"Choose a lead actor clown" • "This is a trending, immoral and dishonest series" • "Take me back to the dark" • Nadia Cohen against the series about her husband Eli and the former head of the Mossad
"For a month and a half, after he last went to Syria, my eyes were red."
Nadia Cohen
Photo:
Efrat Eshel
"What would I do differently if I could? I would break Eli's leg on his last day at home. Let him be without a leg, but let him stay. Let him be in a wheelchair, but alive. Let him see his sons, the grandchildren. Let him stay with me. I cry for it." .
Nadia Cohen, the widow of the most famous Israeli spy in the history of the State of Israel, is furious.
We are sitting in the garden of her well-kept house in Herzliya Pituach.
In the distance an ambulance siren sounds, a bee buzz cuts through the air, but Nadia is in her own world.
She's been in her own world for 54 years.
She, and me.
The official trailer for the series about the life of the spy Eli Cohen
The TV series "The Spy", which aired a few weeks ago on Netflix and allegedly tells the story of the Israeli spy, caused the old demons to reappear.
She was not happy about the dramatic adaptation of her man's character.
On the contrary, she would have preferred the series to never air, not tell "half-truths that lie," not remind her of the institution, which did not accept responsibility for Cohen's death, the then head of the organization, Meir Amit, whom she blames in harsh words about the circumstances To his death, and the most painful fact - Eli's body is still buried somewhere in Syria.
At 84, it is difficult for her to maintain optimism.
To all the articles, columns and sections of Shishvat
Only five years had passed from the moment Eli came to Syria for the first time, to the last time Nadia saw him, and she does not seem to have forgotten a fraction of a second of their short time together.
In the 54 years since his death, she has dedicated her life to commemorating him.
Pious scores
Eli Cohen was born in December 1924 in Alexandria, Egypt.
He attended the Jewish school in the city, and was later accepted to study engineering at the University of Alexandria.
In 1944 he joined the Zionist movement and began working for Egyptian Jewry.
Two years earlier, the Jews in his city were in great danger.
A little over a hundred miles away, one of the decisive battles of World War II, the Battle of El Alamein II, took place, during which the British stopped the Nazis.
Had the results of the battle been different, it is possible that the Jews of Alexandria would soon have been led to extermination.
"Eli knew that," says Nadia.
"The Jews were very afraid of the Nazis, who were very close, and he took a large part in the activities in Egypt, on behalf of various Zionist organizations."
"I was asked not to ask." Nadia and Eli Cohen
He continued his Zionist activities even after the establishment of the state.
His contacts with Israeli intelligence began in 1954, when he rented an apartment in Egypt on his behalf, which was used by members of the "bad business" cell.
The two squad leaders, Moshe Marzuk and Shmuel Ezer, were executed by hanging, and six other members were sentenced to long prison terms.
Cohen was also questioned by the Egyptians, but cleared of suspicion of espionage.
In 1957, three years after the affair shook the State of Israel and the entire Middle East, he immigrated to Israel.
In 1959 he married Nadia, an immigrant from Iraq, and the sister of the writer Sami Michael.
In May 1960, Cohen was drafted into Unit 188, the IDF Intelligence Division's operational unit, and trained as a spy. He learned to pass on information, track suspects and refrain from surveillance. A year later he was sent to Argentina, where an Arab merchant named Kamel Amin was built for him. He contacted key figures in the Syrian community, and in January 1962 he first went to Damascus.
The creators of the Netflix series stressed from the beginning that they do not rely one hundred percent on history, and that certain scenes were invented to amplify the drama component.
But Nadia claims the series is "shallow and full of lies."
In the first episode of the series, Cohen is presented as a frustrated citizen, who works at Mashbir Latzarhan as an accountant.
In one of the first scenes, Nadia (Hadar Ratzon-Rotem) and Eli (Sasha Baron Cohen) are seen talking to each other before bed, and he flatters her with his great frustration: "They are arrogant about us, everyone. With their silly parties and their childish music. They have no idea what I did. "In Egypt, they think I'm just another immigrant."
In the series, Nadia answers him: "If you do not tell, how will they know? You sit quietly in the corner and expect everyone to guess", and Eli adds: "Do you know what they see when they look at me? They see an Arab. That's all. A Jew, yes, but only an Arab ".
"Is this the character that represents Eli ?!" Sasha Baron Cohen as Eli Cohen
Nadia tells a completely different story.
"Eli was a frustrated employee at Mashbir Latzarhan?"
She grins.
"It was planned! The Mossad put him to work in Mashbir, to prepare him for departure. Since his character in Syria was that of a wealthy merchant, knowledge of accounting helped him assimilate. He was not in Mashbir by chance.
"He was trained at home. An Mossad man would come to our house in Bat Yam and sit with him for hours on end, make long conversations with him. There is no mention of it. Eli would bring home a decoding job. I did not know what he was going to do, I did not know what his role "But there was no doubt that he did not work at Mashbir Latzarhan."
You did not ask him what he was doing?
"I was asked not to ask. Eli asked me not to listen or see. He said he was doing what he was doing for me, for the children. 'Look and ignore,' he said. 'Listen and take it out of your other ear.' And I heard his voice."
In other scenes in the series, Cohen is portrayed as too eager to perform the tasks assigned to him.
In one of them he was seen stealing a camera from a man at the Syrian embassy in Argentina to transfer material to an institution, and was almost caught.
The scene ends with the death of a person who followed him.
In another scene, he risks his life when he reaches the border in the Golan Heights and reveals to a random Israeli farmer that Syria is planning action against Israel.
According to the description, it seemed to be a miracle that Cohen had not been caught before.
For Nadia, these are blatant lies, with one goal in mind: to tarnish her name and strengthen the version that, according to her, various elements in the institution have built for many years.
"When I watched the series I got sick. Every segment I saw was like a slap in the face. Action? It's not an action, it's a mudslide on the character. Sometimes he is portrayed as a hero, and once as an irresponsible person. Those who made the series will die and not hear about them. "They will hear about them, but they will always remember Eli. He was a hero."
Annoying shallowness
What angered you the most?
"Everything. The shallowness, the main actor, who does not represent the character of Eli, and also the other actors. This is a cheap series, of children. Shame and disgrace.
"When I first heard that the series was going to be made, I was afraid. I was afraid of the actor, who in his films walked the streets and roads in a bathing suit ('Borat'; HG).
clown.
Is this the character that represents Eli ?!
"I was presented as a pale, miserable young woman working as a seamstress. I worked? Who could work? Three babies, without funding. We had no food for the grocery store.
"They hinted that there was someone in the institution who wanted a sexual relationship with me. It's insulting. Like I was someone waiting for someone to sleep with her. What should it be? In real life I showed the institution people who tried something who Nadia was. There was a representative of the organization, who would bring home the poor salary. "I saw him sit up and not get up from the couch. I showed him my pregnant belly, I held Sophie in my arms and I told him, 'I need to put the girls to bed. Bye bye.'"
"Half-truths that are great lie." Sasha Baron Cohen and Hadar Ratzon-Rotem in "Eli"
The series features agent Dan Peleg (played by Noah Emrich) as he stays with you at night and takes care of your childhood while you sleep.
"What suddenly ?! Me? There is no such thing. I was not a rag. I was a woman with pride. That someone would touch me or fantasize about me? I would have beheaded him."
What did you think of the intimate scenes that show you and Eli?
"It's very ugly. What am I, the woman in red? Eli was a humble man, kissing a mezuzah. Other than Eli I did not know anyone else, and I did not want to meet or see another man. This series is not educational, not moral and not honest."
The creators said they talked to family members. Have you met any of them?
"What suddenly? What can I tell them? They told us from the beginning that they did not cooperate with us, because they took information from the institution. This is a trending series, a failure for directors, actors, and those who collaborated at the institution."
She agrees on one thing presented in the series: the treatment she and her husband received in the first decade of the existence of the State of Israel was disgraceful, she said, due to their Oriental origins.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, there were Ashkenazis and there were Sephardim. They trampled us, Eli's aura while he was in Syria. While he gaped a 50-ton pit inside Syria, they claimed he was 'Spanish.' He was not good enough for Mossad officials.
"But no one can take from me the glory, the Zionism, the love of the state and the people. He has left a mark: after my death I am still alive."
The last task
During his years in Syria, first under the Intelligence Division and later under the Mossad, Cohen passed on invaluable information to Israel.
"Kamel Amin Thabet" befriended senior military officials and statesmen at the top of the Syrian government.
He gathered information, among other things, about Syria's intention to sabotage the national carrier and divert the waters of the Jordanian sources, and provided intelligence that allowed the IDF to attack Syria without entering into a confrontation with the enemy.
The information he provided in real time saved the lives of many and helped the IDF tip the scales in his favor even years after he was captured. Even during the Six Day War, two years after his execution, the IDF used the information it provided about the Syrian army to occupy the Golan Heights quickly and without casualties. .
In September 1964, Cohen visited Israel for the last time.
His daughter Sophie was then 4 years old, Irit was two years old, and Nadia was in her third pregnancy, with son Shai.
"I remember how he smelled the children when he came to visit. He stroked them, ran with them. When Sophie was a one-year-old baby, in 1961, he brought her two dresses of similar colors and made her hocus pocus, confusing her. She burst out laughing. She pulled. "He was in a shirt, and he thought he was fainting. He missed him so much."
In December of that year Cohen set out on his last mission, from which he never returned.
According to one version, the Syrians, whose means of sabotage in the national carrier were destroyed, realized that there was a spy among them and began to use electronic means to find him.
According to another version, which some oppose, in January 1965 a cargo of modern Soviet radios arrived at the port of Latakia, intended to replace the old equipment of the Syrian army.
To make the switch, it was decided to impose wireless silence on the Syrian army's communications systems, but Cohen, unaware of this, continued to broadcast to his operators as usual, and the Syrian army receivers were locked to the broadcast signal and decoded.
This is also the official version that appears on the "Yizkor" page on the Ministry of Defense website.
Fighter No. 88, as he was called at the Mossad, was severely tortured by the Syrians, and in May 1965 was hanged in Marja Square (Shahidim Square) in Damascus.
His body was buried in an unknown location, and according to the Syrians, it was even moved several times, so that it would not be found by Israel.
Despite repeated requests, to this day Syria refuses to return its remains to Israel.
This is where the sharpest disagreements between senior officials at the Mossad and the Cohen family begin regarding the circumstances of Cohen's death, and moreover - regarding the question of who is to blame for his last sending to Syria despite the obvious risk to his life.
In interrogations carried out after his arrest, his operatives testified that he was in an upbeat mood before embarking on the final mission, but Nadia believes the opposite is true.
"Eli was dead walking the last time I saw him. He went to the institution one morning, and another person came back, lifeless.
"A very senior person at the Mossad admitted that Eli was blackmailed like a lemon, he told me that there was no intelligence body in the country - military, civilian, Mossad, GSS, Air Force, Navy - that he did not want information from.
Expose it too much.
"Meir Amit, the head of the Mossad, returned him to Syria even though Eli received threats on his life and the lives of his family. I say this with complete confidence. All the heads of the Mossad, except for its operator, Gedalia Halaf, pushed to send Eli back to Syria against Eli's feeling. "Gedalia was angry and said that he should not be sent. He was punished for that, he paid a heavy and cruel price for this decision in terms of promotion."
Even today, many years after Amit's death, she blames him for not accepting responsibility for Cohen's death.
"From the first moment, Meir Amit blamed Eli for his perception, shrugged the responsibility off his shoulders. He claimed that because he broadcast too much, he was caught. I will never forget that he made Eli show his despair inside the house, his fear of death.
"Until now, he is taking revenge on us, through his shoe polishers, people he brought into the institution. Sons and friends of the workers, who behave like in the port of Ashdod. To this day they continue to lead the line that Eli himself is guilty of being caught, not the fact that the institution made serious mistakes. The reality on the ground is betraying us and lying to us.
"Eli was tremendous. He proved his abilities immense. No one imagined he would reach the position he reached. There was no such person before or after him. He bought the hearts of the Syrians, bought their souls. They opened their mouths, opened the gates of the state. Their and gave him everything.
"Within a short period of time he was able to bring information, strip Syria and leave it naked in all areas - military, economic and intelligence. And that is what scared the people in the Mossad. They were afraid that one day he would become the head of the Mossad. It stabbed them in the head.
"The last time he left the house, it was the first time I cried." Eli Cohen
"I remember his superiors' lack of appreciation, their cruelty, and the fact that they did not honor their commitment to keep him. They said he was not in danger, that they were behind him, and betrayed him. The Syrians did their job, for what he took from them he paid, but Here, in Israel, he was sentenced to death.
"When he left the house for the last time, it was the first time I cried. I held him, hugged him and pinned him to my heart. He looked at me and said, 'You never cried.' He said goodbye to me, said goodbye to the girls. For a month and a half after he left for Syria, his eyes. Mine were red. "
"Like it's not over"
In 2015, an earthquake occurred inside the institution.
In a ceremony held at the President's House to mark the 50th anniversary of Cohen's execution, the then head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo, admitted that his return to Syria was a grave mistake.
"For three whole years I have lived in the shadow of danger," Fredo said.
"Three years in which he was exposed, alone in the turret, returning to his home in Damascus and transmitting to Israel the information he collected. To this day, the circumstances of his exposure and fall remain a mystery. In retrospect, Nadia, it is clear that his last return to Syria was a mistake.
"In the field of covert warfare, we know that from the moment the operation begins, we are in the countdown to its end. The commanders' wisdom is to discern when it is necessary to say 'Enough, stop, go home.' This is not a simple distinction at all - and when you make a mistake, the price is very expensive. "We did not live up to our commitment to bring Eli home safely to his family and country."
Nadia warmly praises the last heads of the Mossad - Meir Dagan, Tamir Pardo and Yossi Cohen, who, according to her, changed the line of their predecessors in office.
"Meir Dagan hugged us, knew how Eli was caught and died. But there are officials who continue to tell lies, spread the message that Eli was irresponsible.
"I know these people, who gave the information to Netflix. They claimed that the Syrians held his hands because he wanted to commit suicide when he was caught, and that he broadcast when he was not supposed to broadcast.
"For 25 years after he was caught they left us on pennies, hungry for bread, and today it's not over. Lies. Lie to me, lie to me, lie to grandchildren. Thank you. Ask for forgiveness."
How do you explain the fact that even today they are trying to obscure the real story?
"They were not used to a woman getting up and talking. When someone was caught and executed in Arab countries, they shot or ran over him, they told his parents he died in a car accident. I did not cooperate.
"How can you hide such a thing? Where is the conscience, where is the sensitivity? These men go home to their children after work. They hug their children, do kiddush with them on Saturday, do them a birthday, a bar mitzvah, a wedding. Shame on you, in front of orphans and a woman Widow.and how Eli dies? In whose hands? Until now they give us slaps in the face.
"We appreciate the people who made Mali a hero, but we did not get to enjoy it. I cry for him, for my children and for myself. He missed us so much, and did not let him stay. Now defame him? Shame on you.
"If I die, my children will stand up and say it. And when they die, the grandchildren will continue the legacy. We pass on to each other the sad, cruel and unbelievable story that happened to us."
"We are waiting for her body"
From time to time her voice broke.
It is clear that even after decades, the pain has not faded.
In July 2018, the Mossad revealed that it had managed to obtain Cohen's wristwatch, which was offered for sale online, apparently by a man in Syria.
"With the return of the clock to Israel, research and intelligence operations were carried out, at the end of which it was unequivocally determined that it was indeed Eli Cohen's clock," it was reported at the time.
The family members rarely talked about the way the clock was discovered, and even now, Nadia skimps on words.
"It's a story I do not want to tell. It was very moving, as if this watch breathed Eli's skin. I know there was an effort to get it. I know it cost money, but there are things that should not be said."
Eli Cohen's watch, which was returned to his family a year ago // Photo: Efrat Eshel
I guess you did not believe that after so many years you would get something from him, a reminder of the past.
"We are waiting for her body."
Do you believe she will be returned?
"I want to believe," she says after a long silence.
"I think the state is not doing enough to bring it back. They are not helping us enough."
Forgot you?
"We do not have blue eyes. We do not have an elite behind us. We have asked dozens of defense ministers, prime ministers and presidents to remind Eli when they talk about the prisoners and the missing. But we have never heard that."
A year ago, in an almost desperate move, Nadia publicly addressed the Syrian president, al-Assad.
In a speech at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, summarizing the treatment of the wounded by Israel, she said: "I had correspondence with Bashar 18 years ago. We wrote to him, photographed the children and grandchildren for him. We asked him to spare us and bring the body. He replied. Time. ”There were also two words of consolation.
"I turn to you from here with love, may there be peace in your homeland. And at the same time, I beg for mercy. Release Eli, release the bones. I am not young. His mother died in old age, without having seen her son's grave.
"Look at us differently. Forgive. Reach out to us and give us a grave. May we have peace, and may Eli also feel that he is in his land."
Do you believe he will accede to your request?
"No. But after so many years, there's nothing worth trying."
The Syrians claim they do not know where he is.
"They know. It's their revenge. They know where I am, and it's time they brought him back. Chances are it's going to happen when I'm no longer here. I cried for his mother, who went and did not win. So I was still young and I believed I would surely see him. "Today I am 84 years old, and he is not with us."
Did it hurt you when you heard that Baumel's body, which had been found in Syria, had been returned?
"I cried, shouted and called the institution. I asked why they did not bring Eli back either. Zechariah Baumel has a family, parents who lost their most precious of all. I cried with them. An outsider is unable to feel this pain. It is like a person's finger is cut from him."
"Dreamed of being the head of the Mossad"
"I am writing to you these last words, in the hope that you will always remain united," Cohen Landia wrote in his last letter, just before he was executed.
"I ask my wife to forgive me, to take care of herself and to give our children a good education. A day will come and my children will be proud of me.
"And to you, my dear Nadia, you are allowed to marry another man for the sake of being a father to our children. In this matter you are completely free. I ask you not to mourn what has happened, but to look to the future. I send you last kisses. Pray for my soul."
I ask Mandia to see the letter, but she refuses, "you will find it elsewhere."
The letter is hers alone.
"He wanted to take care of me because he felt I was going to disappoint me. He felt I had made the arduous journey with him. Over the years I could not turn to anyone, cry. I cried on the pillow. I could not say bad for me. And he knew it."
She never remarried.
Refused to move on and made the commemoration of her husband the mission of her life.
In Bat Yam, where they lived, a large street was named after Eli Cohen, as were other streets in the country and schools.
Even the light rail station in Bat Yam will bear his name.
These days she is helping to establish a museum in his memory in the new city hall in Herzliya, where details about his life and death will be displayed.
"Soldiers, students and the general public will come to learn about his character, about Zionism."
And also on sacrifice.
"It's hard for me to say sacrifice, because he wanted to live. He did not believe he would die."
What do you want them to remember from him?
"The love of the country and its people. The beauty of it. Its modesty. It had so much desire to help, it was in its mind to keep the country, to give it, to embrace it.
"Today he would ask 'Why did I do what I did?'
"How the country has changed. But I leave these things and look at the good. I know there are good people, who do everything for our country and protect it. I adore these people."
"I'm looking at the sky - maybe he's sailing over me, over my kids' houses." Nadia Cohen Photo: Efrat Eshel
Do you think that today's youth know who Eli Cohen is?
"We try to pass on his legacy. In religious Zionism one learns about him, but in the general education system it is not enough. There are so many figures in the country that one can admire and grow on them, and among them.
"The Druze, for example, adore Eli. For them he is a leader, a revered figure, a man who paid the most for the country he loved. So too in religious Zionism. They pray in his memory on the anniversary of his death, learn about him, admire him in an unusual way."
What would Eli have done if he were alive today?
"He would probably take a position as head of the Mossad, from the experience he gained and from the character he created for himself. That was his vocation. He wanted it, he dreamed of it."
How do you move on after so long?
"He's with me all the time. I'm sitting here alone, and I have nothing to look at, so I look at the sky - maybe he's sailing over me, over my children's houses. I see a cloud in the sky, and he's in it. Says he's coming to visit.
"He was a man who smiled all the time, for whom there was no difficulty too much. I have never seen a man with so much grace. Every morning he got up for a new day. He had so much joy of life. He so wanted to live, to hold the children, Grow them.It is impossible to forget him or forgive the people who took him.
"I mourn every day, as if I had a son who was cruelly taken from me. It is a wound that does not heal or heal. Hubble is not erased from me and stays inside me all the time. Only when the children and grandchildren come do I smile, because Eli would want me to smile with them.
"I can go out, eat with someone in a restaurant, and suddenly Eli will be in front of me, inside my soul. I see a man hugging his wife and asking where Eli is. Sitting in Kiddush and feeling Eli missing me. There is not a moment where I do not dream what would have happened if he was with us .
"The last two weeks have taken me back decades, to Eli's perception, to his hanging. They have taken me back to the darkness."
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