"We’ve been dreaming of Jerusalem for many years. We’re the generation that fulfilled that dream. It shows the sacrifice that was there—the risks that were taken—the desire to get to Jerusalem at all costs."
— Shay Yasso, an Israeli born in Ethiopia, rescued by the Mossad as a child

Since October 7, the claim that Israel is a racist state and that Zionism is a racist ideology has become a near-daily lie at anti-Israel rallies. But few recent films have done more to debunk that narrative than the popular Netflix drama The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019), starring Chris Evans and Ben Kingsley. The film dramatizes a remarkable and true story: a covert 1984–1985 operation in which Israeli Mossad agents and the IDF rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in Sudan.

These Ethiopian Jews had fled a devastating famine and a violent Marxist insurgency that left over a million dead in Ethiopia. Sudan, too, was embroiled in civil war. Amid this chaos, Israel launched “Operation Moses”—a daring mission to bring its people home. Between 6,500 and 8,000 Jews were smuggled out of East Africa and flown to freedom in the Jewish state.