Mossad

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IsraelIsrael "General Intelligence and Security Service" ( Mosad Merkazi leModi'in uLeTafkidim Mejuchadim )
- Mossad -
logo
State level Country
Consist since December 13, 1949
Headquarters Tel Aviv
Authority management Yossi Cohen
Employee approx. 7000 (2018)
Website www.mossad.gov.il

Mossad (המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, haMosad leModi'in waLeTafkidim Mejuchadim ? / I , "Institute for Enlightenment and Special Tasks", actually Mosad Merkazi leModi'in uLeTafkidim "in uLeTafkidimadi'in , the Central and Security Service" HaMosadim , in short ) is the Israeli foreign intelligence service . Due to its structure and as a civil intelligence service, its function is comparable to that of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The Mossad is one of the best-informed secret services in the world. Audio file / audio sample

In addition to the Mossad, Israel has the domestic secret service Shin Bet (Shabak), the military secret service Aman , and there was also a fourth secret service, Lakam , which was disbanded in 1986 and was founded to support the Israeli nuclear program. The directors of Shin Bet, Mossad and Aman form the Committee of Directors of Intelligence (Va'adat Rashei Hasherutim, VARASH), which was established in 1949. In the past, this included ministry representatives as well as the inspector general of the Israeli police and the director of Nativ .

Other Jewish organizations were also called "Mossad", including the Mossad le Alija Bet , which organized clandestine immigration to Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel .

The official motto of the Mossad is ( Proverbs 11:14  EU ): Where there is no wise advice, the people perish; but where there are many advisors, help can be found .

organization

Hadar Dafna Building (partial view from Henrietta-Szold-Strasse )

The headquarters of the Mossad is in Tel Aviv- Jaffa. Some novels, films and press reports refer to the Hadar Dafna building ( Hebrew בנין הדר דפנה) as the headquarters. The headquarters were initially in the Red House on Yarkon Street in Tel Aviv near what is now the Ramada and Sheraton Hotels (a small plaque reminds of this today). It later moved to the Foreign Ministry building in Sharona (now the Ministry of Defense, Kirya). In 2018, a large expansion complex was built north of Tel Aviv on the Glilot Autobahn (Glilot Interchange).

The Mossad's workforce was estimated at 1200 to 2000 employees in 2006, and around 7000 in 2018, making it the largest secret service after the CIA. Only a fraction of the employees are active agent leaders ( command officers), so-called katsas. The low number of operational employees compared to other secret services is explained by the fact that the Mossad can fall back on a close-knit network of volunteers ( sayanim ) worldwide . Mostly these are people (Israeli citizens or Jewish sympathizers of other nationalities) who are resident in the target country of an operation and who provide discreet logistical support, for example by providing transport, safe housing or by obtaining information. It has a positive effect that many Jews from different countries live in Israel who are familiar with the cultures and languages ​​of their home countries, while on the other hand many Jews also live in the diaspora , for example in Africa , Asia and Europe .

The staff are civilians and do not have any military rank, but many were formerly in the Israeli military or even in the military intelligence service of the Israeli army.

The identity of the Mossad chief has long been an Israeli state secret. The names have been announced since 1996.

structure

The internal structure of the Mossad is largely unknown. It probably has six to eight departments (as of 2006):

  • Tsomet , the collections section, is the largest section. It directs all espionage activities and has branches all over the world, partly secret, partly as part of the diplomatic missions of Israel. Presumably the department is further subdivided according to regional responsibility.
  • Nevioth (Queshet) is responsible for break-ins, surveillance, wiretapping and other covert methods.
  • The Tevel Department for Political Actions and Cooperation coordinates the work with the secret services of friendly nations and maintains contacts with nations with which Israel has no official diplomatic relations. Employees of this department are usually stationed in larger diplomatic missions in Israel.
  • The Department of Special Operations ( Metsada , formerly Caesarea ) carries out attacks, sabotage and paramilitary operations. A kidon (Hebrew for bayonet) subdivision is responsible for targeted killings and operates under the highest level of secrecy. The assignments are approved by Committee X , chaired by the Prime Minister. It was founded after the 1972 Olympic attack in Munich .
  • The LAP ( Lochama Psichologit ) department is responsible for psychological warfare (according to the translation from Hebrew), propaganda and deception operations. It also collects information on Israeli prisoners of war, missing persons in action, unconventional weapons and hostile sabotage activities.
  • Tsafirim is responsible for the safety of Jews overseas. This also included, for example, the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews, but it also organizes self-defense measures for Jews, for example in Maghrebian states ( Misgeret Department ).

Since then, reorganizations have also taken place, for example under Efraim Halevy , who wanted to bring the service closer to the CIA and concentrate it in three main departments.

There are also training, finance and human resources departments, research and technology departments (also for espionage and sabotage equipment). They developed a special database (PROMIS) that was also sold to foreign intelligence agencies.

In addition, there is a department that deals with nuclear weapons . Substantial parts of the former fourth Israeli intelligence service, Lakam, went into it when it was dissolved in 1986.

Various Israeli think tanks and university institutes are connected to Israeli intelligence services: BESA (Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University), International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) at the Academic Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies (JCSS) and Moshe-Dayan Center for the Middle East at Tel-Aviv University.

management

history

The decision to found secret services was made in June 1948 on the initiative of Reuwen Schiloach (Reuven Shiloah), head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, and Isser Be'eri (Birenzweig, called great Isser ), previously head of the Haganah's intelligence service (Shai ) met. A military intelligence service was founded headed by Isser Beeri (with Chaim Herzog as his deputy), a domestic intelligence service (Shin Bet) headed by Isser Harel (then called Isser Halperin, little Isser ) and Yosef Yizraeli, and the foreign service, at that time still the department Knowledge (Daat) in the Foreign Ministry under Reuwen Schiloach, with the collection - at that time still mainly in Europe - and analysis. In 1949, the joint head office of the Vaarash secret services was founded, at that time headed by Schiloach.

The actual founding date of the Mossad is December 13, 1949 by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at the suggestion of Reuven Shiloah to coordinate the security and secret services of the country (Central Institute). In February and March 1951 the foreign intelligence was reorganized and was now directly subordinate to the Prime Minister. The leading employees of the political department in the Foreign Ministry, previously responsible for secret service operations, resigned as a whole ( revolt of the spies ). The Mossad took over the foreign intelligence (Rashut) from the Foreign Ministry (later the Tsomet department in the Mossad), operations in Arab countries and agents stationed there were subordinate to the military secret service (unit 131). It was not until 1963 that the Mossad was given full control of foreign agents. In the same year it was given its official Hebrew name (Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations).

After the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and various failures, Shabtai Shavit, previously known only as "S", had to resign as general director of the Mossad. On March 24, 1996, Major General Dani Jatom was appointed as the new General Manager. From then on, the names of the Mossad leaders were first made public. As a result of the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Khalid Masch'al (see below) and an unsuccessful operation in Switzerland, Jatom resigned. Ephraim Halevy took over the post in March 1998 . Halevy was previously a Mossad agent and then Israel's representative to the European Union . In October 2002, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed Halevy, with whom he had repeatedly argued over the correct strategy against Palestinian terror. He was succeeded by General Meir Dagan . He served with Sharon in the Israeli army . Dagan headed a commando that tracked down and liquidated Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip . Under him, the Mossad was dedicated again more covert operations and special operations and focused on the fight against viewed by Israel as a threat to nuclear program of Iran .

Overall, the Mossad mainly focuses on Arab countries and organizations. His interests in the intelligence service also extend to NATO countries , for example . He also organizes the smuggling of Jewish refugees from all over the world to Israel.

According to research by Israeli expert Ronen Bergman , the Mossad killed at least 3,000 people by 2018. The victims were not just targeted. Many bystanders who were simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time” were also victims. During the second intifada there were days when four to five targeted killings were ordered.

Yossi Cohen has been head of the secret service since the end of 2015.

Known or suspected actions of the Mossad in the past are shown in the following overview lists.

Successful operations

The Eichmann Trial (1961)
  • One of the first successes of the Mossad, which also earned it great recognition from Western intelligence agencies such as the CIA, was the procurement of the text of Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the XX. CPSU party congress (1956), which he obtained from a source in Warsaw. In the speech, Khrushchev condemned the personality cult of his predecessor Stalin .
  • In May 1960, the Mossad tracked down the German war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in "Operation Garibaldi" and abducted him to Israel (including from Rafi Eitan , who advised against attempting to arrest Josef Mengele at the same time ). Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem, sentenced to death and executed by hanging .
  • In the 1960s, the Mossad agent Eli Cohen succeeded in forwarding important information from the Syrian government and about strategically important positions of the Syrian army on the Golan Heights to Israel. Since all other transmitters were paralyzed due to a power failure and only Cohen's battery-operated transmitter was transmitting, the Syrian secret service was able to locate Cohen's transmitter and arrest him when he was sending a radio message to Tel Aviv. Cohen was tortured and, despite international efforts (including the Vatican ), hanged publicly as a spy in Damascus .
  • In 1962 and 1963, with the help of information from its agent Wolfgang Lotz , the Mossad carried out attacks on several German engineers who had been working on the Egyptian military missile program since 1959 . During the Nazi era, the engineers at the Peenemünde Army Research Center had developed rockets, including the V2 . Such activity in Germany was forbidden at the time due to Allied regulations. The engineer Heinz Krug disappeared in Munich in September 1962. An anonymous caller claimed he was dead; his body was not found (but his car was). In February 1963, electronics expert Hans Kleinwächter narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Loerrach - his car was blocked and he was shot at with a silenced pistol. A letter bomb sent to the engineer Wolfgang Pilz in Egypt cost his secretary's eyesight; another bomb a day later killed five people. Two Israeli agents were arrested in Switzerland when they threatened the daughter of rocket expert and professor Paul Goerke. Ultimately, under pressure from Ben-Gurion, the responsible Mossad leader, Harel, had to resign in order not to jeopardize cooperation with German authorities, and the Mossad's work on this matter was steered into more moderate channels. When the Egyptians instead cooperated with the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states such as the GDR in the mid-1960s , no further approach was necessary.
  • In 1962, the Mossad resolved the Jossele Schumacher affair , which at the time sparked a state crisis in Israel. An Orthodox Jewish rabbi kidnapped his grandson because he feared his parents would raise him secularly . The affair divided Israeli society and overshadowed the simultaneous Eichmann trial in Israel itself , so that the Mossad temporarily concentrated significant resources on the case. A group of Orthodox Jews hid the boy first in Europe and then in the United States. The search for the child was finally successful in New York.
MiG-21 in the Israeli Air Force Museum in Chazerim
  • On August 16, 1966, the Mossad succeeded in helping an Iraqi pilot to escape to Israel with his new MiG-21 (Operation Diamond). The MiG-21 was needed to train its own air force, which was equipped with French Mirage , on the faster accelerating enemy aircraft and to use the Mirage's higher maneuverability.
    In an air battle on April 7, 1967, the Israeli air force shot down six Syrian MiG-21s and did not lose a single aircraft of their own. Israel won the Six Day War (June 1967). A few months later, Israel loaned the MiG to the US. Because of the Vietnam War at the time , the USA was particularly interested in knowing the MiG-21 and its properties.
  • Charles de Gaulle , French President from 1959 to 1969, did not want to have 50 already paid and built Mirages delivered to Israel after the Six Day War (June 1967). In February 1968, a “Procurement Commission of the State of Israel in Paris” tried to get plans for the Mirage engines from the Swiss licensed manufacturer . After the Swiss company refused the sale, the Mossad bribed an employee of the Swiss company with 200,000 dollars and demonstratively got 47 quintals of files about the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel. It was also argued that this was done with the secret support of the French, who only officially refused to deliver weapons to Israel.
  • On Christmas night 1969 Mossad agents hijacked in the operation Noa eight missile boats , which in French Cherbourg had been built for Israel, which President Charles de Gaulle did not want to extradite. In November 1968 the 1142-GRT uranium freighter Scheersberg A served the Mossad in Operation Plumbat to transport uraninite . It is believed that a year later he served as a supply ship for the speedboats on their way to Israel.
  • On December 24, 1969, a Mossad command in Operation Rooster captured a seven-ton Soviet P-12 radar station belonging to the Egyptian air defense system, which could also detect aircraft in deep flight . The command brought the radar station to Israel; the crew - four Egyptian technicians - were kidnapped to Israel.
  • From 1969 to 1971 the Mossad was active in building the rebel army in South Sudan , where Christians and others resisted the oppression by the Islamic government in Khartoum. At first the Anya-Nya had little success and asked Western and African countries for help in vain. Finally, they turned to the Israelis. Golda Meir sympathized with her cause and asked the Mossad to take care of it. She saw the possibility of binding the Sudanese army and it was part of a strategy to open a second front on the periphery of the Arab states. Three Mossad agents, including Ben Uziel (known as John among the rebels ) as leader, were dispatched to check the feasibility. Eventually the rebel army was trained, armed and sabotage operations carried out. Only a few Israeli agents and several doctors were involved. Ben Uziel wrote a book about it and also worked on the rescue operation of Ethiopian Jews via Sudan in the 1980s (see below). Israel's cooperation with South Sudan continued after its declaration of independence in 2011. As part of the strategy of becoming active on the periphery of the Arab states, the Mossad also cultivated ties to Christian Ethiopia, Turkey, Iran, Christians in Lebanon and Kurds in Iraq .
  • On July 8, 1972, the Arab writer Ghassan Kanafani was killed by a bomb attached to his car by the Mossad after he had assumed the post of spokesman for the “ Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ” (PFLP). His niece also died.
  • After the terrorist organization Black September in Munich took eleven athletes from the Israeli Olympic team hostage on September 5, 1972 , and then killed them, the Mossad, under Golda Meir's instructions, formed the Caesarea special unit , whose task was to liquidate the assassins and whose alleged backer was. In the course of the actions known as Operation Wrath of God , Mossad commandos executed around 20 Palestinians, although their connection to the hostage-taking in Munich is partly controversial. The attacks, which were often carried out with bombs, not only killed target persons, but also companions and passers-by. The targeted, mistaken killing of an innocent person came to be known as the Lillehammer affair .
  • In 1973, as part of Operation Wrath of God , the operation spring of youth running, the killing of Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar and Kamal Adwan in Beirut. Since a number of targets of liquidation list in well-secured houses in Lebanon lived and was therefore not possible with previous methods, Caesarea launched the Operation Spring of Youth ( Operation Spring of Youth ). On the night of April 9-10, 1973, Sajeret-Matkal commandos, a team of paratroopers and one of the Schajetet 13 , the Israeli commando - combat swimmers , penetrated Beirut and Sidon . There they killed some high-ranking members of the PLO and Black September , u. a. Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar ( Abu Youssef ), the Black September command officer and PLO official, Kamal Adwan, a Black September command and intelligence officer and head of all terrorist operations on Israeli territory, and Kamal Nasser, the PLO spokesman. Youssef and his wife were killed by gunfire in their bathroom when a police force stormed their Beirut apartment.
  • Since 1969, the Mossad led Ashraf Marwan as an agent who, as Nasser's son-in-law and later close confidante of Sadat, had direct access to the Egyptian center of power, which thus became an open book for the Mossad. He was one of the most valuable agents of the Mossad, who warned Israel of the Egyptian attack shortly before the 1973 Yom Kippur War . The discovery of his identity in early 2003 through an indiscretion by the former head of the military intelligence service in Israel (who was deposed after the disaster of the Yom Kippur War) was perceived as a severe blow by the Mossad.
  • Operation Entebbe 1976 (first called Fireball, later named after the officer Yehonathan Netanyahu who was killed during the operation ), liberation of a hijacked Air France plane in Uganda that was launched in Tel Aviv. The Mossad was involved in the preparation, but it was led by the military intelligence service under Ehud Barak . The operation was carried out by the Israeli military, including the elite Sayeret Matkal unit .
  • On 7 June 1981, the Iraqi nuclear reactor Tammuz-1 (was Osirak ) of the Israeli Air Force destroyed after the Mossad had procured information about it.
  • The Mossad was instrumental in rescuing Ethiopian Jews ( Falaschen ) at risk from hunger and disease via Sudan to Israel ( Operation Moses ) The Ethiopian Jew Ferede Aklum had asked Israel for help in the late 1970s and the action was initiated by President Menachem Begin approved. The predominantly Islamic Sudan was an opponent of Israel at the time, so complete secrecy was required. For this purpose, the Mossad operated a mock diving base for tourists on the Red Sea coast in Arous (70 km north of Port Sudan ) from 1981 to the end of 1985 . This department was built up by Italians in 1974, but left after the operation. The refugees were brought from the camps near Gedaref in the south, about 900 km away, by truck to the vicinity of Arous at night and then on to ships of the Israeli navy in rubber dinghies. The dive center itself only served as a camouflage and logistical center for the agents who looked after tourists during the day and were so successful that the operation also helped finance the operation. After a group was almost exposed in 1982 by Sudanese soldiers patrolling the coast, the transport was shifted to Hercules machines , which secretly landed on a desert runway closer to Gedaref at night. A total of 17 flights were carried out. In 1984, due to famine in Sudan, evacuation became more urgent, and with the support of the Americans and bribes to President Jafar an-Numairi , permission was obtained to evacuate directly from Khartoum, subject to further complete secrecy. Around 6,400 more Ethiopian Jews were evacuated in 28 flights. In 1985 the operation became public and halted, except for one last flight, which took place on the intervention of President George W. Bush . After Numeiri was overthrown in a coup on April 6, 1985, the diving center was also dissolved and abandoned. Further operations followed in the following six years, so that a total of 18,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel.
  • In 1986 the Mossad kidnapped the Israeli nuclear engineer Mordechai Vanunu , who had passed information about the Israeli nuclear weapons program in Dimona to the press.
  • In 1988 the Mossad prepared for the assassination of Chalil Ibrahim al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) in Tunis.
  • In 1991 the Mossad took over Soviet tanks from NVA stocks from the BND and shipped them to Israel as "agricultural spare parts".
  • In October 1995 the Palestinian doctor and co-founder of " Islamic Jihad " Fathi Schakaki was shot dead in Malta .
  • In 2015, the Mossad helped UK MI5 seize three tons of ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in a bomb, stored in ice packs from Hezbollah in London .
  • In April 2018, it became known that the Mossad had stolen around half a ton of top-secret archival material from a warehouse owned by the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency. The documents indicated that Iran had plans to produce highly enriched uranium and build an atomic bomb.

Failed operations

The Mossad's failures and deficiencies in education include the very brief warning about the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the failure to predict the war between Iran and Iraq in 1980 and its end in 1988, and the failure to warn of the Intifada in 1987.

  • In the past, Mossad agents were repeatedly arrested with forged passports or while trying to steal real papers by stealing false facts, which in each case led to diplomatic resentment between Israel and the nation concerned. This happened, for example, in 1981 in London and in 2004 in New Zealand (whereby the agents Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, the latter former head of Nevioth, were exposed).
  • During the so-called " Operation Plumbat " (from the Latin word "plumbum", meaning lead), Germany was suspected of engaging in secret uranium deals. In fact, the owner of the ship that was to be used to ship Yellowcake was Dan Ert (aka Dan Aerbel), an Israeli who worked for the Mossad. He was arrested in Norway in 1973 as part of the Lillehammer affair .
  • In 1973, Mossad agents mistakenly killed the Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki , who they believed was Ali Hassan Salameh , one of the people responsible for the hostage-taking in Munich, in the latter operation . Five Israeli agents were sentenced to prison terms by a Norwegian court.
  • In 1996, intelligence officer Yehuda Gil reported that the relocation of the Syrian Army's 14th Division was part of a plan to retake the Golan Heights in a surprise attack. Gil's deliberately falsified analysis was passed on to the Americans, which after the affair became known, had lasting damage to the reputation of the Mossad in the USA, which is friendly with Israel, and elsewhere.
  • In 1997, a planned poison attack on Hamas leader Chalid Maschal in Jordan failed . According to a statement by Rafi Eitan , a former Mossad agent leader, the failure was due to insufficient training of the agents involved. The agents struck contrary to instructions when the Hamas leader was with them. He was sprayed on the street with a variant of fentanyl that was supposed to cause death after a few days without leaving any traces. The agents were arrested, Israel had to provide an antidote under diplomatic pressure and the agents were exchanged for Hamas leader Ahmad Yasin . Various political concessions were also made to Jordan.
  • In 1998 an attempted eavesdropping failed in Liebefeld near Bern, Switzerland . During the action, the agents were so loud that the police were alerted and could surprise and arrest them.

Unclear or controversial Mossad holdings

The involvement of the service is assumed by different parties in the following operations, but of course cannot or cannot be conclusively proven:

  • The murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels in 1990 . Bull was a Canadian weapons engineer who wanted to develop a "super cannon" for Iraq .
  • Possibly involved in the death of the Russian chemical weapons general Anatoly Demjanowitsch Kunzewitsch in 2002 on his return trip from Syria. He officially died of a heart attack.
  • Longstanding support for Kurdish rebels, especially the training of special forces for the secret infiltration of Syrian and Iranian territory (the border regions are largely Kurdish). Experts estimate that the region's aspirations for independence (especially from Iraq and parts of eastern Turkey) pose a major threat to stability in the Middle East.
  • A series of car bomb attacks in Lebanon , in which Mahmoud al-Majzoub was killed in Sidon on May 25, 2006, among others . The Lebanese secret service arrested the police officer Mahmoud Rafeh in June 2006 . According to Lebanese sources, he is said to have admitted that, as the leader of a terrorist cell, he had carried out deadly attacks in Lebanon on behalf of the Mossad for years. The Lebanese government wants to bring the case to the UN Security Council and hand over the results of the investigation by its secret service to the UN special investigator Serge Brammertz , who is investigating the attack on the vehicle convoy of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri .
Room of the Rotana Hotel (Dubai) where Mahmud al-Mabhuh was murdered.
  • The murder of Hamas leader Mahmud al-Mabhuh , who was found suffocated on January 20, 2010 in a hotel room in Dubai . Dubai police later presented video recordings of the alleged killers' conduct before and after the crime. This gave the assassination unusually heavy media coverage.
  • The kidnapping of the engineer Dirar Abu Sisi , deputy head of the Gaza Strip's only power station . Abu Sisi disappeared on February 18, 2011 under previously unexplained circumstances while on a trip to Ukraine . On March 20, 2011, the Israeli authorities admitted that they had the engineer under their control.
  • Development of the Stuxnet computer worm and its introduction into Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, possibly in cooperation with the CIA .
  • The Mossad is accused of murdering Masoud Alimohammadi, Ardeshir Hosseinpour , Majid Shahriari , Darioush Rezaeinejad and Ahmadi-Roshan. The aforementioned people are scientists who worked on the Iranian nuclear program . It is also believed that the Mossad was also behind the attempted attack on Fereydoon Abbasi .

Some speculations belong to the realm of conspiracy theories , such as the alleged involvement in the death of Uwe Barschel (represented mainly by Victor Ostrovsky ) and the British media publisher Robert Maxwell (the motive given here is that he was opposed to an alleged involvement of the Mossad in the coup Mikhail Gorbachev would have known and in the course of a dispute over money had threatened to make this public) or even an alleged involvement of the Mossad in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . The Mossad is therefore often the object and argument of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which want to see the Jewish state behind many discrepancies in the world.

Relationships with allies

Hijacking of speedboats of the later Sa'ar-1 class to Israel

The Mossad developed close ties with the CIA, headed by James Jesus Angleton , who was a strong advocate of cooperation. What made an impression on Western intelligence services during the Cold War against the Soviet Union was that the Mossad was able to get the Khrushchev speech from 1956 and that in 1966 it received access to a Soviet MiG fighter jet and made the information available to Western intelligence services.

The affair over German missile experts in Egypt led to considerable burdens before diplomatic relations were established between West Germany and Israel, especially because the Mossad did not shy away from attacks in West Germany at the time. In 1963, Isser Harel resigned as head of the Mossad, which the Israeli opposition heavily criticized. The resignation of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in June 1963 was indirectly related to this. Regardless of this, there is a long tradition of Israeli-German arms cooperation that the Mossad helped to oversee.

The Lawon affair and Operation Plumbat show examples of conflicts with other European states, particularly France, in which the Mossad played a role. Before 1969, the main military support for Israel came from France, Czechoslovakia and Germany. Due to the political upheaval in France after the Six Day War in 1969 and the independence of Algeria in 1962, Charles de Gaulle announced an arms boycott against Israel in 1969. In Operation Cherbourg , Mossad agents in France hijacked express boats built with German technology from France to Israel.

After that, the Israelis' cooperation with the USA and its Central Intelligence Agency was intensified. Nevertheless, there were several irritations in relations with the US secret services, for example with the NSA in 1967 when its ship USS Liberty was attacked during the Six Day War , which resulted in several deaths. Although this was officially downplayed by the US government, it caused sustained upset in US intelligence circles. The secret service relations with the USA were also heavily burdened in the mid-1980s by the affair of Jonathan Pollard , a member of the US Navy secret service who was spying for Israel and who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the USA in 1986 . He betrayed u. a. numerous CIA agents, as well as the American wiretapping and satellite observation methods against Israel and the attack plans of American submarines against the Soviet Union . As a result, some US agents are said to have been exposed in the Soviet Union. After the Israeli government had long denied Pollard's espionage activity, it finally announced in 1998 under Benjamin Netanyahu that he was not working for the Mossad as initially assumed. Pollard is said to have worked for the Lakam secret service, which has since been disbanded as a result of the affair . Pollard's officer in charge, Rafi Eitan , who was dismissed in the course of the affair, was involved in the Mossad in, among other things, the Eichmann kidnapping and the affair of the freighter Scheersberg, which was diverted with uranium material.

The Mossad also worked in secret with Arab governments. In 1965, they helped the Moroccan King Hassan II to lure the oppositionist Ben Barka from Switzerland to France. He was supposed to be meeting a film producer in Paris. The French, who worked with the Moroccans, handed him over to the Moroccans who shot him. The reason for the cooperation was security for the Moroccan Jews.

literature

  • Ronen Bergman : The Shadow War. Israel and the Mossad's secret killings. DVA, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-421-04596-6 .
  • Ian Black, Benny Morris : Israel's Secret Wars. A History of Israel's Intelligence Services. London 1991 (German edition: Mossad - Shin Bet - Aman. Palmyra, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-930378-02-7 ).
  • Éric Denécé, David Elkaim: Les services secréts israéliens. Aman, Mossad et Shin Beth , Tallandier 2014
  • Markus Glatzel: The Mossad. A dossier on Israeli foreign intelligence. Grin, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-638-84954-6 .
  • Janusz Piekałkiewicz : Israel's Long Arm - History of the Israeli Secret Services and Command Companies. Goverts, Frankfurt 1975.
  • Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan , Eli Landau: The Mossad inside stories: Israel's secret intelligence service. Paddington Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-448-22201-9 .
  • Wolfgang Lotz alias Rusty Bey alias Major (ret.) Zeev Gur-Arieh: Handbuch für Spione. Moewig, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-8118-6615-X .
  • Erich Follath : The Eye of David. The Israelis' secret commandos. Gruner and Jahr, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-570-01777-X .
  • Ephraim Kahana: Historical dictionary of Israeli Intelligence , Scarecrow Press 2006
  • Victor Ostrovsky : The Mossad. 5th edition, Goldmann, Munich 2000: The Mossad. An ex-agent reveals actions and methods of the Israeli secret service. ISBN 3-442-15066-3 (first representation of the service of a former katsa; in the original: By way of deception: The making and unmaking of a Mossad Officer. New York City 1990).
  • Victor Ostrovsky: In the service of the Mossad. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-455-05829-9 .
  • Victor Ostrovsky: Mossad Secret Files. Goldmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-442-12658-4 .
  • Michael Opperskalski : Mossad: Israel's hit man and secret agent. Unrast, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-928300-87-3 .
  • Ronald Payne: Mossad. Israel's most secret service. Straube, Erlangen 1991, ISBN 3-927491-41-1 .
  • Dan Raviv, Yossi Melman : The History of the Mossad. The rise and fall of the Israeli intelligence service. Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05805-4 .
  • Gordon Thomas : The Mossad Files. Israel's secret service and its shadow warriors. Knaur Taschenbuch 77540, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-426-77540-9 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Mossad  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nissim Mischal, Michael Bar-Zohar : Mossad: Missions of the Israeli Secret Service . Bastei Entertainment, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7325-1379-6 , pp. 34 ( Google Books ).
  2. ↑ a b c Peter Münch: The new Mossad boss - they call him "the model". Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 9, 2015, accessed on January 31, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Official website of the Mossad (English)
  4. ^ Gideon Levy: The Mossad's new mission: Mideast peace . In: Haaretz from December 5, 2010; English, accessed April 29, 2013.
  5. ↑ a b Mossad, About
  6. ↑ a b Chaim Levinson, A Golden Age for the Mossad: More Targets, More Ops, More Money, Haaretz , August 26, 2018
  7. ↑ a b c d e Ephraim Kahana, Historical dictionary of Israeli intelligence, Scarecrow Press, 2006
  8. ^ History of the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service
  9. ↑ Ephraim Kahana: Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence . The Scarecrow Press, Lanford / Toronto / Oxford 2006, p. 192 f.
  10. ↑ This is how the secret killings of the Mossad work Der Spiegel issue 4/2018
  11. ↑ Israelnetz.de of January 24, 2018: The Mossad, the Nazis and the rockets - Showdown on the Nile
  12. ↑ www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
  13. ^ Janusz Piekałkiewicz : Israel's long arm - history of the Israeli secret services and commandos. Goverts, Frankfurt 1975.
  14. ^ The Israeli Air Force. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .
  15. ^ Yossi Melman, Intelligence Report: The Mossad's own 'Tarzan' , Jerusalem Post, December 31, 2015
  16. ^ J. Bowyer Bell: Assassin: Theory and Practice of Political Violence. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2005, ISBN 1-4128-0509-0 , p. 138.
  17. ↑ The case is presented in Uri Ben-Joseph: The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, Harper 2016
  18. ↑ Raffi Berg, Red Sea Diving Resort: The holiday village run by spies , BBC, August 5, 2019
  19. ↑ Gad Shimron, Mossad Exodus. The daring undercover rescue of the lost jewish tribe, Jerusalem: Gefen 2007
  20. ↑ Already carving the coffins. In: Der Spiegel. 45/1995, November 6, 1995.
  21. ↑ Mossad uncovered Hezbollah explosives storage facility in London. In: Israelnetz .de. June 11, 2019, accessed June 26, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Netanyahu "exposes" Iran's "lies" about its nuclear program. In: Israelnetz .de. May 1, 2018, accessed November 12, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Kahana, Historical dictionary of Israeli intelligence, 2006, section Chronology
  24. ↑ The case is presented in Paul McGeough, Kill Khalid, Allen and Unwin 2009
  25. ↑ “ Biblical Plague. Disgrace in Bern: the failed Mossad eavesdropping attack in Switzerland reveals the decline of the legendary secret service. “, Der Spiegel , March 2, 1998.
  26. ^ Gary Younge: Israelis 'using Kurds to build power base'. In: The Guardian. June 21, 2004 (English).
  27. ↑ Hans Leyendecker: Mossad, a myth with scratches. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 19, 2010.
  28. ↑ Joseph Croitoru: The Media and the Mossad: Liquidating with Style . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. March 17, 2010.
  29. ^ Rainer Hermann and Hans-Christian Rößler: Dubai: Murder in room 230 In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. March 17, 2010.
  30. ^ "Mossad kidnaps Palestinians" . In: Sueddeutsche.de , March 22, 2011. Accessed March 29, 2011.
  31. ↑ Ethan Bronner, William J. Broad: In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue. In: NYTimes. September 29, 2010, accessed October 2, 2010 .
  32. ↑ Ulrike Putz: Attack on nuclear scientists in Iran . In: Spiegel Online , SpiegelNet GmbH, January 11, 2012. Retrieved January 15, 2020. 
  33. ^ Geopolitical Diary: Israeli Covert Operations in Iran . Stratfor . February 2, 2007. Archived from the original on September 6, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved on February 4, 2007: "The article will only be sent to the email address." @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stratfor.com
  34. ^ BITS website on the topic, Special Relationships, The German-Israeli Armaments Cooperation by Otfried Nassauer
  35. ↑ Thomas, Gordon: Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (1999)
  36. ^ Bamford: The puzzle palace: a report on America's most secret agency. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1982, ISBN 0-395-31286-8 .
  37. ↑ US Jews outraged by Israel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1996 ( online - Mar. 16, 1987 ).

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