Operation pirate booty

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The operation pirate booty (ger .: Operation Pirate's Booty ) was carried out in August 1948 action by the Israeli Navy to the Argiro to capture and charge, rifles and ammunition that the Palestinian Arab forces in Palestine war to capture were determined.

prehistory

As early as the spring of 1948, the arms delivery, 8,000 rifles and around 10 million rounds of ammunition, were bought by Husseini's agent in Czechoslovakia . Due to the arms embargo imposed on the Jewish and Arab warring parties in Palestine , the arms shipment was officially bought by Syria and was supposed to be delivered to Syria. From there the weapons were supposed to be smuggled overland to Palestine. As a result of a Mossad campaign , the cargo ship Lino with the weapon load was sunk in the port of Bari on April 10, 1948 by the Ha'Chulya divers Dror, Kravitz and Falick. Due to the good packaging, weapons and ammunition were hardly damaged by the sea water. By early August 1948, the Syrians were able to recover the cargo from the wreckage of the Lino , process it and prepare it for transport. For the shipment, the Syrian officer Mardam Bey, a relative of the then Syrian Prime Minister Jamil Mardam Bey , hired the Italian two-masted cutter Argiro , which was supposed to transport the cargo to Egypt .

Operation "pirate booty"

Due to the recovery and processing of the arms delivery, it continued to pose a threat to Israel, so that measures were required again. After the founding of the state of Israel and the establishment of the Israeli Navy, the responsibility for planning and implementation lay with the naval management and no longer with the Mossad. Here it was decided not to destroy the weapons, but to loot them and use them in the war of independence.

At first it was planned to smuggle undercover Mossad agents into the Argiro's crew and take over the ship on the crossing. However, this plan proved impracticable. Instead, two Italian mechanics were recruited who were supposed to shut down the engine after the departure due to an advanced technical defect . On this occasion, two agents disguised as Italian naval officers were to board the Argiro in a small boat and take over command. The two Palyam veterans David Ben-Chorin and Oved Sadeh were commissioned to do this .

The “Operation Pirate Loot” went according to plan. Due to minor repairs, the two Italian mechanics were able to reduce the driving speed. Sadeh and Ben-Chorin came aboard the Argiro and claimed they had to take command on behalf of the Italian government. The captain and his entire crew fell for the deception and handed over command of the ship without resistance. Any doubts about the credibility of the naval officers due to the poor Italian they spoke could be dispelled two days later: Sadeh and Ben-Chorin now claimed that they were actually Egyptians and had the task of piloting the ship through the eastern Mediterranean. which had been very mine-contaminated since the Second World War .

Falsified radio contact with Syria suppressed further suspicions; in reality the radio contact was with the Israeli headquarters in Rome and Israel. Mardam Bey and his staff, however, received no more reports from the Argiro . He suspected that he had lost the ship, but had no idea how and where that could have happened. Meanwhile, a heated discussion took place in the Israeli naval leadership as to how the operation could be brought to a conclusion. The result was the decision that the Argiro should be "intercepted" by the two corvettes K-18 Wedgwood and K-20 Haganah away from Crete. The Italian crew should be taken into custody and the alleged Egyptian officers arrested. The implementation took place according to plan. After the weapon load was reloaded onto the corvettes, the Argiro was sunk.

Effects

Back in Israel, the weapons and ammunition were quickly forwarded to the combat zones, where they had a very important, and according to some reports, decisive influence on the further course of the war.

For the Syrians, this loss was a severe disgrace, for which Mardam Bey was personally held responsible. He was accused of treason . The Syrian press reported that Mardam Bey had been seduced by a Czech Jew who persuaded him to hand over the Argiro with her cargo to Israel.

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