In 2009, moments after submitting the charter to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, then-new ambassador Yitzhak Lebanon stood on the terrace overlooking the courtyard of the Presidential Palace in Cairo, with the sounds of "Hope" played by the President's House Orchestra in the background.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
It was much more than a childhood dream come true.
These were moments that drained an entire life story into them.
Whoever stood on the balcony in those historic minutes, and looked excitedly at the waving Israeli flag, is none other than Isaac Cohen Kishik - the boy who was born in Beirut and has kept in his heart all these years the secret of his mother.
This is the same boy who 46 years earlier had stood in the military court in Lebanon with his family, and his heart was torn when the sentence for the Jewish spy, Shulamit Cohen, was heard.
"According to the severity of the law, the court determines that the defendant deserves the maximum punishment: death."
The story of the Jewish spy from Beirut centered around a mysterious aura.
Her colorful figure and life trajectory fascinated the Arab press, earning her the nickname "Mate Harry of the Middle East."
But for Yitzhak Lebanon, the retired ambassador, who is Isaac the boy and boy of the Cohen-Kishik family, Shulamit Cohen is first and foremost a mother.
"You deserve the death penalty, but I am sentenced to 20 years in prison with hard labor, for betraying the country where you lived for so many years," recalled son Yitzhak (Isaac), who later changed his surname to Lebanon when he immigrated.
"He was not satisfied with the punishment he had just imposed on my mother. This time he turned to my father, Joseph Cohen Kishik, who was also sitting on the dock next to my mother. ' "The court sentences you to two years in prison," Lebanon recalls in his new book, "In the Eye of the Storm - Diplomatic Secrets" (Yedioth Books).
"I kept sitting. Trying to digest things. The death penalty and immediately after that 20 years in prison. And Dad, the proud and respectable man, Hawaja Joseph, will be jailed for two years. My world has been destroyed on me. "I was so close to my mother, but it is forbidden to approach her. To hug. To caress the face in which the past suffering is evident."
Secret codes on the radio
The hot summer nights of Beirut.
The year is 1961. There are knocks on the door of the Cohen Kishik family home in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood, the Jewish neighborhood.
Quiet at home.
Everyone is sleeping except Isaac and his mother Shulamit, who are sitting together in the living room.
Isaac, wearing a tank top, wears a Star of David necklace around his neck, not suspecting anything.
"There were loud knocks, I went to open, the officer pushed me in and went inside. I realized they were coming to arrest my mother only after I saw the Arab-Lebanese agent who used to come to our house. Demonstrating chauvinism, but a mother, who already understood what was happening, said, sit back. I remember they started turning the coffin. To the room with Dad, and then they took Mom at three in the morning. "
Anyone crossing the border from Syria was hidden in a synagogue.
Beirut, 1969, Photo: E.P.
After she was stopped, the relationship with her was severed, and for a long time the family did not know what happened to her.
"There was talk that the Syrians wanted her. There was a time when we thought she might not be in Lebanon at all. One day they came to pick me up from the university for questioning, they asked what I know about my mother's activities, I denied everything. Then they turned on large recording equipment. Says in the recording '14 Galili Bed ', this was an Arabic word I used when I wanted to inform my mother that 14 Jews had managed to arrive and were on their way to Israel.
"They asked for an explanation and I said, 'My father works with cloth rolls, he was in business.' They did not buy the story. She turned to me and said to me in Hebrew: I did not admit anything. "
Cohen knew how to connect with people.
She was recognized at the top of the Lebanese government.
She was able to establish contacts with senior Lebanese officials.
During the 12 years it was in operation, it was tasked with intelligence and intelligence services in Israel, and it was responsible for smuggling many hundreds of Jews from Lebanon and Syria.
"Over time, a fairly regular procedure was formed: the young people who crossed the border from Syria reached contacts in Beirut, who took care to hide them in the synagogue or in residents' homes. The next step was to inform the mother of the young people's arrival and she began preparing to move to Israel."
Gathering and transmitting information to Israel was part of her daily routine.
Only in retrospect will it become clear that Cohen was also involved in the abduction of the boy Yossele Shohamchar, whose ultra-Orthodox grandfather tried to smuggle him abroad in the early 1960s. In Lebanon - a place where the Mossad can not operate freely. The news reached Shulamit Cohen and it advised Rabbi Shrem, the chief rabbi of Beirut, to reject the request.
In time you begin to discover.
A person who suddenly comes to our house, and we ask who it is.
"On Fridays there was a feature of urgency at home in the run-up to Shabbat. Mother would plead with all the children 'Now do not talk, be quiet,' and we did not understand why.
The radio was at low volume, yet an enemy state.
It was only after a while that we realized that the program included codes for the mother from its operators in Israel, "says Lebanon.
"I refused to speak Arabic"
The unconventional and intense occupation that Cohen chose for herself sometimes required absence from home in favor of the tasks she performed.
She maneuvered between a spy career and being the wife of a man and the mother of seven children in Beirut in the 1960s.
She did what few dared to do in her time.
The push and encouragement she received from her husband Joseph was an important component in her success.
"Dad's brothers would sometimes remark to him that it's not acceptable - see your wife here, and walk around there alone, but he backed her one hundred percent. He was also her secret man."
Six years later, during which she was imprisoned in Beirut prison in harsh conditions and suffered torture, Cohen was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Lebanon.
"They took their mother to Rosh Hanikra, where she crossed the border. When they told her, 'They are taking you now to see your grandmother in Jerusalem,' she said, 'but before that, they took me to the barbershop,'" Lebanon says.
"We left everything behind, everyone packed a suitcase and left."
Shlomit Lebanon, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
In addition to being the son of the famous spy, Lebanon officially began his career in the Israeli Foreign Service after immigrating to Israel.
But he had made his first steps in the world of diplomacy long before, in meetings and contacts that fate had summoned for him with the Red Cross following the affair of his mother's espionage.
From the day of his arrest he has been working with the local authorities in an attempt to prevent the sentence and bring about her release.
"In Beirut I was the frightened, persecuted Isaac who saw the Israeli flag trampled," he says, "looking for a favor to release his mother or to put in the prison cell the food she loves without the guards pushing fingers into it. When I arrived in Egypt it was Isaac, a representative of A sovereign state, looking into the eyes of its interlocutors at eye level and with its head held high. "
The attitude towards Lebanon is ambivalent, and the feelings are complicated.
From the country where he was born and raised, from the place where his personality took shape, bitter memories have been burned over the years that overshadowed all the good that Lebanon knew how to give its inhabitants.
"I loved Lebanon until my mother's arrest. Then everything changed. There was a time when I refused to speak Arabic, I cut myself off from Lebanon. But over the years, it slowly came back, I still have emotion, something remains in me."
Between Chad and Mauritania
Individuals were exposed to the secret.
He managed to keep it most of the time.
The work in the Foreign Service of the State of Israel required the modesty of this detail from his biography, and he himself did not want his success to be attributed to the fact that he was "the son of."
"I was afraid in Paris that they would know about the affair, when I was appointed the liaison of the Lebanese who were coming, maybe someone would come to know my family. And it happened to me in Paris with a representative of the Lebanese forces who told his colleague, this is the spy's son.
The process of normalization that has developed between Israel and some Arab countries in recent years has not surprised Lebanon.
"When I was ambassador to Geneva, I discovered that the head of the patent organization was a Sudanese, Kamal Idris. We organized a meeting between their senior minister close to the top echelons of the government and our then foreign minister, Sylvan Shalom, and thus thawed the atmosphere between Israel and Sudan," Lebanon said.
"The Sudanese minister had a request: the International Court of Justice in The Hague sought to prosecute 51 soldiers from the Sudanese army, on suspicion of involvement in the genocide in Darfur. , Kofi Anan.
"The attempts to establish ties with Chad also came from a less expected direction. I befriended a Jewish-Israeli businessman who was close to Chad's ambassador in Paris, and decided to lead a move. I knew that Chad was very rich in natural resources, especially in the north near the border with Libya. I was able to reach as far as their defense minister, Idris Debbie, who is currently serving as president.
"Time passed, tensions between Libya and Chad increased and the Libyan army entered Chad's territory. In Israel, they came under pressure and feared for the fate of the advisers. When I learned of the intention to return the military personnel, I called the Foreign Ministry and explained that they were not in danger. Levy, decided to bring the consultants home.
The war ended, the Libyan army withdrew.
I was asked to renew my relationship with Chad.
I turned to the ambassador in Paris and received an unequivocal answer: 'Sorry, no thanks.
When we needed you you were not here.
It was only three decades later, in 2019, that relations between Israel and Chad were renewed.
Another African country to which a communication path was paved in his time is Mauritania.
"Representatives from Mauritania approached me and expressed a desire to promote relations with Israel. I forwarded the request to the Foreign Ministry, but there they were not enthusiastic: who needs them? One of the poorest countries in the world, what good will Israel do?" "The oasis called Mauritania will quench our thirst ... After a while I came to the capital, again with a chief of staff and an administrative man, to start promoting the move," Lebanon writes.
"I asked if it was possible to arrange a meeting between the Indonesian foreign minister and the Israeli foreign minister, and a positive answer was received, provided that it was kept secret. The Indonesian minister explained that as long as all the problems with the Palestinians are not resolved, there is no way for public relations."
This striped meeting had no sequel.
But the big miss, he says, lies in the state of relations with neighboring Lebanon.
It is difficult to extract from him an optimistic statement about the reality that the ruined country is currently experiencing and the chances of emerging from a state of hostility with Israel.
"It saddens me," he admits.
"The internal Lebanese structure is different and it was clear that it would cause friction, but it hurts to see a beautiful country being trampled on. This is not the same Lebanon. It is disturbing because I thought it would be a good neighbor. .
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