The
Mossad short for
HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim (Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations) (
), is the national
intelligence agencyAn intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
of
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
The Mossad is responsible for
intelligence collectionIntelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
and
covert operationA covert operation is a military, intelligence or law enforcement operation that is carried clandestinely and, often, outside of official channels. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation...
s which are suspected to include
targeted killingTargeted killing is the deliberate, specific targeting and killing, by a government or its agents, of a supposed terrorist or of a supposed "unlawful combatant" who is not in that government's custody...
s and
paramilitaryA paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
activities beyond Israel's borders, bringing
JewsThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
to Israel from countries where official
AliyahAliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
agencies are forbidden, and protecting Jewish communities worldwide. It is one of the main entities in the
Israeli Intelligence CommunityThe Israeli Intelligence Community is the designation given to the complex of organizations responsible for intelligence collection, dissemination, and research for the State of Israel...
, along with Aman (
military intelligenceMilitary intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
) and Shin Bet (internal security), but its director reports directly to the
Prime MinisterThe Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful political figure in Israel . The prime minister is the country's chief executive. The official residence of the prime minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem...
.
Executive offices
The largest department of the Mossad is Collections, tasked with many aspects of conducting espionage overseas. Employees in the Collections Department operate under a variety of covers, including diplomatic and unofficial. Their field intelligence officers, called
katsaA katsa is a field intelligence officer of Mossad. He or she collects information and runs agents, similar to the case officer of the CIA.-Operation:...
s (Hebrew: acronym, meaning "Collections Officer"), are similar to
case officersIn intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of agents, principal agents, and agent networks by intelligence officers typically known as case officers.-Human intelligence:...
of the CIA. Thirty to forty operate at a time, mainly in Europe and the Middle East. The Political Action and Liaison Department is responsible for working with allied foreign intelligence services, and nations that have no normal diplomatic relations with Israel. Additionally, the Mossad has a Research Department, tasked with intelligence production, and a Technology Department concerned with the development of tools for Mossad activities.
Mossad was formed on December 13, 1949 as the "Central Institute for Coordination" at the recommendation of Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
to
Reuven ShiloahReuven Shiloah was the first Director of the Mossad from 1949 to 1952. Born in Ottoman ruled Jerusalem as Reuven Zaslanski, he would later shorten his last name to Zaslani and use the codeword Shiloah. From an Orthodox Jewish family and with a rabbi for a father, Shiloah abandoned the religious...
. Ben Gurion wanted a central body to coordinate and improve cooperation between the existing security services – the army's intelligence department (AMAN), the Internal Security Service ("Shin Bet") and the foreign office's "political department". In March 1951, it was reorganized and made a part of the prime minister's office, reporting directly to the prime minister.
Mossad's former motto,
be-tachbūlōt ta`aseh lekhā milchāmāh is a quote from the Bible (Proverbs 24:6): "For by wise guidance you can wage your war" (
NRSVThe New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Bible released in 1989 in the USA. It is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version .There are three editions of the NRSV:...
). Ostrovsky claims this translates, "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War." The motto was recently changed to another Proverbs passage:
be-'éyn tachbūlōt yippol `ām; ū-teshū`āh be-rov yō'éts . This is translated by NRSV as: "Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety."
Directors
- Reuven Shiloah
Reuven Shiloah was the first Director of the Mossad from 1949 to 1952. Born in Ottoman ruled Jerusalem as Reuven Zaslanski, he would later shorten his last name to Zaslani and use the codeword Shiloah. From an Orthodox Jewish family and with a rabbi for a father, Shiloah abandoned the religious...
, 1949–52
- Isser Harel
Isser Harel was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad . In his capacity as Mossad director he oversaw the abduction, and secret transport to Israel, of Holocaust organizer Adolph Eichmann....
, 1953–63
- Meir Amit
Meir Amit was an Israeli politician and general. He served as Director of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968 before entering politics and holding two ministerial positions.-Biography:...
, 1963–68
- Zvi Zamir
Zvi Zamir born Zvicka Zarzevsky was a Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and the Director of the Mossad from 1968 to 1974. Born in Poland, Zamir immigrated with his family to the then British Mandate of Palestine when only seven months old...
, 1968–73
- Yitzhak Hofi
Yitzhak Hofi was a General, member of the Palmach, the head of the Israeli Northern Command and the director of Mossad....
, 1973–82
- Nahum Admoni
Nahum Admoni was the Director of the Mossad from 1982 to 1989. Born in Jerusalem to Polish immigrants, he fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War in the SHAI, the Haganah intelligence branch, and later in the newly created Israeli Defense Force Intelligence...
, 1982–89
- Shabtai Shavit
Shabtai Shavit was the Director General of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996.Shavit first joined the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in the Sayeret Matkal and from 1958 to 1959 he was the Military Governor of the Southern Command...
, 1989–96
- Danny Yatom
Danny Yatom is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Labour. Before that he was a Director of the Mossad security service.-Background:...
, 1996–98
- Efraim Halevy, 1998–2002
- Meir Dagan
Meir Dagan is a former Israel Defense Forces officer and former Director of the Mossad .-Biography:...
, 2002–2011
- Tamir Pardo
Tamir Pardo , is the current Director of the Mossad, taking over the role from Meir Dagan on 1 January 2011. The appointment was announced by Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 29, 2010....
, 2011–present
Argentina
In 1960, the Mossad discovered that the Nazi leader
Adolf EichmannAdolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
was in
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. A team of five Mossad agents slipped into Argentina and through
surveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
, confirmed that he had been living there under the name of Ricardo Klement. He was abducted on May 11, 1960 and taken to a hideout, where the agents put an SS cap on him and compared him to a photograph of Eichmann in SS uniform, confirming that it was Eichmann. He was subsequently smuggled to Israel aboard an
El AlEl Al Israel Airlines Ltd , trading as El Al , is the flag carrier of Israel. It operates scheduled domestic and international services and cargo flights to Europe, North America, Africa and the Far East from its main base in Ben Gurion International Airport...
flight where he was tried and executed. Argentina protested what it considered as the violation of its sovereignty, and the
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Security Council noted that "repetition of acts such as [this] would involve a breach of the principles upon which international order is founded, creating an atmosphere of insecurity and distrust incompatible with the preservation of peace" while also acknowledging that "Eichmann should be brought to appropriate justice for the crimes of which he is accused" and that "this resolution should in no way be interpreted as condoning the odious crimes of which Eichmann is accused." Mossad abandoned a second operation, intended to capture
Josef MengeleJosef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
.
United States
During the 1990s, the Mossad discovered a
Hezbollah agent operating within the United States in order to procure materials needed to manufacture
IEDAn improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
s and other weapons. In a joint operation with U.S. intelligence, the agent was kept under surveillance in hopes that he would betray more Hezbollah operatives, but was eventually arrested.
The Mossad informed the
FBIThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and CIA in August 2001 that based on its intelligence as many as 200 terrorists were slipping into the United States and planning "a major assault on the United States." The Israeli intelligence agency cautioned the FBI that it had picked up indications of a "large-scale target" in the United States and that Americans would be "very vulnerable." However, "It is not known whether U.S. authorities thought the warning to be credible, or whether it contained enough details to allow counter-terrorism teams to come up with a response," The Mossad has a history of credibility issues, before and after 9-11 which continue to influence the perceptions of the reliability or veracity of information provided to U.S., and other intelligence agencies around the world. A month later, terrorists struck at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Uruguay
Mossad assassinated Latvian Nazi collaborator
Herberts CukursHerberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
in 1965.
Austria
The Mossad gathered information on Austrian politician
Jörg HaiderJörg Haider was an Austrian politician. He was Governor of Carinthia on two occasions, the long-time leader of the Austrian Freedom Party and later Chairman of the Alliance for the Future of Austria , a breakaway party from the FPÖ.Haider was controversial within Austria and abroad for comments...
using a
molePeter Sichrovsky is an Austrian journalist, writer, former politician and Member of the European Parliament. He belonged to the Freedom Party of Austria during his two terms in the European Parliament, although he was officially non-attached.- Early life :Peter Sichrovsky was born in Vienna, Austria...
.
Belgium
The Mossad is alleged to be responsible for the killing of Canadian engineer and
ballisticsBallistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...
expert
Gerald BullGerald Vincent Bull was a Canadian engineer who developed long-range artillery. He moved from project to project in his quest to launch economically a satellite using a huge artillery piece, to which end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for the Iraqi government...
on March 22, 1990. He was shot multiple times in the head outside his
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
apartment. Bull was at the time working for
IraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
on the
Project BabylonProject Babylon was a project commissioned by the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to build a series of superguns. The design was based on research from the 1960s Project HARP led by the Canadian artillery expert Gerald Bull...
supergunA supergun is an extraordinarily large artillery piece. This size may be due to a large bore, barrel length or a combination of the two. While early examples tended to have a fairly short range more recent examples sometimes had an extremely high muzzle velocity resulting in a very long...
. Others, including Bull's son, believe that the Mossad is taking credit for an act they did not commit to scare off others who may try to help enemy regimes. The alternative theory is that Bull was killed by the CIA.
IraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
are also candidates for suspicion.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Assisted in air and overland evacuations of Bosnian Jews from war-torn
SarajevoSarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
to Israel in 1992 and 1993.
Cyprus
The killing of
Hussein Al BashirOperation Wrath of God ,This title was an invention of later writers, and was most likely not used by the Mossad itself. also called Operation Bayonet, was a covert operation directed by Israel and the Mossad to assassinate individuals alleged to have been directly or indirectly involved in the...
in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1973.
France
The alleged killing of
Zuheir MohsenZuheir Mohsen was a Palestinian leader of the pro-Syria as-Sa'iqa faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1971 and 1979...
in 1979.
The alleged killing of
Atef BseisoAtef Bseiso was the PLO head of intelligence. He was killed in Paris in 1992. Yasser Arafat blamed the Israeli secret service Mossad for the killing. This involvement, to date, has not been proven...
in Paris in 1992. French police believe that a team of assassins followed Atef Bseiso from Berlin, where that first team connected with another team to close in on him in front of a Left Bank hotel, where he received three head-shots at point blank range.
The killing of Yehia El-Mashad in 1980.
The killing of Dr. Mahmoud Hamshari with an exploding telephone in his Paris apartment in 1972.
The killing of Dr. Basil Al-Kubaissi in Paris in 1973.
The killing of Mohammad Boudia in Paris in 1973.
On April 5, 1979, Mossad agents are believed to have triggered an explosion which destroyed 60 percent of components being built in
ToulouseToulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
for an Iraqi reactor. Although an environmental organization,
Groupe des écologistes français, unheard of before this incident, claimed credit for the blast, most French officials discount the claim. The reactor itself was subsequently destroyed by
an Israeli air strikeOperation Babylon was a surprise Israeli air strike carried out on June 7, 1981, that destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq....
in 1981.
The Mossad allegedly assisted
MoroccoMorocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
's domestic security service in the disappearance of dissident politician
Mehdi Ben BarkaMehdi Ben Barka was a Moroccan politician, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference...
in 1965, in exchange for the safety of Moroccan Jews.
Germany
Operation PlumbatOperation Plumbat was an Israeli covert operation in 1968 to obtain yellowcake to support the Israeli nuclear weapons effort....
(1968) was an operation by
LekemLekem, an acronym for ha-Lishka le-Kishrei Mada , was an Israeli intelligence agency. It collected scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both open and covert sources. It was disbanded in 1986 following the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for espionage on behalf of Israel...
-Mossad to further Israel's nuclear program. The German freighter "Scheersberg A", disappeared on its way from
Antwerp to
GenoaGenoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
along with its cargo of 200 tons of
yellowcakeYellowcake is a kind of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. Yellowcake concentrates are prepared by various extraction and refining methods, depending on the types of ores...
, after supposedly being transferred to an Israeli ship.
The sending of letter bombs during the
Operation Wrath of GodOperation Wrath of God ,This title was an invention of later writers, and was most likely not used by the Mossad itself. also called Operation Bayonet, was a covert operation directed by Israel and the Mossad to assassinate individuals alleged to have been directly or indirectly involved in the...
campaign. Some of these attacks were not fatal. Their purpose might not have been to kill the receiver. Some of the more famous examples of the Mossad letter bombs were those sent to Nazi war-criminal
Alois BrunnerAlois Brunner is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner was Adolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man." As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to...
.
The alleged targeted killing of Dr
Wadie HaddadWadie Haddad , also known as Abu Hani, was a Palestinian doctor of medicine and the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's armed wing...
, using poisoned chocolate, in 1978. The PFLP-EO movement dissolved after his killing.
The Mossad discovered that
Hezbollah had recruited a German national named Steven Smyrek, and that he was travelling to Israel. In an operation conducted by the Mossad, the CIA, the German Internal Security agency
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, and the Israeli Internal Security agency Shin Bet, Smyrek was kept under constant surveillance, and arrested as soon as he landed in Israel.
Italy
The Mossad abducted nuclear whistleblower
Mordechai VanunuMordechai Vanunu ; is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and kidnapped by...
in Rome and smuggled him to Israel in 1986 after
American-IsraeliAmerican Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
Mossad agent
Cheryl BentovCheryl Ben Tov , born Cheryl Hanin in 1960, is an American real estate agent and former Israeli Mossad agent who became well-known in 1986 when, under the name "Cindy", she persuaded former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu to go with her to Rome, where he was captured, drugged, and...
lured him from the United Kingdom.
The killing of Wael Zwaiter.
Malta
The killing of Fathi Shiqaqi. Shiqaqi a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was shot several times in the head in 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in
SliemaTas-Sliema is a city located on the northeast coast of Malta. It is a centre for shopping, restaurants and café life. Tas-Sliema is also a major commercial and residential area and houses several of Malta's most modern hotels. Tas-Sliema, which means 'peace, comfort', was once a quiet fishing...
,
MaltaMalta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
.
Norway
On July 21, 1973, Ahmed Bouchiki, a
MoroccanMorocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
waiter in
Lillehammeris a town and municipality in Oppland county, Norway, globally known for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics. It is part of the traditional region of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. As of May 2011, the population of the town of Lillehammer was...
, Norway, was killed by Mossad agents. He had been mistaken for
Ali Hassan SalamehAli Hassan Salameh was the chief of operations—code name Abu Hassan—for Black September, the organization responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre and other attacks. He was also the founder of Force 17...
, one of the leaders of
Black SeptemberThe Black September Organization was a Palestinian paramilitary group, founded in 1970. It was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes and officials, and fatal shooting of a West German policeman, during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, their most publicized event...
, the
PalestinianThe Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
group responsible for the
Munich massacreThe Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...
, who had been given shelter in Norway. The Mossad agents had used fake
Canadian passportsPassport Canada is an independent operating agency of the Government of Canada with bureaucratic oversight provided through Foreign Affairs Canada. It operates under the auspices of the Canadian Passport Order which defines the agency...
, which angered the Canadian government. Six Mossad agents were arrested, and the incident became known as the
Lillehammer affairThe Lillehammer affair was the killing by Mossad agents of a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in Lillehammer, Norway on July 21, 1973. The Israeli agents had mistaken their victim for Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for Black September...
. Israel subsequently paid compensation to Bouchiki's family.
United Kingdom
In 1986, Mossad used an undercover agent to lure nuclear whistleblower
Mordechai VanunuMordechai Vanunu ; is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and kidnapped by...
from the United Kingdom to Italy where he was abducted and transported to Israel where he was tried for treason because of his role in exposing Israel's nuclear programme.
Mossad assisted the UK Intelligence organisation
MI5The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
following the 7/7 bombings in London. According to the 2007 edition of a book about the Mossad titled “Gideon’s Spies,” shortly after the 7/7 London underground bombings, MI5 gathered evidence that a senior al-Qaeda operative known only by the alias Mustafa travelled in and out of England shortly before the 7/7 bombings. For months, the real identity of Mustafa remained unknown, but in early October 2005, Mossad told MI5 that this person was, in fact, Azhari Husin, a bomb-making expert with Jemaah Islamiyah, the main al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia. Husin studied in Britain and reports claim that he met the main 7/7 bomber, Mohammad Sidique Khan, in late 2001 in a militant training camp in the Philippines (see Late 2001). Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, apparently also told MI5 that Husin helped plan and recruit volunteers for the bombings. Mossad claimed that Husin may have been in London at the time of the bombings, and then fled to al-Qaeda’s principal haven in the tribal area of Pakistan, where he sometimes hid after bombings. Husin was killed in a shootout in Indonesia in November 2005. Later official British government reports about the 7/7 bombings did not mention Husin.
Switzerland
In February 1998, five Mossad agents were caught wiretapping the home of a
Hezbollah agent in a Bern suburb. Four agents were freed, but the fifth was tried, found guilty, sentenced to one year in prison, and following his release was banned from entering Switzerland for five years.
Soviet Union/Russia
The Mossad was involved in outreach to
RefuseniksRefusenik originally referred to citizens of the former Soviet Union who were refused permission to emigrate.Refusenik or refusnik may also refer to:*An Israeli conscientious objector, see Refusal to serve in the Israeli military...
in the Soviet Union during the crackdown on Soviet Jews in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. Mossad helped establish contact with Refuseniks in the USSR, and helped them acquire Jewish religious items, banned by the Soviet government, in addition to passing communications into and out of the USSR.
Ukraine
In February 2011, a Palestinian engineer,
Dirar Abu SeesiDirar Abu Seesi or: Abu Sisi is the Deputy Engineer for the Gaza Strip's sole electrical plant, which provides 25% of Gaza's power, and, according to Israel, also a Hamas weapons engineer...
, was allegedly pulled off a train by Mossad agents enroute to the capital
KievKiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
from Kharkov. He had been planning to apply for Ukrainian citizenship, and reappeared in an Israeli jail only 3 weeks after the incident.
Egypt
- Provision of intelligence for the cutting of communications between Port Said and Cairo in 1956.
- Mossad spy Wolfgang Lotz
Wolfgang Lotz was an Israeli spy during the Cold War.- Biography :Wolfgang Lotz was born at Mannheim, Germany in 1921 to a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish German father. Lotz's father was a theater director who worked alongside his wife, an actress...
, holding West German citizenship, infiltrated Egypt in 1957, and gathered intelligence on Egyptian missile sites, military installations, and industries. He also composed a list of German rocket scientists working for the Egyptian government, and sent some of them letter bombs. After the East German head of state made a state visit to Egypt, the Egyptian government detained thirty West German citizens as a goodwill gesture. Lotz, assuming that he had been discovered, confessed to his cold warThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
espionage activities.
- Provision of intelligence on the Egyptian Air Force
The Egyptian Air Force, or EAF , is the aviation branch of the Egyptian Armed Forces. The EAF is headed by an Air Marshal . Currently, the commander of the Egyptian Air Force is Air Marshal Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed...
for Operation FocusOperation Focus was the opening airstrike by Israel at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967. It is sometimes referred to as "Sinai Air Strike" since the focus was primarily on airfields around the Sinai Peninsula. At 07:45 on June 5, 1967, the Israeli Air Force under Maj. Gen...
, the opening airstrike of the Six-Day WarThe Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
.
- Operation Bulmus 6
Operation Bulmus 6, also known as the Green Island Raid, was a military raid conducted by special operations units of the Israel Defense Forces against an Egyptian early warning radar and ELINT station located on a small island in the Gulf of Suez on the night of July 19, 1969.-Background:Green...
– Intelligence assistance in the Commando Assault on Green Island, EgyptGreen Island or El Jzeera El Khadraa is a small artificial island in the Red Sea at the southern mouth of the Suez Canal.-History:...
during the War of AttritionThe international community and both countries attempted to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The Jarring Mission of the United Nations was supposed to ensure that the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 242 would be observed, but by late 1970 it was clear that this mission had been...
.
- Operation Damocles
Operation Damocles was a covert campaign of the Israeli Mossad in August 1962 targeting German scientists and technicians, formerly employed in Nazi Germany's rocket program, who were developing rockets for Egypt at a military site known as Factory 333...
- A campaign of assassination and intimidation against GermanThe Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
rocket scientists employed by EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in building missiles.
Iran
Prior to the
Iranian RevolutionThe Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
of 1978–79,
SAVAKSAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah on the recommendation of the British Government and with the help of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency SAVAK (Persian: ساواک, short for سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور...
(Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian
secret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
and intelligence service was created under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957 to protect the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing the dissidents (especially Leftists). After security relations between the United States and Iran grew more distant in the early 1960s which led the CIA training team to leave
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Mossad became increasingly active in Iran, "training SAVAK personnel and carrying out a broad variety of joint operations with SAVAK."
The Mossad discovered Iran's covert
nuclear programThe nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The support, encouragement and participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution...
before it officially became known, and conducted espionage operations against nuclear facilities in the country.
A US intelligence official told
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
that Israel orchestrated the defection of Iranian general Ali Reza Askari on February 7, 2007. This has been denied by Israeli spokesman
Mark RegevMark Regev , formerly Mark Freiberg, is an Australian-born Israeli diplomat and media spokesman. He is currently the spokesman for the Prime Minister of Israel and an advisor on foreign press and public affairs, a position he has held since his appointment by the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert...
.
The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
reported that Askari had been a Mossad asset since 2003, and left only when his cover was about to be blown.
Le FigaroLe Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
claimed that the Mossad was possibly behind a blast at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Imam Ali military base, on 12 October 2010. The explosion at the base killed 18 and injured 10 others. The base is believed to store long-range missiles, including the
Shahab-3The Shahab-3 is a medium-range ballistic missile developed by Iran and based on the Nodong-1. The Shahab-3 has a range of ; a MRBM variant can now reach...
, and also has hangars. It is one of Iran's most secure military bases.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi has accused Mossad of assassination plots and killings of Iranian Physicists in 2010. Reports have noted that such information has not yet been evidently proven. Iranian state TV broadcast a stated confession from Majid Jamali-Fash, an Iranian man who claimed to have visited Israel to be trained by the Mossad.
The Mossad is believed to have assassinated
Masoud AlimohammadiMasoud Alimohammadi was an Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist and a distinguished professor of elementary particle physics at Department of Physics of University of Tehran...
,
Ardeshir HosseinpourDr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour was an Iranian junior scientist, assistant professor, and authority on electromagnetism. He was also involved in the Iranian nuclear program. Hosseinpour died mysteriously in early 2007 during his nuclear work at Isfahan.-Career:...
,
Majid ShahriariMajid Shahriari was a nuclear engineer who worked with the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission.He specialized in neutron transport, a phenomenon that lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs. According to The Guardian, he "had no known links to banned nuclear work"...
, and
Darioush RezaeinejadDarioush Rezaeinejad was an Iranian shot dead in east Tehran by gunmen in July 2011 while he and his wife waited for their child outside a kindergarten...
, scientists involved in the
Iranian nuclear programThe nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The support, encouragement and participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution...
. It is also suspected of being behind the attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist
Fereydoon AbbasiFereydoon Abbasi-Davani is an Iranian nuclear scientist and current Vice President and Head of Atomic Energy Organization.-Academic and Early Career:...
.
Iraq
Assistance in the defection and rescuing of the family of
Munir RedfaMunir Redfa was an Iraqi fighter pilot, of ethnic Assyrian origin, who defected to Israel in 1966 by flying a MiG-21 of the Iraqi Air Force. In what is considered as one of the Mossad's most successful operations, Redfa's entire extended family was smuggled safely out of Iraq to Israel...
, an
IraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i pilot who defected and flew his
MiG-21The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 is a supersonic jet fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It was popularly nicknamed "balalaika", from the aircraft's planform-view resemblance to the Russian stringed musical instrument or ołówek by Polish pilots due to...
to Israel in 1966: "Operation Diamond". Redfa's entire family was also successfully smuggled from Iraq to Israel. Previously unknown information about the MiG-21 was subsequently shared with the United States.
Operation Sphinx – Between 1978 and 1981, obtained highly sensitive information about Iraq's Osirak
nuclear reactorA nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
by recruiting an Iraqi nuclear scientist in France.
Operation Bramble Bush IIOperation Bramble Bush was an Israeli plan to assassinate Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1992. It was described in full in December 2003 by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, though news reports had circulated about the plot since January 1999...
– In the 1990s, the Mossad began scouting locations in Iraq where
Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
could be ambushed by
Sayeret MatkalSayeret Matkal is a special forces unit of the Israel Defence Forces , which is subordinated to the intelligence directorate Aman. First and foremost a field intelligence-gathering unit, conducting deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines to obtain strategic intelligence, Sayeret Matkal is also...
commandos inserted into Iraq from
JordanJordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
. The mission was called off due to
Operation Desert FoxThe December 1998 bombing of Iraq was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from December 16–19, 1998 by the United States and United Kingdom...
and the ongoing Israeli-Arab peace process.
Jordan
In what is thought to have been a reprisal action for a Hamas suicide-bombing in Jerusalem on July 30, 1997 that killed 16 Israelis, Benjamin Netanyahu authorised an operation against
Khaled MashalKhaled Mashal, also known as Khaled Mashaal, Khaled Meshaal, and Khalid Mish'al, has been the main leader of Hamas since the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in 2004. In addition, Mashal heads the Syrian branch of the political bureau of Hamas.Mashal was born in Silwad, a village north of...
, the Hamas representative in Jordan. On September 25, 1997, Mashal was injected in the ear with a toxin (thought to have been a derivative of the synthetic opiate
Fentanyl called Levofentanyl). Jordanian authorities apprehended two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists and trapped a further six in the Israeli embassy. In exchange for their release, an Israeli physician had to fly to Amman and deliver an antidote for Mashal. The fallout from the failed killing eventually led to the release of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Hamas movement, and scores of Hamas prisoners. Netanyahu flew into Amman on September 29 to apologize personally to King Hussein, but was met instead by the King's brother, Crown Prince Hassan.
Lebanon
The provision of intelligence and operational assistance in the 1973
Operation Spring of YouthThe 1973 Israeli raid on Lebanon took place on the night of April 9 and early morning of April 10, 1973 when Israel Defense Forces special forces units attacked several Palestine Liberation Organization targets in Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon...
special forces raid on
BeirutBeirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
. The sending of letter bombs to PFLP member
Bassam Abu SharifBassam Abu Sharif is a former senior adviser to the late Yasser Arafat and press officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization ....
. Sharif was severely wounded, but survived.
The
targeted killingTargeted killing is the deliberate, specific targeting and killing, by a government or its agents, of a supposed terrorist or of a supposed "unlawful combatant" who is not in that government's custody...
of
Ali Hassan SalamehAli Hassan Salameh was the chief of operations—code name Abu Hassan—for Black September, the organization responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre and other attacks. He was also the founder of Force 17...
, the leader of
Black SeptemberThe expression Black September may refer to:* Black September in Jordan, the conflict between Palestinian guerrilla organizations and King Hussein of Jordan that began in September 1970 and ended in July 1971 with the expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon....
, on January 22, 1979 in
BeirutBeirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
by a car bomb.
The killing of
Ghassan KanafaniGhassan Kanafani was a Palestinian writer and a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, allegedly by the Mossad.- Early years :Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in 1936 in the then Acre , British Mandate of Palestine...
, also by a car bomb, in 1972.
Providing intelligence for the killing of
Abbas al-MusawiAbbas al-Musawi was an influential Shia cleric and co-founder and Secretary General of Hezbollah. He was killed by Israeli forces in 1992.Al-Musawi was born in the village of al-Nabi Shayth in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon....
, secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut in 1992.
Allegedly killed
Jihad Ahmed JibrilMohammed Jihad Ahmed Jibril was the son of Ahmed Jibril, founder of the PFLP-GC. He was assassinated in Beirut on May 20, 2002 at the age of 38. Jihad Ahmed Jibril was born in Damascus, Syria in 1964; he attended high school at ثانوية عز الدين التنوخي and graduated in May of 1982. Mr...
, the leader of the military wing of the PFLP-GC, in Beirut in 2002.
Allegedly killed
Ghaleb AwwaliGhaleb Awwali was a senior Hezbollah official who was assassinated in a car bombing in Beirut, Lebanon on July 19, 2004. Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attack. However, credit was claimed by a previously unheard of Sunni group called Jund Ash Sham. Ghaleb Awwali has been called a martyr of...
, a senior Hezbollah official, in Beirut in 2004.
Alllegedly killed
Mahmoud al-MajzoubMahmoud al-Majzoub also known as Abu Hamza was a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was wounded in a car bomb blast in Sidon on May 25, 2006 and died the next day. His brother Nidal al-Majzoub also died in the explosion...
, a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in Sidon in 2006.
The Mossad was suspected of establishing a large spy network in Lebanon, recruited from
DruzeThe Druze are an esoteric, monotheistic religious community, found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, which emerged during the 11th century from Ismailism. The Druze have an eclectic set of beliefs that incorporate several elements from Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism...
,
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, and
Sunni MuslimSunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....
communities, and officials in the Lebanese government, to spy on
Hezbollah and its Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisors. Some have allegedly been active since the
1982 Lebanon WarThe 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
. In 2009, Lebanese Security Services supported by Hezbollah's intelligence unit, and working in collaboration with
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
,
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, and possibly Russia, launched a major crackdown which resulted in the arrests of around 100 alleged spies "working for Israel". Previously, in 2006, the Lebanese army uncovered a network that allegedly assassinated several Lebanese and Palestinian leaders on behalf of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Pakistan
In a September 2003 news article, it was alleged by Rediff News that General Pervez Musharaf, the then-President of Pakistan, decided to establish a clandestine relationship between Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Mossad via officers of the two services posted at their embassies in Washington, DC.
In January 2009 it was alleged by Indian news agencies that Mossad officers lead a rescue mission to extract an Indian former member of parliament and an Israeli cultural attache who where arrested on the charges of producing methamphetamine.
Syria
Eli CohenEli Cohen was an Israeli spy. He is best known for his work in Syria, where he developed close relationships with the political and military hierarchy and became the Chief Adviser to the Minister of Defense. He was eventually exposed and executed in Syria in 1965...
, a spy for the Mossad, infiltrated the highest echelons of the Syrian government, was a close friend of the Syrian President, and was considered for the post of Minister of Defense. He gave his Mossad handlers a complete plan of the Syrian defenses on the
Golan Heights, the Syrian Armed Forces order of battle, and a complete list of the Syrian military's weapons inventory. He also ordered the planting of trees by every Syrian fortified position under the pretext of shading soldiers, but the trees actually served as targeting markers for the Israel Defense Forces. He was discovered by Syrian and Soviet intelligence, tried in secret, and executed in 1965. His information played a crucial role during the Six Day War.
The alleged killing of
Izz El-Deen Sheikh KhalilIzz El-Deen Sobhi Sheikh Khalil , from the Shajaiyeh district of Gaza City, presently a Hamas stronghold, was a senior member of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas when he was killed in an automobile booby trap on September 26, 2004, in the al-Zahera district of southern...
, a senior member of the military wing of
HamasHamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
, in an automobile booby trap in September 2004 in
DamascusDamascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
.
The alleged killing of
Muhammad SuleimanMuhammad Suleiman was a general and Special Presidential Advisor for Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons to Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad...
, the alleged head of Syria's nuclear program, in 2008. Suleiman was killed by a sniper firing from a boat while on a beach in Tartus.
The alleged killing of Imad Mughniyah, a senior leader of Hezbollah complicit in the
1983 United States embassy bombingThe 1983 U.S. embassy bombing was a suicide bombing against the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on April 18, 1983 that killed over 60 people, mostly embassy staff members and United States Marines and sailors. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is...
, with an exploding
headrestIn an automobile, head restraints are attached or integrated into the top of the seats in each seating position to limit the rearward movement of an adult occupant's head relative to his torso in a crash, so as to reduce the danger of whiplash or other injury to the cervical vertebrae...
in Damascus in 2008.
United Arab Emirates
The Mossad is suspected of killing
Mahmoud al-MabhouhMahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh was a senior Hamas military commander and one of the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military affiliate of Hamas...
, a senior Hamas military commander, in January 2010 at
DubaiDubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
,
United Arab EmiratesThe United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...
. The team which carried out the killing is estimated, on the basis of
CCTVClosed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
and other evidence, to have consisted of at least 26 agents traveling on bogus passports. The operatives entered al-Mabhouh's hotel room, where Mabhouh was subjected to electric shocks and interrogated. The door to his room was reported to have been locked from the inside. Although the UAE police and Hamas have declared Israel responsible for the killing, no direct evidence linking Mossad to the crime has been found. The agents' bogus passports included six British passports, cloned from those of real British nationals resident in Israel and suspected by Dubai, five Irish passports, apparently forged from those of living individuals, forged Australian passports that raised fears of reprisal against innocent victims of identity theft, a genuine German passport and a false French passport. Emirati police say they have fingerprint and DNA evidence of some of the attackers, as well as retinal scans of 11 suspects recorded at Dubai airport. Dubai's police chief has said "I am now completely sure that it was Mossad," adding: "I have presented the (Dubai) prosecutor with a request for the arrest of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and the head of Mossad," for the murder.
Morocco
In September 1956, the Mossad established a secretive network in
MoroccoMorocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
to smuggle Moroccan Jews to Israel after a ban on immigration to Israel was imposed.
In early 1991, two Mossad operatives infiltrated the Moroccan port of
CasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
and planted a tracking device on the freighter
Al-Yarmouk, which was carrying a cargo of
North KoreaThe Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
n missiles bound for
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
. The ship was to be sunk by the
Israeli Air ForceThe Israeli Air Force is the air force of the State of Israel and the aerial arm of the Israel Defense Forces. It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence...
, but the mission was later called off by Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
.
Tunisia
The 1988 killing of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad).
The alleged killing of
Salah KhalafSalah Mesbah Khalaf , also known as Abu Iyad was deputy chief and head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the second most senior official of Fatah after Yasser Arafat....
in 1991.
Uganda
For
Operation EntebbeOperation Entebbe was a counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Special Forces of the Israel Defense Forces at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976. A week earlier, on 27 June, an Air France plane with 248 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists and...
in 1976, Mossad provided intelligence regarding
Entebbe International AirportEntebbe International Airport is the principal international airport of Uganda.-Location:It is located near the town of Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and about from the capital, Kampala...
and extensively interviewed hostages who had been released.
South Africa
After the Mossad discovered the presence of two
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian agents in
JohannesburgJohannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
on a mission to procure advanced weapons systems from
DenelDenel Ltd is a South African state owned aerospace and defence technology conglomerate established in 1991. It was created when the manufacturing subsidiaries of Armscor were split off in order for Armscor to become the procurement agency for South African Defence Force , now known as the South...
, a Mossad agent was deployed, and met up with a local Jewish contact. Posing as South African intelligence, they abducted the Iranians, drove them to a warehouse, and beat and intimidated them before forcing them to leave the country.
Sudan
After the 1994 AMIA bombing, the Mossad began gathering intelligence for a raid by Israeli Special Forces on the
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian embassy in
KhartoumKhartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
as retaliation. The operation was called off due to fears that another attack against worldwide Jewish communities might take place as revenge. The Mossad also assisted in
Operation MosesOperation Moses refers to the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan during a famine in 1984...
, the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel from a famine-ridden region of Sudan in 1984, also maintaining a relationship with the Ethiopian government.
Zimbabwe
The Mossad secretly evacuated Zimbabwean Jews out of the country due to fears of persecution by the Zimbabwean government, which was allied with the
Palestine Liberation OrganizationThe Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
and
LibyaLibya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. The Mossad infiltrated the Zimbabwean government's
Central Intelligence OrganizationThe Central Intelligence Organisation is the national intelligence agency or "secret police" of Zimbabwe.-History:The CIO was formed in Rhodesia on the instructions of Prime Minister Winston Field in 1963 at the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and took over from the...
, in response to the supply of
uraniumUranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
from the
CongoThe Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
via Zimbabwe to
North KoreaThe Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, and
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
.
New Zealand
In July 2004, New Zealand imposed
diplomatic sanctionsInternational sanctions are actions taken by countries against others for political reasons, either unilaterally or multilaterally.There are several types of sanctions....
on Israel over an
incidentOn 15 July 2004, New Zealand imposed diplomatic sanctions against Israel and suspended high-level contacts between the two countries in July 2004 after two Israeli citizens, Uriel Zosha Kelman and Eli Cara, were convicted of passport fraud in Auckland...
in which two Australian based Israelis, Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, who were allegedly working for Mossad, attempted to fraudulently obtain
New Zealand passportNew Zealand passports are issued to New Zealand citizens for the purpose of international travel. The Department of Internal Affairs is responsible for issuing New Zealand passports.-History:...
s by claiming the identity of a severely disabled man. Israeli Foreign Minister
Silvan Shalom' , born 4 October 1958) is an Israeli politician, member of the Knesset for Likud and the country's Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Development. He previously served as the country's Foreign Minister and Finance Minister.-Biography:...
later apologized to New Zealand for their actions. New Zealand cancelled several other passports believed to have been obtained by Israeli agents. Both Kelman and Cara served half of their six-month sentences and, upon release, were
deportedDeportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
to Israel. Two others, an Israeli, Ze'ev Barkan, and a New Zealander, David Reznick, are believed to have been the third and fourth men involved in the passport affair but they both managed to leave New Zealand before being apprehended.
Relations with other agencies
The Mossad has experienced a mixed relationship with Western intelligence agencies. A secret addendum was promised to
Anwar SadatMuhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...
by the CIA if he agreed to the terms of the
Camp David AccordsThe Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following thirteen days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States...
. The
CIAThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
would supply Sadat with all of Israel's military secrets, as part of a covert intelligence liaison between Washington and Cairo. According to a former US army officer:
We gave Sadat everything. Satellite photos, intercepts, the location of Israel's nuclear force, everything he wanted. As it turned out, the Israelis discovered that we had bribed Sadat, but Begin' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
told everyone to keep their mouths shut. America was the only ally Israel had left. Still, betraying all of Israel's secrets was a pretty shitty thing for us to do.
Starting in 1979, the CIA started sharing intelligence provided by the Mossad with
Saudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. The CIA was "pouring intelligence about Israel into the Saudi's military headquarters." The Saudis lacked the skills to interpret and analyze most of the Israeli intelligence, so the CIA would provide the expertise, and in exchange, the Saudis would share US supplied-information about Israel's weak points with other Arab nations.
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, the French government and
militaryThe French Armed Forces encompass the French Army, the French Navy, the French Air Force and the National Gendarmerie. The President of the Republic heads the armed forces, with the title "chef des armées" . The President is the supreme authority for military matters and is the sole official who...
terminated all weapons support for Israel. Despite the ban, the Mossad was able to convince French intelligence to force their French contractors to finish construction on
Israel's nuclear weaponsIsrael is widely believed to be the sixth country in the world to have developed nuclear weapons and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea...
project. Prior to the ban, the Mossad uncovered
Charles De GaulleCharles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's role in recruiting Fascist fugitives as French agents to fight the Communists in the Balkans. The Mossad revealed that several prominent members of de Gaulle's administration had been Nazi collaborators, among them
André François-PoncetAndré François-Poncet was a French politician and diplomat whose post as ambassador to Germany allowed him to witness first-hand the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and the Nazi regime's preparations for war.François-Poncet was the son of a counselor of the Court of Appeals in...
. The Israelis threatened to expose de Gaulle if he were to implement the weapons ban. No matter how furious French leaders became at Israel, their military intelligence continued to supervise the construction of the plutonium factory at
DimonaDimona is an Israeli city in the Negev desert, to the south of Beersheba and west of the Dead Sea above the Arava valley in the Southern District of Israel. Its population at the end of 2007 was 33,600.-History:...
.
During the Eisenhower administration, CIA director
Allen Welsh DullesAllen Welsh Dulles was an American diplomat, lawyer, banker, and public official who became the first civilian and the longest-serving Director of Central Intelligence and a member of the Warren Commission...
was responsible for recruiting Nazi war criminals as intelligence agents and sponsored their immigration to the United States.
United States Secretary of StateThe United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
John Foster DullesJohn Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
and Allen Welsh Dulles actively betrayed British, French and Israeli military secrets to the Arab nations in order to gain the dominant role in the Middle East. In response to Eisenhower's policies, the Mossad temporarily abandoned intelligence sharing with the United States and switched allegiances to
MI6The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
and French intelligence.
See also
- Kidon
Kidon is the name of a department within Israel's Mossad that is allegedly responsible for assassination and kidnapping. Kidon is suspected of being behind a number of assassinations in the Operation Wrath of God campaign carried out by Israel after the 1972 Munich massacre...
- A department within Mossad that is allegedly responsible for assassinationTo carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
and kidnappingIn criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
.
- Shin Bet - Israel's internal security service
- Aman - Israeli's military intelligence agency
- Israeli Special Forces Units
Sayeret , literally means "reconnaissance unit" in the Israel Defense Forces . In practice, these units specialize in commando and other special forces roles, in addition to reconnaissance...
- Yamam
The Yamam ) is an elite Border police, not civilian Police counter-terrorism unit in Israel. The Yamam is capable of both hostage-rescue operations and offensive take-over raids against targets in civilian areas...
- Israel's elite civilian SWAT Unit
- Duvdevan Unit
Duvdevan is an elite special forces unit within the Israel Defense Forces, directly subordinate to the West Bank Division and the Paratroopers Brigade. Duvdevan are particularly noted for conducting undercover operations against militants in urban areas...
- Israel's undercover strike unit
- Foreign relations of the Vatican
- The Spy Machine
The Spy Machine was a documentary special about the work of the Mossad, made by Open Media and Israfilm and first broadcast by Channel 4 in May 1998...
- List of Israeli assassinations
- Eli Cohen
Eli Cohen was an Israeli spy. He is best known for his work in Syria, where he developed close relationships with the political and military hierarchy and became the Chief Adviser to the Minister of Defense. He was eventually exposed and executed in Syria in 1965...
- Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
Further reading
- Ben-Menashe, Ari
Ari Ben-Menashe is the author of Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network, a book purporting to describe his involvement in Iran-Contra and other intelligence operations. An Iraqi Jew who was educated in Israel, he is a former Israeli government employee, and has said that he...
. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1992. ISBN 1-879823-01-2. .
- Black, Ian and Benny Morris. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services
Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services is a 1991 book written by Ian Black and Benny Morris about the history of the Israeli intelligence services from the period of the Yishuv to the end of the 1980s...
. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. ISBN 9780802132864. .
- Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services: A Survey. Washington, D.C., 1979. (Included in Documents from the US Espionage Den. Tehran: Center for the Publication of the US Espionage Den's Documents, 1982.)
- Jonas, George. Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team
Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team is a 1984 book by George Jonas describing part of Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli assassination campaign launched after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre...
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. ISBN 0-67-150611-0. .
- Ostrovsky, Victor
Victor John Ostrovsky is an author, artist and former katsa for the Israeli Mossad . He authored two non-fiction books about his service with the Mossad: By Way of Deception, a New York Times No. 1 bestseller in 1990, and The Other Side of Deception several years later...
. By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. ISBN 0-9717595-0-2. .
- Ostrovsky, Victor. The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. ISBN 0060176350. .
- Parsi, Rita. Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-300-12057-5, ISBN 0300143117. .
- Eric Frattini
Eric Frattini is a Spanish essayist, novelist, journalist, college professor, political analyst, television screenwriter, and lecturer.- Works :...
. Mossad, los verdugos del Kidon. Madrid: Atanor Ediciones, 2011. ISBN 978-84-938718-6-4
External links