All language subtitles for Spy Wars s01e08 Exodus.eng

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.

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