Mossad’s operations caught on films
A STUNNING real-life operation by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the 1980s that saw agents set up a fake diving resort in Sudan to rescue Ethiopian Jews is due to become a Hollywood film.
The Red Sea Diving Resort, set for a 2019 release, is filmed in South Africa and Namibia by Israeli director Gideon Raff.
The movie tells the story of Operation Brothers, carried out by the Mossad between 1981 and 1985, where some 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were exfiltrated from Sudan to Israel by Mossad agents who had set up a fake diving resort on the Red Sea for the operation.
But this is not the only movie inspired by Mossad operations.
Here is a list of other such movies:
The Angel (2018) Israeli director Ariel Vromen’s film tells the story of Ashraf Marwan, son-in-law of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and adviser to his successor Anwar Sadat.
Marwan was suspected of being a double agent who alerted the Mossad to an imminent attack on the eve of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
The film was released on Netflix on Sept 14.
Operation Finale (2018) A number of films have been made on the hunt for Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was taken from Argentina by the Mossad while disguised as a flight attendant for Israeli airline El Al.
The film, released on Aug 29, stars Ben Kingsley in the role of Eichmann, who was hanged in 1962.
The Debt (2010) This British-American adaptation by John Madden of the 2007 Israeli alternate history-thriller film Ha-Hov tells the story of three Mossad agents attempting to exfiltrate a former Nazi.
It is loosely based on the hunt for Eichmann and another Nazi war criminal, Josef Mengele, who died without being captured.
It stars Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain.
Live and Become (2005) This French-Israeli film tells the story of a boy who is disguised as a Jew by his Ethiopian Christian mother in hopes of saving her son.
It shows his arrival in Israel, living a new culture – Judaism, and facing racism as well as conflicts with the Palestinians.
Munich (2005) This Steven Spielberg film is perhaps the best-known film on the Mossad about Operation Wrath of God, which carried out the assassinations of 11 Palestinians.
This was in retaliation for the Munich Massacre, the hostage-taking and murder of the same number of Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 summer games.
Nominated in five Oscar categories, the film brought in more than US$130 million (RM538.4 million) at the box office.
The Patriots (1994) This is French director Eric Rochant’s film on a young French Jew recruited by Israeli intelligence.
His missions are loosely based on Operation Opera, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, as well as the story of former Jewish-American spy Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard was jailed for 30 years for having provided Israel with thousands of documents on US spying activities, mainly in Arab countries. – AFPRelaxnews