In the late 1970s and early 80s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews escaped from their own country, through Sudan, another state that was an enemy of Israel. The story of that escape and the Israeli Mossad agents who got the Ethiopian Jews to Israel is the subject of the book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad's Fake Diving Resort by Raffi Berg. The dramatic events inspired a movie on Netflix also.
Berg tells this amazing story with enough detail to show just how difficult and precarious the entire operation was from beginning to end, yet at a page-turner pace. The two men at the center of the story, Dani the agent who organized the operation and kept it going, and Ferede Aklum, the Ethiopian Jew who worked from beginning to end to get his people to Israel, begin with getting a few Jews out with fake documents to the buying and running a diving resort on the Red Sea. The resort allows Jews to be taken out by sea and later is a base that allows hundreds to be flown out at a time on Israeli C-130 Hercules transport planes.
It is a great story from beginning to end. I knew so little about Ethiopian Jews and their exodus from remote areas of the country where they lived for more than a millennium. Now I feel like a witness to a land, sea and air miracle in the late 20th Century.
Enjoy!
