Why did Israeli spies build a fake beach resort?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Arous was an idyllic holiday resort on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, a slice of paradise offering an escape to up to 30 scuba-diving tourists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But it held a secret, one so outlandish it’s just been made into a Netflix movie. The BBC news website’s Middle East Editor Raffi Berg tells us a tale of espionage, exodus and wind-surfing. Producer: Harriet Noble Mixed by Weidong Lin Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.4	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.0	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.8	Every day we ask one big question about one big story.
0:15.0	Today why did Israeli spies build a fake beach resort?
0:27.0	Well, it's called A Roos, and it's called it's called Arous and it's on the Red Sea coast of Sudan which is northern Africa essentially.
0:40.0	Rafi Berg is the BBC News website Middle East editor and for years he's been
0:45.4	researching a tale that draws in a team of Israeli undercover agents, one of the
0:49.9	lost tribes of Judaism and a bunch of scuba diving tourists.
0:54.4	All this in the midst of an African civil war.
1:00.0	It was a most beautiful place.
1:01.8	People have described it as being idyllic.
1:05.0	These are people who stayed there as a mirage
1:08.2	in the middle of nowhere.
1:09.7	If you can picture it, a beautiful holiday resort sandwiched between the chain of mountains known as the
1:17.6	Red Sea hills on one side and facing out to the Red Sea which was absolutely beautiful like crystal clear and the
1:26.9	Red Sea was famous in those days it had been popularized by deep sea divers like
1:32.3	Jacques Cousteau. It was teeming with all rich varieties of fish.
1:37.0	People hadn't visited this particular spot before because it was pretty much in the middle of the wilderness.
1:44.0	So you have a beautiful place to stay,
1:48.0	Western standards, and it attracted guests from all over the world.
1:53.0	What do it look like?
	...

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