the way in, not on the way out.

And the way to do it's to go very low altitude, Like 300 feet.

You are landing on a dust field And it's the middle of nowhere,

And you need to be there in like plus or minus 13 seconds That more or less the level of accuracy

That was being expected.

So it's very challenging for the pilot.

Before the flights could begin, Limor and his team needed to undertake the critical task

Of identifying the secret desert landing sites.

We start in the desert To find and improvise a landing strip

To be exactly 1,500 meters long and about 10-meter wide.

No obstacles, no trees, no big rocks.

And it's on my shoulder again.

One of the pilots talked to me, "are you sure you know what you are doing?"

I said, "no, this is my first time.

"there's a first time for everything."

In the camps, with the rescue missions on hold, Ethiopian jews began to think

They had been abandoned by israel.

Is it true that the cost of freeing 10,000 people out

Was worth the price of sacrificing two or 3,000 people?

I don't know the answer to that.

Only one being knows the answer to that, and he's in heaven.

Finally, in may 1982, With secret landing sites identified, Mossad's operatives on the ground

Were ready to resume operation brothers.

Now limor's agents wouldn't just be managing a dive resort.

They'd be operating a clandestine airline too.

An israeli c-130 transport plane Took off from air force base 27 in lod

Heading for a secret location in the sudan.

The fate of those in the camp now depended on the agents

Successfully guiding the israeli air force To land in the heart of the sudanese desert.

In an aerial operation, You cannot allow yourself to be late.

Everything had to be timed very, very accurately.

Once the planes approached sudanese airspace, Limor's team had just a few hours

To make it more than 120 miles across the desert From the camps to the landing sites.

The same drill, but this time it was different.

We felt the sense of urgency

That we need to speed up the operation.

There are many many people waiting, suffering, Dying in the camps.

With the israeli air force involved, Up to 400 people could be evacuated At a time on two planes.

With space for just 200 people on the team's trucks, It'd be standing room only.

They were climbing from the side.

They were squeezing in my lorry, which is eight by two,

That's it, it's undescribable.

Mali and her family had survived A year and a half in the camp's squalid conditions.

They safe, go, go, go.

The airplanes are already in the air.

I have 200 kilometers approximately to drive Till the meeting point.

At the landing site, It was limor's job to guide the planes in.

Usually we had about between five and 10 minutes

From the moment we reached the landing strip Before the plane landed.

We communicate in english, And we kind of mimic a truck driver.

Car 12, car 12 from car 13.

So in all of this very strict operation, Everybody's stressed now,

Suddenly there is this communication, Colorful communication with the ground.

Your parking lot is ready.

Which, if someone listening to this frequency, Definitely wouldn't connect it to an airplane.

In the pitch black, The pilots had only night vision goggles To aid their final approach.

You need guts.

What these guys do with those huge airplanes, They're like solo violinists.

And that was an experience that I will never forget.

We were sitting in the car And this huge monster passes maybe, I don't know,

10 meters over your head, you don't forget that.

You're trembling all over And you have to retain your juices.

In a hostile territory, You want to minimize your time on the ground.

Stopping, lowering the ramp, putting 200 people in, Bring security back, closing the ramp,

Take off power, and we are out.

This was a matter of less than two minutes.

After 4 1/2 hour flight, The c-130 touched down in israel.

From the summer of 1982 until the autumn of 1984,

Dani limor and his team coordinated 17 separate airlifts From the desert.

In four years, some estimates place the number of people

Saved from starvation and death in the camps at 12,000.

So far, in israel, The media blackout about the influx of refugees had held.

But by the beginning of 1985, News that thousands of ethiopian jews

Had made it to jerusalem had leaked.

Mossad ordered the immediate evacuation Of the arous diving resort.

On the easter weekend of 1985, Scuba diving tourists awoke to find the hotel deserted.

I mean, if you ask real mossad people About the chances of such an operation to go on

And continue without being caught, without interference,

They would say it's almost impossible, and we did it.

You know, we did what we had to do And we are proud for having done it.

For me it symbolizes The reason of the existence of the state of israel.

This was such a unique experience.

When I got back, I didn't speak to people about it.

I had friends who knew me for so many years, And they never had an inkling.

For 35 years, nobody knew anything.

Operation brothers Became the role model for a new series

Of intelligence-sponsored humanitarian missions.

Former director of the cia And now u.S. Vice president, george bush stepped in.

In secret talks with the sudanese president mariam,

He brokered a series of 28 covert airlifts.

As the wider international community woke up To reports of the biblical famine in ethiopia,

Operation moses flew a further 6,000 jews To israel via brussels.

Later, in may 1991, Operation solomon evacuated over 15,000 people to safety,

Setting a world record with 1,067 passengers Crammed onto a single flight.

Today, there are around 130,000 jews of ethiopian descent

Living in israel.

I'll tell you something which sounds maybe facetious But that's true.

I'm a little humbled by all this.

It's a privilege to be somehow involved In this action in life.

It also gives a lot of feeling of hope and confidence That we will make it.

We will make it in every sense of the word.