Ari Ben Canaan

Ari Ben Canaan is a tall, husky, handsome but cold-eyed, chain-smoking crack agent of Mossad Aliyah Bet. He swims ashore on Cyprus in 1947, charged with leading a headline-catching mass escape of Jewish detainees. Ari is the son of the legendary Zionist leader Barak Ben Canaan (Jossi Rabinsky), born while his father and uncle are serving with the British Army in World War I and after the Turks have tortured his mother Sarah for information. Ari joins the work force at fourteen and learns to use a bullwhip to defend himself. Now twenty-one, Ari is a striking figure, buying swamplands from effendis for new immigrants to reclaim and settle, and he a close friend of the Arab muktar, Taha. The murder of his lover, Dafna, turns Ari into a recluse, but he comes out of it to join the Haganah and become a protygy of Major P...