JORDAN MOSHE
A former commander in the Mossad, Limor is responsible for rescuing thousands of Ethiopians from war ravaged villages via Sudan, and bringing them to freedom in Israel.
Limor’s account of Operation Brothers, the Mossad’s secret scuba operation in Sudan, gripped the audience at the South African Zionist Federation conference from the moment he began speaking on Sunday.
In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin was determined to rescue the long-lost Ethiopian Jewish tribe, Beta Israel. It was Mossad commander Limor who spent four and half years devoted to the mission involving Mossad agents and Israeli navy seals. Limor, the mind behind the mission, recounted how the plan was conceived.
“I was sent to Sudan in 1979, and landed in Khartoum on the day of my wedding anniversary,” he said. “We wanted to help get the Ethiopian Jews out, but it wasn’t about us coming in and just picking them up. It couldn’t have been done unless we worked together – it was about co-operation between Jews, Ethiopians, and Israelis.”
This bond inspired Limor to dub the mission “Operation Brothers”, and he found that the similarities between himself and the Ethiopians was stronger than he might have originally thought.
“I sought out a leader in the Jewish community in an Ethiopian village who had to escape because the security service was going to arrest him for being a Zionist leader. When I met him, we worked together to find a solution to bring the people from Ethiopia into Sudan, and evacuate them from there. We became real brothers.”
“The Ethiopian Jews were Zionist before Theodor Herzl,” he said. “They managed to survive probably for 2 700 years because they believed they were the last Jews in the world, and their dream was to return to Zion. It was their reason for living.”
Their passion for Israel spurred Limor into action. He made undercover trips to Ethiopia to begin making arrangements to extract the Jewish tribe. Their situation was dire, he said. “They would walk during the night, not knowing how far they had to go to reach Israel. They lacked food and water, often arriving barefoot.”
Their plight moved him, and Limor crossed into Ethiopia one night undercover, painting his face black with charcoal, and stealing into communities to meet their leaders to put his case to them. After doing so, he returned to Sudan, and began preparing an elaborate cover for the operation.
“In the beginning, my cover was as a French anthropologist,” he said. “That’s how I got my visa to Sudan – pretending I was studying tribes in the area. We decided to work with the navy through the Red Sea, and looked for appropriate beaches on which the seals could operate.”
To their surprise, the team stumbled upon a disused diving resort built by Italians years before, who had pulled out after their business failed. Said Limor, “They just abandoned it, and it went over to the ministry of tourism. I visited the minister, and declared that I had finished my research, and wanted to make money. Israel gave me cover in the form of a shell company, and I became the manager.”
The operation began in earnest. Not only did the team renovate the complex, but they operated it as a legitimate resort, one where all the staff were actually undercover agents.
“We operated the complex for five years,” said Limor. “It gave us the perfect cover. One of the diving instructors was recruited from the Mossad, but most of the team were former navy seals. I needed agents who could bring Jews over, but also be legitimate diving instructors.”
With the resort open, Limor and his team actually made a brochure, distributed it, and started to attract tourists. “In our third year, we earned more than $250 000 (R3.5 million). I asked the office back home if I could give dividends to the team, but that didn’t go so well.”
All the while, they worked tirelessly to extract Ethiopian Jews to Israel across Sudan, and over the Red Sea. The team would cross raging rivers and cover hundreds of miles with groups of Ethiopians, using the cover of darkness as they moved them from refugee camps using a jeep Limor had bought for this purpose.
“When I arrived in Khartoum, I found there was no car rental company. A Mossad agent that can’t rent a car is handicapped. I went to the market, found an old Defender, negotiated with the owner, gave him good money, he gave me the keys, and that was that. He also gave me a piece of wire because the door on the driver side had no handle.”
Limor and the team moved people through Khartoum using the vehicle, often telling officials who stopped them that they were “relocating” them by order of the United Nations. “We always worked at night, and never stopped at checkpoints,” said Limor. “Some of the Ethiopians working with us were caught and tortured for information, because in the camps most refugees were not Jews. Non-Jewish Ethiopians could recognise them, and often went to the security services and reported them. Ethiopian Jews disappeared in numbers overnight.”
Limor developed close relationships with many Sudanese officials, including the deputy-minister of tourism, and the head of camp security, neither of whom ever suspected he was working undercover. He recounted, “The head of security once told me Israelis were stealing Ethiopian Jews to take to Israel, and he didn’t know how they were doing it. He thought I was an anthropologist.”
Operation Brothers ended abruptly in 1984, when an Israeli politician bragged publicly about the mission. The Israelis evacuated the resort overnight, leaving behind plenty of scuba-diving tourists who would wake the next morning to find that the entire senior staff had deserted them. The operation increased the number of Ethiopian Jews in Israel more than 5 000%, and became the precursor to subsequent daring rescues.
Today, there are more than 130 000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel. Said Limor, “Most of the immigrants became leaders in society in every branch of Israel. They decided on their own that they wanted to be a part of Israel.” The triumph of Limor’s mission has recently been brought to life on Netflix with the launch of The Red Sea Diving Resort, a film inspired by the operation.
Limor is retired, but continues to be actively involved in and beyond Israeli society. He founded the first non-orthodox pre-military school for social leadership in Israel, and engages with remote Jewish communities in South America and Africa.
“As a senior citizen, I can stay at home and watch TV, but what gives me strength are the young Jews I meet and work with. These are the future leaders of Israel.
“I look at young Jews around the world and I see that we are all brothers. Colour is not an issue. If we are united, nothing can stop us.”
