TJS S3E26 Eli Cohen, hero of Israel

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Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world, said David Ben-Gurion, the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism. Well, I sure know how to work, and I like to bring my intellect to bear on every fight in which I engage, because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. episode 26 ellie cohen hero of israel you know it's a truism that there are stories that just tell themselves and there are people who seem to have been born for the role that they play we're about to meet one of them in just a minute but before we do i want to offer a bit of a frame for what's about to follow because we've visited many times in the jewish story this question of the great man theory of history.

This idea that there's an argument between historians over whether one person ever really matters on the historical scale. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that single actions never matter. After all, Gavrilo Princip managed to touch off a war which killed 20 million people with a single bullet. But if he'd never shot Archduke Ferdinand, wouldn't World War I have happened anyway? I mean, Princip didn't create the social, political, and economic forces that transformed Ferdinand's death into a global conflict. And perhaps something would have set them off anyway, even without the shot he fired. In the age of Netflix, there are more people today who know the story of Elie Cohen than surely ever were.

Or at least they think they know it. And part of that story has always been framing him as someone who saved the nation in the lead-up to the War of 1967. I'm not going to undermine that idea, but we will touch on the various professional opinions about whether it's completely true or not toward the end. What interests me right now is the fact that we all want someone like Eliot Cohen to be a hero. because historians might argue about whether Napoleon was the product of the revolution or whether he actually himself personally produced a new Europe or whether any individual is really an essential element in the face of these massive social forces. But the average person really just wants a hero, not to save them on the historical stage, but to inspire them in their own life.

And that brings me to another point. We saw last episode how Israeli identity is in major flux in the 50s and 60s. In that episode, I was interested in unfolding a bit about how the breathing room gained by Israel after the Sinai campaign actually opened up a space for reflection about where we were and what we'd done to get there, and of course, what lay ahead. In many ways, as soon as the existential threat is removed for even the slightest moment from the young state of Israel, all the questions of Jewish history come pouring in. And that process, that reflection and refinement of the identity which emerges from it, isn't going to stop. But together with it, we're going to find this incredible spirit of heroism, which has not faded, and in fact has guided the Jewish people at this point in our story for millennia.

It's a powerful mixture of personality that seeks growth, only found through personal challenge and does so on behalf of the nation. Now, I've waded through a lot of conflicting histories to put together the story you're about to hear. And if there's one thing I can say for sure is that Eli Cohen embodies a critical element of Israeli identity. Dare I say a critical element of Jewish identity because he was a hero. spying as Rudyard Kipling says in his novel Kim is about living with many identities and Eli Cohen came to know this well before his end he himself was actually born in Alexandria in Egypt in 1924 but his father originated in Aleppo Syria a coincidence which would prove a rich inheritance for his son in the years of head growing up Eli's family were both religiously observant and Zionists.

Along with the rest of the Egyptian Jewish community, they watched with pride and horror the hanging of Eliyahu Beit Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim for the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyn, British minister resident of the Middle East. One can only imagine that watching two young Jews with his own name go to the gallows for the sake of the Jewish people made a very deep impression on the 20-year-old Cohen. In general, life in Egypt was never easy for the Jews. I mean, after all, go read the Torah. But in 1947, Eli tried to enlist in the Egyptian army, rather than pay the head tax, which was expected of a young Jew in his day, and he was rejected on the grounds of questionable loyalty. Seeking some outlet, he then enrolled in university, but was soon forced to leave due to harassment by the Muslim Brotherhood, which had a strong presence on the campus.

But things really began to deteriorate in the wake of Israel's victory in the 1948 War of Independence. There was no large-scale expulsion of Jews of Egypt, as occurred in other Arab lands, but there was rioting, confiscation, and imprisonment became increasingly common without just cause. Many Jews at this point, including Eli's family, left Egypt, but he remained. The Free Officers' Revolution of 1952, which eventually brought Nasser to power, you can go back to episode 13 of this season to hear that story, brought with it yet another wave of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist persecution. This time, Eli himself was arrested on suspicion of engaging in Zionist activities, but released almost immediately, which apparently was a mistake on the part of the Egyptian police, because he was in deep with espionage even then.

we've spoken at length about the 1954-55 false flag operation Susanna, right, that was the attempt to destroy the Egyptian relationship with western powers in hopes of keeping Britain on the Suez Canal whose failure blew up into the Lovon Affair which actually undermined an Israeli government, you can actually go back to episodes 14 and 24 of this season if you want the full story once again, two Jews paid with their lives on the Egyptian gallows. This time, Eli wasn't just a bystander. He was in the midst of it. He was, in fact, aiding that Israeli commando unit from within the local community. And fortunately for him, despite the suspicions of the police, they were unable to establish any link between Eli and the accused.

Eli's Jewish identity came to an end at last, at least in its full sense, in the wake of the Sinai campaign of 1956. Now, whatever you deem to be the political results of the war, the outcome for the Jews of Egypt was almost universally negative. In the immediate aftermath of the trilateral invasion by Branton, France, and Israel, Nasser issued a proclamation stating that all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state, and promised that they would soon be expelled. As a result, some 25,000 Jews, almost half of the community, left for Israel, Europe, and the U.S. and South America. The rest waited to be expelled until after the Six-Day War. In order to quiet the international community, thousands were forced to sign declarations that they were actually leaving voluntarily and that they had agreed to the entire confiscation of their assets.

A thousand more were in prison just to ensure they went quietly. Eli was actually amongst those who were forcibly deported to Italy. But for a Jew and a Zionist, leaving Egypt's not always such a bad thing. In Naples, Eli contracted the Jewish agency, and soon he was on a boat to Israel. It was time to go home, at least for a little while. The first stop in Israel for Eli was the coastal city of Bat Yam, where his parents had settled when they'd left not so many years before. Now, I can imagine that any 32-year-old would have found it more than a bit difficult to move back in with his parents. However, Eli faced a deeper challenge. his mind was still on the underground life. His youngest brother Avram tells the story that one time, soon after Ellie arrived and began sharing his bedroom, Avram walked into the room unannounced.

Ellie hastily shoved some papers he was reading into the suitcase lying on his bed, and after a few minutes of small talk, he got up and left. Now, what younger brother could resist such a temptation? Looking to see that Ellie was really gone, and taking every precaution to leave everything just as he'd found it, Avram opened the case and went through Ellie's things. What he found is irrelevant. What matters was Ellie's reaction upon his return only a half hour later. Taking one glance around the room as Susie entered, he turned to Avram and asked if he'd enjoyed his tour of Ellie's stuff. The younger brother was too astonished to lie and deny what he'd done. He simply asked Ellie how he knew. The answer was a small thread that Ellie had left on the lid of the case, which was now lying on the floor.

This is not the behavior of an average person. And indeed, Eli immediately set out to find a job upon his arrival in Israel, and a very specific job. He wanted to work in the intelligence services. With his experiences in Egypt, his master of French, Arabic, and Hebrew, it seemed he was a shoe-in. The first inquiries led Eli to the Egyptian's immigrant club in Tel Aviv, and where, to his good fortune, he found it under the direction of one Sermano, who had studied with him back in the Jewish school of Alexandria. Sermano, in turn, gave Ellie the address of an office on Allenby Street in downtown Tel Aviv. What intelligence agency he arrived at is actually a question which is an argument between the chroniclers of his story.

You can read all the books and decide for yourself. And that's really probably itself a product of the fact that in 1957, all these agencies were pretty hard to tell apart. They weren't really formal intelligence organizations. They were more like clubs that had been formed by the men who created them out of their underground and wartime relationships. So either way, by all accounts, Eli wasn't shy. He boasted of his experience in Alexandria, of his language skills, and most importantly, he declared loud and clear his willingness to work in any Arab land to which he might be sent. There's again deep disagreement over why Eli failed, and in fact ended up behind a desk after his first encounter with the intelligence services.

Some say there was just simply no need for his work at that moment. He may have been the right man, but not at the right time. Others claim it was a reflection of Ashkenazi prejudice. It's the ethnic irony of his life, they call it, that the same characteristic which made Eli useful to the intelligence services was exactly what kept his peers on Israel's margins. being an Arabic speaking Jew in those years was useful if you were a spy in real life it was a handicap to be overcome there a third camp which actually say there was a strain of recklessness which showed right away in Eli behavior and that led to his initial rejection and perhaps his ultimate downfall. No matter what side you take, behind the desk is indeed where he landed, drawing 170 pounds a month, together with other Jews from Egypt and Iraq, translating Arabic documents.

That was a pretty good living, by the way, in Israel in 1957, but perhaps because of that, it simply couldn't last. In less than a year, he and the rest of the team were let go. It was a sign of Eli's character and his abilities that he soon found another job, this time as an accountant in the supply department of Hamashbir Hamer Kazi. He was inspecting the retail shops which sold the Mer Mashbir, the cooperatives, goods, which, by the way, at that point in Israeli history, was more or less everything you could get in Israel at the time. I mean, this is true socialism. Eli's job hut was no doubt aided by his younger brother, Maurice. Maurice had fled Egypt before him with the rest of the family, and having been in the country longer, had mastered the life of Israeli much more thoroughly than his older brother.

By 1957, he was working as a postmaster, he was a reserve officer in the IDF, and he was married. Before too long, in fact, Maurice would be recruited himself into the intelligence services without Eli ever knowing. At a certain point, as we'll see, his job as a Mossad postman would see Eli's own coded messages passing through his very hands. But the most important thing to Eli at this point of the story was the fact that Maurice, like I said, though younger brother, was already married, because it was through Maurice and his wife that Eli would meet his bride-to-be, Nadja Majald. Nadja Majald was born into a wealthy, cultured family in Baghdad, one of eight children. According to her own account, the family's connection to Israel began with her oldest brother, Sami, who in Baghdad led an underground communist group which was active against the Iraqi regime.

The Iraqi secret police were pursuing him, and he actually was sentenced to death in absentia after he escaped the Iran and then Israel in 1949. An interesting side note, Nadja went on to marry, of course, the most famous spy in Israeli history, while Sami, now known as Sami Michael, is currently one of Israel's best-known authors and left-wing activists. He kept up his communist activities upon arrival in Israel, and as we saw last episode, the Israeli Communist Party was the real primary seedbed for the development of Palestinian nationalism. All his books are considered controversial, because in the beginning he wrote about the aspirations and struggles of both Jews and Arabs side by side, and Sami was among the first in Israel of any cultural stature to call for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

But Nadia wasn't so politicized. She and her remaining family were among the first waves of Iraqi Jews who fled Iraq and were really expelled in 1951. Overnight, she went from the affluent life of gardeners and nannies into the hard poverty of the Ma'abarot, the transit camps. Go back to episode four of this season if you don't recall how difficult that was. But contrary to many of the stories told about the Mabarot, some of which we touched on there, Nadia's account of her life at this point is overwhelmingly positive. As she says, we lived there for six years, but the joy in our hearts was great because it was our state. It was our people, and material matters did not make a difference. It was a positivity that would remain consistent in the years ahead.

As I said, Ellie's brother Maurice was the first to make the link between them. As the story goes, Maurice's wife asked him to pick up some dresses at a shop owned by her sister Hela, and as he was waiting, a pretty young woman entered the shop. After giving him the once-over, the young woman asked Hela in Arabic, When's your acquaintance of this nice-looking guy? Is he Ashkenazi? Hela answered with pride that Maurice was her brother-in-law, and that, being an Egyptian, he spoke Arabic as well. The young woman blushed in embarrassment, but nonetheless, she turned to Maurice and said, if you were a bachelor, I could introduce you to my sister Nadia. Maurice replied with a smile, if your sister Nadia is as pretty as you, I will gladly arrange for her to meet my brother.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Ellie and Nadia were married in a modest ceremony in Tel Aviv in a synagogue in 1959 while he was working as an accountant for the Mashbir. It was a middle-class existence which differed from many of their fellow immigrants from Arab-speaking nations. In fact, the summer they got married, 1959, saw the outbreak of the Wadi Salib riots, the first racial violence to mar Jewish society in Israel. They began on July 9th, when police confronted a resident of Wadi Salib, a poor neighborhood in downtown Haifa, whose Arab residents had fled in 1948 and was now populated by North African immigrants. According to the police reports, Yaakov El-Karif was drunk and disturbing the peace, and when he began behaving wildly and hurling empty bottles that the police sent to arrest him, he was shot and seriously wounded.

What resulted should be familiar to anyone who reads the news today. Residents surrounded the police vehicle and dragged an officer out of it, and he was saved only after warning shots were fired. Meanwhile, rumors quickly raced through the neighborhood that El Karif had actually been shot dead, and several hundred Wadi Salib residents marched on Hadar HaKamel, a predominantly Ashkenazi district, smashing shop windows and setting cars on fire. In Wadi Salib itself, the mob targeted the headquarters of the Mapai, that's the Labor Party, basically, and the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union, the ultimate symbols of Ashkenazi power. In the end, 13 police and two demonstrators were wounded. Two days later, sympathetic riots broke out in other large communities of North African immigrants, in Tiberias, in Beersheba, Migdala Emek.

It was later claimed that these were not spontaneous outbreaks, but rather part of a local movement, the Kud Yozdei Tzfon HaAfrika, Union of North African Immigrants, that they were the ones involved planning them. David Ben-Harush, one of the movement's founders, was actually sent to prison and ran for the next Knesset elections while incarcerated. He failed, but you can't blame him. In many ways, the Suwadi Salib riots are just a taste of what's to come in Israeli culture with the rise of the Israeli Black Panthers in the 1970s. It's a story we'll tell, but it lies ahead. For now, Eli and Nadia were actually living the Israeli dream in the late 50s. But Eli was far, far too restless a soul for middle class life.

You know, out there in the world they say, where there is a will, there is a way. And here in Am Yisrael we say that there's only one will in the world, and that will will have its way. no matter how you hold on that question, there are any numbers of opinions about how Ellie eventually made it into the intelligence work he so deeply desired. Maybe he was just persistent in his requests, and that persistence eventually paid off. Maybe his original rejection was only in order to place him under observation for a really big job. And maybe God was just waiting for the right time and place where he could be the right man for the role. No matter which side you choose, everyone agrees that sometime in late 1960, Eli Cohen was under observation by the Mossad, that elite counterintelligence agency founded by Ben Gurion in 49, and to this day answerable solely to the Prime Minister's office.

Field agents watched Eli for several weeks while others combed through his background, and he was, by all accounts, the perfect recruit. High intelligence, with a near-photographic memory, unswervingly loyal to both his family and his employer, hardworking, good-looking, and with more than a touch of natural charm. The only real challenge was his recent marriage. Domestic bliss and international espionage rarely go well together. At his final trial, Eli recalled his recruitment like this. One day a man named Zalman came to see me. He told me that they'd kept an eye on my work and found that I was suited to a more responsible task. He asked me if I was willing to work for intelligence and go to Europe or an Arab country.

I told him I had just married and didn't have the urge to travel. My wife was a nurse before we got married, but she had to quit work when she became pregnant, and I had to work overtime. Now, however you think the world works, that reply might have been a mistake, because sure enough, he suddenly found himself let go from his position at HaMash Pier. Though Ellie would later deny that any pressure had ever been placed on him to join, the fact remained that an intelligence job was now the only immediate option for feeding his family. Nadia was understandably worried when he lost a job. She'd become pregnant, as he noted, soon after the wedding, and it was a very difficult time to find decent work for anyone, especially for the new immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries.

Ali's response was typical. Don't worry. I'm an educated man. I'll find a new job. He was, by all accounts, always ready to take care of things himself, and after two weeks, he announced to her, I found a job, a very interesting job. So he fudged a bit on what it actually was. Eli told Nadja that he was now involved in weapons purchases for the state, but in reality he had been recruited into Amman, the intelligence branch of the Israeli Defense Forces. Eli began learning his new craft at Israel's School of Espionage, a source of much legend. They taught him how to follow, how to lose a tail, map reading, small arms fighting sabotage. He learned photography and film development, encryption and Morse code.

They worked to perfect his photographic memory, a critical tool, and the instructor would toss random items onto the table, keys, ball, a pack of cigarettes, and then snatch them away after only a few seconds, demanding that Eli describe them in exhaustive detail. But Eli wasn't being trained to be just another spy. He was going lehistarev, as they say here in Israel, although many people out there who watch Fauda probably already know what that is. It means to become an Arab. In fact, since the pre-state days, the Shuv had recruited Jews from Arab lands into the Palmaq's Arab section. In many ways, that Arab section served as a precursor to the Mossad. If you want to read a great book on that, check out Mati Friedman's recently published Spies of No Country.

It tells a fantastic story. But for now, Ali Cohen was being trained to go deeper into the Arab world than any other Israeli spy ever had, or at least that we're aware of. And so together with his spy craft came intensive instructions in Quranic studies, the order of Muslim prayer. Eli learned to change his accent and dialect in Arabic from Egyptian to Syrian, facilitated by the fact that his father had come to Alexandria from Aleppo, something which, of course, was well known to his recruiter. And finally, Eli's instructors decided the time had come to craft him a cover story, which is how Kamel Amin Thabet was born. Thabet was a businessman whose parents were of Syrian origin but had immigrated to Lebanon.

He himself was born in Beirut but moved with his family to Alexandria at the young age of three The family then left together Egypt for Argentina in 1946 at the behest of an uncle who had invited Thabat father to join him in business. One after another, the three characters of his story then die. Father, mother, uncle. Eli, meaning Thabat, is then left as an orphan in Argentina with a bankrupt business, which of course, by the grace of Allah, he builds back up into a lucrative enterprise. His handlers had chosen Argentina because at the time, it was home to a large expatriate Syrian community, many of whom were very sympathetic to the Ba'athist revolutionary movement, which was even then threatening the stability of the government in Damascus from the left.

As Kama Amin Thabet, Eli would be perfectly positioned to become another supporter, and as a wealthy businessman, one with money to burn. Now, ultimately, his destination was Syria, But for Eli and Thabet, the road to Damascus ran through Buenos Aires. Mayor Amit, soon to be the head of the Mossad, described the final phase of Eli's training like this. Eli learned the language of an exporter-importer to Syria. He was like a chameleon absorbing everything. Before my very eye, Eli Cohen faded and Thabet took over. Every day, Eli became more confident, more certain and keen to prove he could carry off the role. He was like a world champion marathon runner, trained to peak at the start of the race. But he could be running for years.

We'd done all we could to show him how to pace his new life to live the life. The rest was up to him. We all knew that. There was no big goodbye or send-off. He just slipped out of Israel, the way all my spies went. And on February 3rd, Ellie Cohen told Nadja he was leaving the country on a top-secret arms purchase mission, a story she believed until his capture four years later. A Ministry of Defense car drove them together to Lod Airport outside of Tel Aviv so that she could say goodbye. And there he boarded an El Al flight to Zurich. But once he arrived in Zurich, en route to Argentina, he switched his passport. Elie Cohen the Israeli was no more. Now there was only the Syrian businessman, Hamel Amin Thabit, and he had much work to do.

Eli's arrival in Buenos Aires was uneventful, and that itself was a major victory. He'd come to the country only months after the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, and the Argentinian government was still loudly denouncing Israel and the UN for their violation of their sovereignty. Within days, Eli had met his controlling officer, known to him only as Abraham, and settled down to master the Spanish language. And over the coming weeks, he proceeded to craft his character, opening a bank account in an Arab bank, buying the flashy clothes and sports cards, which were typical of the young Syrian bachelor in Buenos Aires, and turning up at all the favorite haunts of the community's elite. By all accounts, Kamal Thabit was an instant social success, particularly amongst the left-leaning Ba'athists within the expat community.

His new contacts quickly included Abad al-Latif al-Ashan, the Ba'athist editor of an Arabic-Spanish weekly paper, and Amin al-Hafez, Syria's new military attaché to Argentina. Al-Hafez was a rising star in the Syrian military. His last post was actually commander of army training. But his Ba'athist views were too extreme for Damascus at the time, and so they'd shift him off to South America where they thought he'd be safe. And this was a fortunate coincidence for Eli and Israeli intelligence. because little more than two years after they met, in the wake of the Ba'athist revolution to come, El Hafez would actually be president of Syria. Now, one of the greatest arguments in Eli's story is just how close he was to El Hafez.

Maybe we'll touch on it soon, but one thing is beyond dispute. Having a relationship with such a powerful person that stretched back to Argentina opened many doors to Eli once he reached Damascus, but he wasn't there yet. At all these parties, with everyone he met, Eli expressed his patriotic desire to return to Syria. And together with that, he declared his willingness to invest large amounts of his hard-earned money in a Ba'athist regime, which won him many friends very quickly. Meanwhile, Avraham, Eli's controller, was extremely impressed with his new asset. The information he was providing, the behavior he displayed so much so, that his reports to Tel Aviv caused the powers that be to accelerate their plans.

It suddenly became the talk of Syrian Buenos Aires. Kama Amin Thabet would soon be taking his first trip to the Syrian homeland. Now, it wasn't just Eli's performance driving the timing of the operation. Israeli intelligence was gripped by a growing sense of desperation about the Syrian front. You might recall that back in 1958, only a few years ago in our story, Nasser's Egypt had joined with Syria in a political union as the first step in realizing his pan-Arabist dream. The resultant United Arab Republic was meant to unify the political and military infrastructure of the two countries. And to what end? Well, all it takes is one glance at the map to see that the only thing they needed to unite themselves territorially into a pan-Arabic union was to eliminate Israel.

But the truth is, the UAR was never a happy marriage. And when in the summer of 1961, Nasser announced a sweeping program of nationalization, something which, by the way, he used to control the Egyptian economy, a group of Syrian businessmen and their military allies decided that they'd had enough. The resulting conservative anti-Nasser regime, which overthrew the UAR in Syria, was unstable and short-lived, but it did pave the way for the Ba'athist revolution, which still rules the country today. And Israel wanted a man on the inside to watch it unfold. So Eli's first stop on the way from Buenos Aires to Damascus was actually returned to Israel. In December of 1961, his father Shaul passed away. And Eli was allowed to come home for the funeral and for Shiva, the traditional seven days of mourning.

He was allowed to come for six of them, actually, because duty's still cold. When Eli told his family that he must leave before Shiva ended, they were shocked. But as his younger brother Abraham recalled, he told us he must leave for a business trip. He's a grown man. We cannot tell him what to do. Nor could he tell them where he was actually going, back to the birthland of the father they were still mourning. When Eli boarded his plane back to Italy, he carried with him a powerful miniature radio transmitter, amongst the most advanced in the world at the time, hidden in the false bottom of an electric food mixer. His electric shaver was a long-range antenna. the aspirin in his kit was actually cyanide for use on any enemy, or himself, in the last extreme.

Even his toothpaste tubes and jars of face cream were filled with chemicals to make high explosives. As the commander of Oman's elite unit 131 told him before he left, this was the Takhlis. This is the real thing for which you've been trained. And on January 10th, 1962, Kama Abin Thabet boarded the cruise ship Astoria out of Genoa, bound for Beirut. His first-class quarters and free-spending ways, of course, won Eli many francs amongst the other Arab passengers, just as they'd done in Argentina. And it was on board the Astoria that Eli made a friend who had accompanied him for his full three years in Damascus, Majid Sheikh Al-Ard. Al-Ard was a man of the world, like Thabet, speaking many languages, including German, and seemingly also with money to burn.

The two drew quite close on the journey. and in every conversation, Eli, that is Thabet, told Majid about his inherited capital and his burning desire to invest it in Syria. As they approached their destination, Majid told Eli he planned himself to travel by car from Beirut to Damascus and of course invited him to join. It was only natural to say yes and so after a day's rest in port, Eli found himself traveling through the mountain roads in Majid Al-Arad's private car. Now, there's something you need to know. According to documents from U.S. intelligence, Majid Sheikh al-Ard was no innocent bystander. In fact, he'd worked as a paid informant for the Americans from 1951 through 59, and it's unclear what he was doing on that ship.

Perhaps this is why, as they approached the border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, al-Ard explained to Eli that he had friends who could arrange a smooth crossing of the border just for the sake of a few hundred Syrian pounds. And so at the cost of a non-refundable loan of 400 pounds, Majid and Ali sat drinking coffee as Al-Ard's friends took care of the paperwork. When a junior custom officer had the audacity to try and open the bags, which actually contained Ali's spy equipment, their boss scolded them loudly, they've already been checked. Certainly, Al-Ard had no idea who Kamu Amin Thabit really was. But nonetheless, it was through his agency that Eli Cohen arrived in Damascus without so much as a search of his personal effects.

Five days after arriving, having managed to rent an apartment, Eli Cohen transmitted his first message back to headquarters in Israel. I have arrived. Now there's no end to the stories which I could tell you about Eli Cohen's work as a spy. the work which earned him the title of Our Man in Damascus. And of course, because of that, there's also no end to the arguments between authors, historians, spies, and his family members about which stories are actually true or false. In February of 62, Ellie officially joined the Ba'ath Party, promising to become a true example of the Arab struggle. It was an act that became particularly significant when only a year later the Ba'athists took power through yet another coup.

And Ali went on to attend the sixth national convention of the bath in October of 63, where his generosity and his contacts gave him access to most activities, even some of the closed session. All the time, of course, transmitting back to base. His life in Damascus centered around his flat, situated near the general staff headquarters. Simply by mapping the traffic in and out and noting when the lights were on and off, he was able to provide critical day-to-day intelligence on enemy activities. Add to this the role he played amongst the Damascus elite. Now, you may be familiar with the image painted of Eli as the orchestrator of wild Syrian parties with all kinds of illicit alcohol and ladies. Some historians contest that image and actually claim that Count Amin Thabet led such a frugal bachelor's life that it caused some people to begin to question his cover.

Whichever side you take, most people agree that his apartment became a rendezvous of choice for senior government men and women with whom they would otherwise rather not be seen, as they say. And that certainly gave him access to all kinds of information. There's further controversy about Eli's relationship with Syrian President Amin al-Hafez, like I mentioned. Some say that they had no more than a passing acquaintance once he reached Damascus which of course helped his status but put him in no direct connection Others claim that El Hafez saw Eli as a confidant In fact that Eli aided him when he had cancer and he indeed was considered for the post of deputy defense minister before he was caught.

Bottom line, everyone agrees with the assessment of the Mossad chief, Mayor Amit, that Eli's greatest contribution to Israeli security was the close relationship he built with decision-makers in the Syrian government. In his guise as Stabit, Eli toured the Golan Heights repeatedly, memorizing the placements of armaments and fortifications. This was information that would prove critical when Tzaho and the Israeli army stormed that plateau in only a few years, in the last moments of the Six-Day War. He was also able to assist Israel in defeating Syria's plans to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River. Their goal was to choke that newly built national water carrier we spoke about a couple of episodes ago.

Now, the Syrian plans were public knowledge, so it's a misnomer to say that Eli uncovered them. But the precise information he provided allowed the Israeli Air Force to destroy the Syrian efforts before they ever got underway. But some say that as his time in Damascus drew on, Eli became overconfident, perhaps even a bit reckless. His handlers knew from the outset that Eli's biggest shortcoming was to believe he could do everything himself. This may have actually been his downfall in the end. His brother Maurice tells the story like this. By 1963, Maurice was serving in the intelligence unit, which was responsible for encoding and decoding transmissions. And he eventually learned that a certain subset of his messages were from Damascus, a fact that seemed irrelevant at the time.

And then came a strange coincidence. One day, a message came with a postscript, which he decoded to read, Did Nadja get the Singer sewing machine I sent her? Now, there were no such words in his codebook as Nadia or Singer Sewing Machine, so he asked his commanders for clarification. They replied that this was a top-secret code for which he didn't have security clearance and he should forget he ever saw it. Which Maurice might well have done if he hadn't happened to visit his sister-in-law Nadia that very day and found her cooing over the brand new sewing machine that Ellie had just sent her from abroad. Many other hints followed, and as the evidence mounted, Maurice became convinced that the man behind the messages he was receiving was none other than his brother, Eli, and that he was taking progressively more and more risks.

Eli was in Damascus from 1962 until his capture in 1965, but his cover as an importer-exporter allowed him to take covert trips to Israel under the guise of going abroad for purchases. And on one of those visits, Eli brought a pair of house slippers for his daughter. They were beautiful, velvet, with golden embroidery, and they'd been made in Syria. Maurice, who at this point was already quite suspicious, asked Eli where he'd bought such nice slippers. And his brother answered without hesitation, from the Lafayette Gallery in Paris. But Maurice wasn't going to let it go. Then why is the shoe size written in Arabic, he said. What is this, an interrogation, replied Eli? I told you I bought them in France.

Maybe they were imported from an Arab country. Trying to change the subject, Ellie then asked if Maurice had gotten a phone line finally for his new apartment. Maurice replied yes and gave him the number. But as Ellie began to write it down, his face turned red. Maurice was reading off to him the number of his very own apartment in Damascus. Now at this point, Maurice had overstepped his bound, and he was severely reprimanded by his superiors and told to forget everything which happened. But the thing he couldn't forget was how dangerous a situation Ellie found himself in. In his heart, Maurice knew he had a choice to make. He could blow Ellie's cover, ruin his own career, but force his return to Israel and really save his life, or he could bury the secret in his heart and perhaps hold some responsibility for how this story ends.

As with so many of the other elements of this spy story, the question of how the Syrians realized Kamo Amin Thabet was really an Israeli intelligence officer is far from certain. From 1963 on, the Syrian intelligence agency had begun to suspect that there was a leak somewhere within the highest level of government circles. The Israelis just knew too much about what they were thinking. and most agree that on January 24th, 1965, when Eli was taken in a pre-dawn raid, he was located by honing in on the transmissions from his secret radio. The question is, what lay in between the suspicion and the capture? And the answer is, it's impossible to say. But there's a powerful story which in my research seems to be central and I think it offers us one last insight into exactly what it was Eli was doing in Damascus.

Because this is a story in which he may have risked his entire mission, not to mention his life, to kill a single man. But not just any man. In the wake of the Eichmann trial of 1961, which I hope you remember from the Jewish story, Isser Hawell, the legendary head of the Mossad, had become preoccupied with hunting down the surviving Nazis. Some say obsessed. Lesson has it that he drew up a list and declared there are people who are marked to die. Now, eventually, this obsession actually led to a breakdown between he and Ben-Gurion and his subsequent retirement from office. But even his successor, Merah Amit, continued the hunt. And so imagine the excitement in Tel Aviv when Eli sent an encrypted message informing them he'd identified Franz Radmacher.

Now, Radmacher had been the head of D3, the so-called Jewish desk of the German Foreign Office from May 1940 until April 1943, in which capacity he attended the Wansi Conference, meaning he was part of formulating the final solution. Rademacher was actually captured after the war and stood trial at Nuremberg, but he jumped bail while his conviction was on appeal and fled to Syria, which is where Ali found him. And it happened by coincidence over lunch with his old friend Majid Sheikh Al-Ard. During the meal, Al-Ard told Ali that just a few days earlier he'd met with a man named Rosolio. And in the course of their conversation, he let it slip that Rosolio was actually the Nazi war criminal Franz Radmacher, hiding right there in Damascus.

Eli feigned disbelief, and he challenged Aard. It wasn't possible he knew a real, live Nazi. Offended, Majid telephoned Radmacher, and 40 minutes later, the three were seated together in the living room of Radmacher's safe house. It was only a 10-minute walk from where Eli lived. And when he relayed the information to his superiors in Tel Aviv, some historians claim he was told to keep his eyes on the prize, others that he was given the green light. Either way, the result was a letter bomb, crafted carefully from the chemicals that he'd smuggled into the country and sent care of Franz Radmacher, which unfortunately did not kill its intended target. but it may have been the clue which Syrian intelligence was looking for.

I think we have to appreciate what this teaches us about Eli, that at a certain point, he wasn't just there for the thrills. He wasn't bored by the domestic life and the middle class existence, as some people like to claim. He was seeking to defend and avenge the people of Israel. Now, the Syrians knew Majid al-Ard, and they knew what he was, an informer for the Americans. and apparently the documents show they were also aware of that three-way meeting between he, Eli, and Radmacher. Only a fool lets a Nazi hide in their country without keeping a close eye on him. Because they knew under the guise of Rosolio, Radmacher himself was up to his neck in espionage. Now what would you do if you witnessed a meeting between a Syrian businessman and two known spies?

You would assume the businessman's dealings were not all above board. And in fact, the testimonies of Ahmed Suedani, head of Syrian intelligence, and of the officer who broke into Eli Cohen's apartment in January of 1965, indicate that the Syrians had begun to monitor Eli months before he was caught, and that they had no idea until he was in their hands that Kamel Amin Tabit was actually a Zionist spy. I'm sorry to say, but it may just be a reality that no truly heroic story has a happy ending. Ali was seized by Syrian intelligence in January of 1965, but he didn't stand trial for another two months. According to many sources, an interval which was filled with torture too horrible to describe. From February 28th until March 19th, Elie stood before a military tribunal, denied even the most basic legal defense, but it didn't really matter.

His guilt was a foregone conclusion, and indeed the trial ended with a sentence of death. Pleased from world leaders, politicians, religious figures from across the spectrum were to no avail, and on May 18th, 1965, before an angry crowd of thousands gathered in a Damascus square, Eli was led to the gallows. Now the Syrians, in a particular twist of horror, televised his execution, and so his wife and family watched in absolute, absolute horror as he was hanged by the neck until dead. It was only later that Nadia received his parting letter. Perhaps the single mercy shown to him by his enemies. I am begging you, my dear Nadia, not to spend your time in weeping about something already passed. Concentrate on yourself.

Look forward for a better future. Don't forget also your dear family. Give them my best regards. Don't forget to pray for the soul of my late father and of mine. Receive all of you my last kisses and blessing. Eli Cohen. And as his brother Maurice likes to remember, Eli went to the gallows saying Shema Yisrael. the last words of a hero of Israel. And I'm happy to share with you the details about how you can dedicate a show to someone with you today or in the memory of those that have passed. I want to thank the Land of Israel Network, that's thelandofisrael.com, for creating a platform that roused me to reach so many amazing people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, pardes.org.il, for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of teaching so many wonderful Jews.

And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Boyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Thank you.