Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services

311 Pages·1991·10.29 MB·English

by  Ian Black

ISRAEL'S
SECRET WARS
A History of
Israel’s Intelligence Services
Ian Black and Benny Morris
Grove Weidenfeld
NE W Y O R K
Copyright © 1991 by Ian Black and Benny Morris Contents
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form,
by any means, including mechanical, electronic,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without Authors' Note vi
prior written permission of the publisher. Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
Published by Grove Weidenfeld
A division of Grove Press, Inc. Map xviii-xix
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003-4793 1 Origins: 1936-46 1
2 The Test of Battle: 1947-9 35
First published in Great Britain in 1991 by
3 Birth Pangs: 1948-51 71
Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London
4 From War to War: 1949-56 98
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
5 Enemies Within: 1948-67 134
Black, Ian, 1953- 6 Great Leaps Forward: 1956-67 168
Israel's secret wars: a history of Israel's intelligence services/
7 Six Days in June: 1967 206
Ian Black and Benny Morris,
p. cm. 8 Palestinian Challenges: 1967-73 236
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9 Mehdal: 1973 282
ISBN 0-8021-1159-9: $24.95
10 Interregnum with Peace: 1974-80 322
1. Intelligence services—Israel. 2. Secret service—Israel.
3. Military intelligence—Israel. 4. Israel. Mosad le-modi in 11 The Lebanese Quagmire: 1978-85 361
tafkidim meyuhadim. 5. Israel. Sherut ha-bitahon ha-kelali.
12 Occupational Hazards: 1984-7 400
6. Jewish-Arab relations—1949- 7. Israel-Arab conflicts.
I. Morris, Benny, 1948- II. Title. 13 Intifada: 1987-90 451
UB251.I78B55 1991
355.3 '432'095694—dc20 90-49373 Conclusion 498
CIP Glossary 505
Notes 509
Manufactured in the United States of America Sources 566
Index 575
Printed on acid-free paper
First American Edition 1991
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Authors’ Note Acknowledgements
Many people, especially those involved in the Haganah, the In writing this book, we have tried to use as much original
Jewish Agency or the Zionist establishment, Hebraized their documentation as possible and have invariably indicated the
names (sometimes first names as well as surnames) during the source of our information (broadly document, interview, book
mandatory period and in the early years after independence in or newspaper). Large parts of the narrative are based on inter­
1948. The practice followed throughout this book has been to views with former Israeli intelligence personnel from all three
give first the original name with the new one in brackets and services. A surprisingly large number were willing to speak,
then to use just the new name. Thus Reuven Zaslani (Shiloah) although only a tiny handful agreed to be identified. Many
later becomes Reuven Shiloah, Moshe Shertok (Sharett) were prevented by law from allowing their names to be pub­
becomes Moshe Sharett. lished and expressed frustration that this was so. Some non-
Israeli sources preferred anonymity.
We have also drawn heavily on Israeli and foreign news­
papers, journals and books - but always carefully separating
the wheat from the chaff. Throughout we have made strenuous
efforts at verification from two or more independent sources.
The bulk of the book has been read over by retired intelligence
officers, although any errors of fact or interpretation that may
have crept in are, of course, our own.
We have been handicapped by the irritating but unavoidable
fact that whatever we wrote would ultimately have to pass
through the sieve of Israeli military censorship. But the censors
treated our finished product with far greater liberalism than we
had expected or than anyone could have enjoyed only a few
years ago. Surprisingly little had to be deleted from the original,
finished manuscript (and this only after all possible appeal
procedures had been exhausted).
Far too many people have helped with this project to be
viii
Israel’s secret wars
mentioned by name. Many of those who can be have been
credited in the notes at the end of the book; some of those
whose assistance was priceless still cannot be publicly thanked.
This is one of the unfortunate occupational hazards of being
involved in, and writing about, intelligence. Introduction
Just off Israel’s Mediterranean coastal highway, a few miles
north of Tel Aviv, a cluster of unremarkable grey-white concrete
buildings can be made out through a line of dusty eucalyptus
trees that runs roughly parallel to the main road. Turn left after
the busy Glilot junction, past the soldiers waiting for lifts, and
there, hidden in the centre of the cluster, yet clearly signposted for
all the world to see, lies a fine public memorial to over 400 Israelis
who died while serving in their country’s intelligence services.
The monument, fittingly enough perhaps, is built in the form
of a maze, an interlocking complex of smooth stone walls
engraved with the names of the fallen, and by each name is
the date of death. It is divided into five chronological sections,
beginning in November 1947 - when the United Nations voted
to partition British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and
Arab states - and ending (so far) in February 1989. The section
covering the last fifteen years is entitled ‘the beginnings of
peace’ but it still lists more than 200 names. More blank walls,
backing on to a grassy outdoor amphitheatre, are available for
future use.
The monument should be a spycatcher’s dream. But the
hand of official secrecy lies heavily even on the dead. Names
and dates yes, but there are no ranks, no units, no places, no
hints of the circumstances in which these unknown soldiers
lost their lives. Some died naturally after long years in the
shadows, yet most of these are still as anonymous as the many
others who fell on active service.
X Israel’s secret wars INTRODUCTION xi
A few of their stories have been told, though most are scale conventional wars (six if the 1968-70 ‘war of attrition’
covered in a heavy patina of heroic myth. There, from the early on the Suez Canal is counted) and four decades of cross-border
days, is Ya’akov Buqa’i, executed in Jordan in 1949 after incursions and anti-guerrilla operations. The memorial to the
filtering in disguise through the ceasefire lines together with fallen of the intelligence community at Glilot was erected in
hundreds of released Arab prisoners of war. There are Max 1984 as a result of pressure from bereaved families, who felt
Binnet and Moshe Marzuk, who died in Egyptian prison in the that the contribution of their relations to national security had
mid-1950s after the exposure of the famous Israeli sabotage not been given adequate public recognition. A few of the 415
network at the centre of the Lavon Affair. There are Eli Cohen, men and women whose names are engraved on its walls are
the legendary spy who penetrated the highest echelons of the still buried in unmarked graves or under assumed names in the
Syrian government and was hanged, live on television, in Arab countries where they operated.
Damascus in 1965; Baruch Cohen, the Mossad agent-runner The monument is as unique as it is bizarre, a taut compromise
shot dead in Madrid by a Palestinian gunman in 1973; Moshe between the harsh demands of official secrecy and the need
Golan, a Shin Bet security service officer murdered by a West for recognition for those whose loved ones lived and died in
Bank informer in a safe house inside Israel in 1980; Ya’akov anonymity. There is probably nowhere else on earth that,
Barsimantov, a Mossad man assassinated in Paris weeks proportionate to its size and population, produces, analyses or
before the invasion of Lebanon in 1982; and Victor Rejwan, consumes as much intelligence as Israel, a country of 4 million
a Shin Bet man killed in a shoot-out with Muslim militants in people that has been in a state of war for every moment of its
Gaza just before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in forty-three-year existence and sees its future depending, perhaps
1987. more than ever before, on the need to ‘know’ its enemies,
A little knowledge and imagination can help with the predict their intentions and frustrate their plans.
majority of names that are still unknown to the wider pub­ Intelligence is an expanding business. The British writer
lic. A cluster of men killed in June 1967 and a larger number Phillip Knightley has calculated that in the mid-1980s over a
who died between October and December 1973 are the losses million people, spending £17,500 million annually, were
of army field intelligence units during the Six Day and Yom engaged worldwide in what he irreverently reminded spy buffs
Kippur wars. Another group who died on the same day in was called ‘the second oldest profession’.1
November 1983 comprised Shin Bet agents blown up by a Serious study of the subject is growing too. In the academic
Shi’ite Muslim suicide bomber in the southern Lebanese city world intelligence is starting to receive attention as the ‘missing
of Tyre. But most of the names remain mysterious, impenet­ dimension’ without which politics, war, diplomacy, terrorism
rable and unyielding as tombstones. Only the breakdown of the and international relations cannot be properly understood.2
total fatalities (available until mid-1988) reflects the different The United States, with a unique though often threatened
roles - and degree of exposure to mortal danger - of the three tradition of relative openness in such matters, has taken the
separate services that make up Israel’s intelligence community: lead in the field. But there has been impressive progress else­
army intelligence, 261; the Shin Bet, eighty; the Mossad, sixty- where. In Britain historians like Christopher Andrew have
five. shown that hard work and imaginative research methods can
Israel has many war memorials. Different military units - the circumvent some of the more absurd restrictions of official
paratroops, the air force and the tank corps - have all erected secrecy, clumsy ‘weeding’ and censorship in the name of
monuments to the men and women they have lost in five full- national security. Learned journals, symposia and multi­
xii xiii
Israel’s secret wars INTRODUCTION
disciplinary international conferences are proliferating like the exposure generally remains limited. That is why Victor
intelligence and security bureaucracies themselves. Ostrovsky’s damaging claims in his book, By Way of Deception:
Exposure has brought with it more public interest. The British The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, came as such a
government’s prolonged attempts to ban Spy catcher, the sensa­ grievous blow.
tional memoirs of the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, were Thus any serious study of the subject is bound to be difficult.
bound to fail in the end. Israel ignored this lesson, and in 1990 It is not necessary to subscribe to the rigid view that an event is
tried and also failed to halt publication - in the United States and true only if it is somehow documented to acknowledge that the
Canada - of an embarrassing book about the Mossad by Victor existence of hard, written evidence is the exception rather than
Ostrovsky, a disgruntled former officer. Democratic societies can­ the rule in the field of intelligence and security. A substantial
not consistently withstand pressures for some measure of account­ amount of original documentation is available - if one knows
ability and control of their secret services. This is especially how and where to look - for the period up to about 1958; this
true when intelligence efforts are directed against a country’s material can provide remarkable insights into matters that
own citizens, not at foreign armies, spies or terrorists. But were never intended to be made public, and, perhaps, should
unlike Israel, neither the United States nor Britain is at war. never have been committed to paper.
Yet even Israel is not immune from the trend towards more Secret reports on officially sanctioned assassinations and kid­
exposure. Several recent security and espionage scandals have nappings survive from the chaotic period before the outbreak of
badly tarnished the halo of its secret services, although, as is the 1948 war. A declassified file of Mossad cable traffic detailing
the case with intelligence organizations everywhere, mistakes communications between Baghdad and Tel Aviv gives a fascinat­
have become public knowledge far more quickly than successes. ing glimpse of the nuts and bolts of clandestine operations, of
The Lavon Affair of the 1950s and 1960s, the intelligence the rising panic when an agent is blown and may be talking
failure that preceded the surprise Egyptian-Syrian assault of under torture; a mass of more mundane yet often thrilling
October 1973, the bungled killing of an innocent man in material gives a sense of the scale and character of routine
Lillehammer, Norway, in the Mossad’s shadowy war against intelligence gathering. Records of interrogations of captured
Palestinian terrorism and the 1984-6 Shin Bet scandals over Palestinian infiltrators show how Israel built up a picture of its
the killing of prisoners and torture of suspects have all been enemy. Foreign Ministry material reveals diplomats choosing to
documented far more completely than the impressive number ignore intelligence facts when they contradicted the official
of successes notched up by Israel. propaganda line.
Success is a problem too. Like other intelligence communities From the end of the 1950s contemporary documents are
in other democratic societies, Israel’s has become adept at sporadic, non-existent or, in most cases, simply unavailable.
cultivating selective links with journalists who are grateful for Other historical evidence can be partial or unreliable: personal
whatever snippets of secret information are released from the memoirs tend to suffer from self-censorship and a natural
nether world. Israel has its equivalents of Nigel West and human tendency to be self-serving. Old men forget; but younger
Chapman Pincher, two British writers who for years had a ones can have surprising lapses of memory as well - official
virtual monopoly of writing about their country’s secret services censorship often demands it.
on the basis of unattributable interviews. And Israel’s stringent Yet if the obstacles to the study of Israeli intelligence are
laws of military censorship and non-release of almost all intelli­ considerable, there are very powerful incentives. One is the
gence material in government archives combine to ensure that glaring lack of balanced, factual work on the subject whereas
xiv Israel’s secret wars INTRODUCTION XV
the profusion of fictional or sensationalist ‘factional’ accounts Affair, which clouded the horizons of the Israeli intelligence
and countless miles of newsprint suggest that interest in it is community and intermittently rocked its political life for almost
strong and growing. two decades, was ‘Who gave the order?’ The same deceptively
John le Carre's bold excursion to the Middle East in The Little simple question applied equally well to the scandal that erupted in
Drummer Girl remains the best literary treatment of Israeli 1986 over the Shin Bet’s killing of Arab prisoners and to the
intelligence and its continuing war against the Palestinians. recruitment and running of Jonathan Pollard, the American-
Agents of Innocence, a gripping story by the American author Jewish spy for Israel whose capture and exposure briefly shook the
David Ignatius, touches on the subject too. But these successful cosy web of US-Israeli intelligence liaison and exchange.
novels - and several recent, less well-known Hebrew works Another incentive to studying Israeli intelligence is that it
that have not been translated into other languages - are really matters. The conflict between the Jewish state and its
exceptions. The Arab-Zionist conflict has produced few memor­ Arab neighbours remains in some ways as bitter and insoluble
able paperback heroes; many purportedly ‘documentary’ works today as it was in 1948, when independent Israel fought its
owe far more to fantasy than reality. way into the world out of the ruins of the British Mandate and
Operation Uranium Ship,3 for example, is billed as a ‘true’ the disarray of the Palestinians and the Arab governments
account of how, in 1968, a team of Israeli agents hijacked a which supported them.
ship full of uranium for use in the country’s clandestine nuclear When intelligence fails, both in its primary mode as a device
programme. The book’s dustjacket reveals tantalizingly that the intended to provide early warning of enemy strength and inten­
team included: tions, and in its secondary one as a supplier of raw information
and considered assessments on the basis of which policies,
A handsome, sophisticated, ruthless Israeli super-agent... a beautiful strategies and tactics can be constructed, the results can be
young woman with exquisite sexual skills ... a wire-thin, lethally
catastrophic. The bitter lessons of the October 1973 war, when
efficient professional killer ... a grizzled sea-captain pressed into
much of the blame for the initial disaster was laid at the door of
perilous service ... a mechanical genius who performed miracles
military intelligence, and of the grandiose and wrong-headed
with anything made of metal... and others ... from the top levels of
design that led to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon have not been
Israel’s scientific and espionage elite to the outmost limits of her
forgotten. Yet for all its importance, intelligence does not exist
worldwide network of operatives.
in a vacuum; the advice of secret servants can be - and often is
The real world would be hard put to compete with such - ignored by the politicians. For it is they, not the spymasters,
superlatives, yet if the truth is not actually stranger than who must make policy.
fiction, it is certainly more complex. Secret agents have con­ The importance of accurate and reliable military and political
trollers, and controllers have department heads, just as intelli­ intelligence has not been diminished by the considerable pro­
gence chiefs are responsible to ministers, who in turn have gress that there has been towards Israeli-Arab coexistence. The
diplomacy, budgets, public opinion and elections to think Sadat initiative in 1977 and the subsequent peace treaty with
about. Egypt, the de facto peace with Jordan and the slackening of the
One of the recurrent themes of the history of Israeli intelligence PLO’s ‘armed struggle’ in the wake of the Lebanon war do not
is how politicians keep intruding into the secret world, making mean that Israeli intelligence can rest on its laurels.
demands, exercising control and then ducking responsibility when Yehoshafat Harkabi, the brilliant, and now outspokenly
things go wrong. The fundamental question about the Lavon ‘dovish’, former head of military intelligence, has argued
xvii
xvi Israel’s secret wars INTRODUCTION
together employ thousands of people and spend hundreds of
persuasively that a sea change has taken place in Arab attitudes
millions of dollars every year on defending Israel from its
towards Israel and that the onus is now on the Jewish state to
enemies, acquiring their secrets and penetrating their ranks.
take up the challenge. ‘Knowing your enemy’, Harkabi and
Neither are its friends immune. Whether the awesome reputa­
others have insisted, must include knowing how to see that
tion of Israeli intelligence is wholly deserved remains moot. It is
that enemy may be in the process of becoming a non-belligerant.
clear, however, that in many Arab countries there is still a
But the conflict, with its periodic outbreaks of full-scale war­
strong belief that Israel has a long and dangerous arm, con­
fare and tense, prolonged respites in between, continues. The
political and human tragedy of the Palestinians has still not trolled by a subtle and cunning mind.4
Too much is at stake in the Middle East conflict for the
been resolved; without such a resolution, the conflict can only
intelligence activity at the centre of it to be left solely to its
deepen or at best stagnate. Israel’s intelligence services are still
anonymous practitioners. Israel’s Secret Wars treats intelligence
in the eye of the struggle - military intelligence, with its sensors
with the seriousness it deserves and tries to take spies, secret
focused on Syrian and Iraqi armaments and intentions; the
agents, terrorism and security out of the realm of popular
Shin Bet as the cutting edge of Israeli rule in the West Bank
fiction, deliberate leaks and excessive official secrecy and place
and Gaza Strip; and the Mossad as the executive arm in the
them firmly where they belong - in the context of history,
savage battle of terrorism and counter-terrorism in the Middle
politics and international relations, and in the real, con­
East and Europe. The Shin Bet’s response to the Palestinian
uprising - the intifada - in the occupied territories and the temporary world.
Mossad’s assassination of Abu Jihad, the senior PLO military
leader, in April 1988 have served as reminders of the centrality
of these services.
Israel’s controversial kidnapping of a militant Lebanese Shi’ite
leader, Sheikh Obeid, in July 1989 to obtain a bargaining chip
in negotiations to free its soldiers held by pro-Iranian groups in
Lebanon provided another of many examples of daring based
on precise intelligence and a hard-headed view of its foes.
Powerful Arab states like Syria and Iraq continue to pose a
military threat to Israel’s hold on the occupied territories if not
to Israel itself. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 turned
the region upside down, breaking old alliances and forming
new ones, creating previously unimagined uncertainties and
dangers for the future. On different fronts, in the Middle East
and beyond, the war goes on.
Israel’s intelligence community has come a long way since its
origins in the amateurish and improvised information-gathering
begun by a handful of dedicated volunteers working for the
Haganah militia in British-ruled Palestine of the 1930s. Today,
IDF Intelligence Branch (Aman), the Mossad and the Shin Bet
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Origins:
1936^6
The Arab strike and the failure of Haganah intelligence
On the evening of Wednesday, 15 April 1936, several armed
Palestinians blocked the narrow road between the little village
of Anabta and the British detention camp at Nur Shams - a
lonely and exclusively Arab area at the western end of the
rolling Samarian uplands - and stopped about twenty vehicles
to demand money to buy weapons and ammunition. One of
them, a truck carrying crates of chickens to Tel Aviv, had a
Jewish driver, Zvi Danenberg, and a Jewish passenger, a poultry-
firm clerk of about seventy called Yisrael Hazan, a recent
immigrant from Salonika in Greece. A third Jew was travelling
in another car. The Arab bandits rounded up the three and
shot them. Hazan was killed outright and the other two were
injured. Danenberg died later of his wounds.
The next day, 16 April, two Jews - easily identifiable as such
since they were bare-headed and wearing khaki shorts - drove
up to a tin shack close to the road between Petah-Tikva and
Sharona, in Palestine’s fertile coastal plain east of Tel Aviv. The
two, members of a dissident Zionist militia group called Irgun
Bet, knocked on the door and fired inside, killing one Arab and
badly wounding another. Before he died, the injured man
managed to describe his assailants to British policemen. Both
police and Arabs assumed at once that the attack was in
retaliation for the previous day’s incident in Samaria. ‘If the
perpetrators had imagined that they would thus put an end to