Tag Archives: Mossad

Jew of the Week: Isser Harel

Father of Israeli Intelligence

Israel “Isser” Halperin (1912-2003) was born in what is today Vitebsk, Belarus to a wealthy Jewish-Russian family. His father was a rabbi who had studied at the famed Volozhin Yeshiva, while his mother’s family ran a large vinegar factory. Following the Russian Revolution, they lost their business and the Communists confiscated all of their property. The family eventually fled to Latvia and were robbed along the way, arriving with absolutely nothing. Young Isser realized Jews would never be safe anywhere, and needed their own national home. He soon joined a Zionist youth group, and at 16 decided to make aliyah. The following year, he faked his age to get a British visa. Arriving in Israel, he joined a kibbutz and there met his soon-to-be wife. The couple later opened their own orange-packing company. In 1942, Isser changed his last name to the Hebrew Harel (“Mountain of God”), and joined the pre-IDF Haganah, which was working together with the British auxiliary forces to fight the Nazis. Harel took an officer’s course in intelligence, then joined the Haganah’s “Shai” intelligence unit. He eventually became the main aid to Shai’s chief, as well as the head of its Tel-Aviv office. With the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, Harel co-founded Shin Bet, Israel’s “FBI”, and built it from the ground up. In 1952, he became the director of Mossad, and over the next 11 years at its helm, turned it into one of the world’s most elite intelligence agencies. In 1955, he arranged meetings between Egypt’s Nasser and Ben-Gurion and nearly achieved a peace deal. Meanwhile, he convinced Morocco’s king to let 80,000 Moroccan Jews immigrate to Israel. It was Harel who obtained copies of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s critical 1956 “Secret Speech” denouncing his predecessor Stalin and marking an important shift in the USSR. He shared the speech with the CIA. Harel also exposed a number of Soviet agents. In 1960, Harel planned and led the successful mission to capture Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He later wrote an account of the mission, The House on Garibaldi Street, which became a bestseller and was adapted to a 1979 film of the same name. In 1963, Harel oversaw Operation Damocles which targeted German rocket scientists working for Egypt. When Mossad mail bombs killed innocent bystanders, Harel resigned from his position. He later joined Ben-Gurion’s new political party and was elected to the Knesset in 1969, serving until 1973. After retiring, he turned to writing and published ten popular books, both fiction and non-fiction. It has been said that “No one terrified Israel’s enemies like Isser Harel”.

Important Thoughts on Palestinian Refugees

Words of the Week

The best way to understand antisemitism is to see it as a virus. Viruses attack the human body, but the body itself has an immensely sophisticated defence, the human immune system. How, then, do viruses survive and flourish? By mutating. Antisemitism mutates, and in so doing defeats the immune systems set up by cultures to protect themselves against hatred. There have been three such mutations in the past two thousand years, and we are living through the fourth.
– Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Jew of the Week: Gamliel Cohen

Father of Israeli Espionage

Gamliel Jamil Cohen (1922-2002) was born in Damascus to a religious Syrian-Jewish family, and grew up in the city’s Jewish Quarter. Yearning to live in the Holy Land and inspired by the Zionist vision, he left Damascus at the age of 21 and literally walked to Israel. He joined a kibbutz started by Ashkenazi immigrants. Despite being the odd one who was darker-skinned and spoke no Yiddish, Cohen quickly fell in love with the sense of unity and brotherhood, as well as the important pioneering work of developing the Jewish ancestral homeland. His uniqueness caught the attention of the Palmach, the commando unit of the pre-IDF defence force, the Haganah. The Palmach sought to launch an intelligence unit that could infiltrate Arab governments, and were looking for talented and dedicated Arab Jews. In 1944, Cohen became their first recruit. Together with Iraqi Jew Shimon Somech, they created the first unit of Mista’arvim (recently popularized by the show Fauda). The term itself came from the name of the ancient Mizrachi Jewish communities living in Arab lands that were distinct from, and pre-dated, the Sephardic Jews that joined them after the Spanish Expulsion of 1492. After several years of training, Cohen moved to Beirut in 1948 and set up Israel’s first official intelligence outpost, living undercover as Yussef el-Hamed, a textile shop owner. By this point, his operation was overseen by the newly-formed Mossad. Cohen’s trailblazing work and espionage innovations paved the way for more famous later spies like Shula Cohen and Eli Cohen. In 1954, Cohen married a fellow Syrian Jew who also worked for the Mossad. Together, they moved to Paris undercover as Arabic journalists. Cohen managed to get hired by the Syrian Embassy in Paris, from which he sent critical intelligence to the Israeli government. In 1958, the Cohens moved to Vienna to continue their work as “journalists”. In addition to infiltrating the embassies of Arab states, they also found information on neo-Nazi groups and exposed war criminals in hiding. Cohen retired from active duty in 1964 and went on to train the next generation of Israeli spies. In his last years, he wrote the book Undercover: The Untold Story of the Palmach’s Clandestine Arab Unit. Almost all of Cohen’s work remains classified. He has been called the “father of Israeli espionage”.

Happy Israel Independence Day!

Zionism Before Zionism

Words of the Week

The U.N. did not create Israel. The Jewish state came into being because the Jewish community in what was Mandatory Palestine rebelled against foreign imperialist rule. We did not conquer a foreign land.
– Yitzhak Shamir

Jew of the Week: Yitzhak Shamir

In Memory of a Great Israeli Prime Minister

Yitzhak Yezernitsky (1915-2012) was born in what is now Belarus and spent his youth in Poland. As a young man, he joined Betar, the Zionist organization founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. After a short time studying law at the University of Warsaw, he made aliyah and changed his last name to “Shamir”, after King Solomon’s Biblical stone-cutting tool used to construct Jerusalem’s Holy Temple. Tragically, his entire family that remained back in Europe was killed in the Holocaust. Before his father was murdered by villagers, he reportedly said: “I have a son in the Land of Israel, and he will exact my revenge.” Shamir joined the paramilitary Irgun force to fight off British rule, and later was part of the more aggressive Lehi, or “Stern Gang”. For his activities, he was imprisoned a number of times. (During one imprisonment, he met his future wife Shulamit, who had been arrested by the British for “illegal” immigration, having escaped Nazi-allied Bulgaria by boat.) In 1946, Shamir was arrested again and this time exiled to Eritrea in Africa. He managed to escape by digging a 200-foot tunnel, and found asylum in France. Shamir moved back to Israel immediately after the Declaration of Independence in 1948. He participated in the War of Independence, and later joined the Mossad. One of his main missions was Operation Damocles, to assassinate former Nazi rocket scientists helping Egypt develop missiles. He later resigned from the Mossad due to controversy over that operation. In 1973, he was first elected to the Knesset as a member of Likud. He became Foreign Minister in 1980, and Prime Minister of Israel in 1983. A hard-liner, Shamir opposed the peace treaty with Egypt, blocked a planned 1987 “regional peace conference”, and opposed the 1991 Madrid peace talks. When the Soviet Union began to fall apart in 1989, many Soviet Jews were fleeing to the United States. Shamir stepped in to stop the “insult to Israel” (as he called it) and said Soviet Jews were not refugees, since they had a home in Israel. The US changed its refugee policy and henceforth most Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel. Similarly, when the Ethiopian government collapsed in 1991, Shamir ordered Operation Solomon to airlift 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Shamir steered the country through the difficult years of the First Intifada and the First Gulf War. During his premiership, Israel established formal relations with over a dozen countries. He stepped down as Likud leader in 1993, but continued to sit in the Knesset until 1996. It was Shamir who launched Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career by appointing him to his first post (Israel’s ambassador to the UN). He would later leave Likud due to disputes with his young protégé, and only returned to the party in 2001 to support Ariel Sharon. That year, he also received the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. Shamir left politics entirely in 2004 due to declining health. He wrote two books, including an autobiography. He has been described as one of Israel’s bravest warriors and most influential leaders. His yahrzeit is this Sunday.

Words of the Week

In their war against Israel’s existence, the Arab governments took advantage of the Cold War. They enlisted the military, economic, and political support of the communist world against Israel, and they turned a local, regional conflict into an international powder keg.
– Yitzhak Shamir