AROUS – Desert Rhinos | Naftaly Gliksberg

The film “Desert rhinos” is a documentary thriller: For the very first time Israeli Mossad officials grant us access into the heart of the mechanism behind secret operations carried out in an enemy state between the years 1981-1991. The highlight; for half a decade the Israeli intelligence undercover agents ran a diving resort in Sudan. The picturesque village on the Red Sea coast served as a cover story for a secret headquarters of the organization which, using ships and air crafts, smuggled to Israel Ethiopian Jews who fled from their country to Sudan.

The secret operation, in a hostile country, lasted a whole decade and involved Navy Seals, Air Force personnel, a Mossad agent under the guise of a French anthropologist who lived in Khartoum, a Swiss travel agent and Mossad agents (3 of which were women) who operated the resort.

Years later, after receiving a onetime special permit for this film, Mossad agents will reveal their identity and their practice, letting us in on the complex planning process, the triumphs and the failures of this secret operation in an enemy country. The documentary thriller Desert Rhinos will for the first time tell this otherwise utterly covered story from the mouths of those who planned and executed it.