Date and time: Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 7 to 9 pm British Summer Time (UTC+1)
Register here [1].
From Ethiopia to Israel – The Lost Biblical Tribe Saved by Spies
Raffi Berg
Lecture will start at 7 pm BST with a Q&A afterward.
We’ll be using Zoom – a Zoom link will be emailed out on the day of the lecture.
A lost biblical tribe, a fake holiday resort and one amazing, audacious plot. BBC journalist and author Raffi Berg tells the remarkable true story of the secret operation that brought the Jews of Ethiopia back to their ancestral home. In a tale which inspired a recent Netflix film, Berg lifts the lid on how Israeli secret agents ran a holiday village on the Red Sea coast of Sudan, posing as diving instructors by day and smuggling Ethiopian Jewish refugees through the desert by night, under the noses of the unwitting Sudanese authorities and the guests who stayed there.
For his new book on the subject, Red Sea Spies, Berg obtained rare access to the agents at the heart of the mission, and the Ethiopians they spirited out. Berg will talk about how he pieced together the story of a modern-day Exodus, and of the people who made it happen.
Red Sea Spies was published in hardback by Icon in February 2020, at a list price of £16.99 in the UK.
Raffi Berg is the Middle East editor of the BBC News website and has extensive experience reporting on Israel and the wider region. His article scratching the surface of this story was the most-read original feature in the history of the site.