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"We finished a briefing before an operation. The head of the Mossad started washing dishes and said: 'You prepare. If you mess up, I'll clean up after you'" | Israel today

2022-09-30T18:54:29.782Z


Former Mossad officer, Gad Shemron, tells what he learned from the heads of the intelligence system with whom he worked • How Ephraim Halevi reacted to the lack of politeness of his fighters • What caused the head of the Caesarea branch to be fired • What to do when an acquaintance meets you during a covert operation


Gad Shimron


, journalist and writer, former operations officer at Mossad


served as a fighter in the Keshet Wing and in a unit that operated in Sudan to raise Ethiopian Jews, under the cover of a holiday village on the shores of the Red Sea

Gad Shimron, retired from the Mossad in the mid-1980s.

When was the last time you visited the Mossad's headquarters, or were in professional contact with its people?


"Even after my retirement, when I worked as an active journalist, I continued to work with the Mossad in all kinds of special operations until the end of the 1980s. In 1988, they asked me to coordinate an operation in Europe with full foreign coverage. I agreed, but I asked that my absence be arranged with Maariv, where I worked at the outside desk. They contacted whoever was the editor of 'Maariv' at the time, and it turned out that I took an unpaid leave for a year.

"I said hello to the guys and disappeared to coordinate an operation against an Arab country. By the way, my collection officer was the famous Yehuda Gil, from the story with Syria. Then I returned to Maariv."

You said that at the foreign desk you witnessed the operations in which you participated.

interesting experience.


"It gave me a different angle. I had the privilege of sitting at the outside desk of 'Maariv' and editing news that came from news agencies about operations I participated in. It also made me realize how much journalists are fed by what they are fed."

The contrast between the two professions you have chosen is not trivial.

On the one hand - a shadow man, on the other hand - a high-profile writer, journalist and commentator.

How do these two sides connect together?


"Essentially, a good journalist, a reporter, is actually like an operations man at the Mossad. More precisely, a collection officer and a journalist are quite similar in their work: they have to bring news, each in their own way, and of course the distribution is different. So the skills I acquired at the Mossad helped me later in my life as well.

"On the wall in my house hangs a picture with Markus Wolff, who is in charge of the foreign intelligence of the East German intelligence organization, the 'Stasi', and Shimon Finkel from the stage. Wolff is called 'the man without a face' because the Western intelligence services were unable to obtain his picture.

"When I was a 'Maariv' emissary in Germany, he was put on trial. On the day he was acquitted, I called him, and in the direct approach that is sometimes accepted in the world of espionage, I said to him: 'Wolf, I know you are half Jewish, I know you tried to get to Israel when the wall fell and you had nowhere to go Run away. I know they didn't let you come here because they were worried about relations with Germany.'

I guess this is not the end of the story.


"No. He's not a nice man, and he didn't want to talk at first. I knew I had to break him, so I brought Shimon Finkel, because Wolf's father used to be a stage actor, and Finkel acted in one of his plays. Finkel gave him a book with his father's directing instructions. After that, Wolff asked me, 'Are you from the family?', that is, from the intelligence family. He said, 'You broke me,' and from that moment he spoke freely for a week. It was a classic use of the techniques I had learned. Later, we kept in touch until the day he died."

The delicious croissant in Damascus

How did the service in the institution affect you, your character, your lifestyle?


"It enriches life. So, for example, let's say I'm sitting watching a Champions League game with a friend, let's call him D, who is a much more celebrated fighter and hero than I am, and before the game there is a news report from Damascus with a photo from a certain area. And suddenly he says 'Wow, What a shame... on the left was a bakery that made the best croissants in Damascus. At other times, when old guys from the Mossad sit together in a cafe, for example, we immediately recognize if there is unusual activity going on in the street - say, the undercover police are following a drug dealer. Who who has the knowledge, sees these things in a second.

James Bond Zionist.

"The Red Sea Diving Site", Netflix,

"In general, I think that when people from the security establishment, certainly the operational ones, look at a certain thing - they see a broader and more complex picture compared to a person who lacks the security background. I guess it's the same with artists. It also has its drawbacks: when I tell my partner that we only saw yesterday You're the same person in another movie - she asks me why I deal with nonsense."

Does it produce a certain paranoia?


"In the books 'The Mossad and the Myth' there is a chapter called partial schizophrenia. I claim that 90 percent of the operatives have a certain scratch, in one way or another. When you return from an operation you are no longer a diamond from a European country, but the same Israeli again.

"If on the way to a meeting with teachers at your children's school, a policeman stops you for a minor traffic violation, you have the tools to manipulate him so that he forgets why he stopped you at all. So, of course, many will issue a license and receive the report.

But there are also intelligence officers who went to prison.

"At any given time, there are at least one or two people in Israel's prison system who are veterans of the security system, for criminal offenses that were committed because they thought they could work on everyone. Some have a positive effect on them, and some less so."

In many ways, returning from a successful operation in a foreign land is tantamount to descending from Olympus.

In a relatively sharp way you return to Israel as one of the people, when no one knows about your heroism.


"It is shared at any given time by several thousand Israelis - air force pilots, members of the IDF patrol or patrol, intelligence personnel who sit in the military, Shin Bet, Mossad - a partial list of course.

The least pleasant situations are when you are sitting in a company and one of the people present starts talking about an event that you are directly or indirectly related to.

People start babbling nonsense - and you either smile or shut up.

"One of the greatest strengths of the operations man is knowing how to live one day in a certain way, under cover, and the next day in a completely different way. This is quite a difficult task. In this regard, it must be said that the real heroes are the women. They welcome home someone who returns from a world flooded with adrenaline, he has a lot of To tell, but he can only tell a little, and in many cases he returns to feeding at night and taking care of the babies. Containing this situation - it's not a simple thing at all."

In what other cases does the professional meet the personal in operational work?


"In one of the operations I participated in in Europe, while I was undercover, I ran into a person I knew in my youth. He asked me - 'Gadi, what are you doing here?'

I of course kept walking without responding, but he didn't give up and kept calling my name.

"The person who was walking with me, one of the objects, began to wonder and of course I told him that I had no idea who it was. After a short time, the same guy, who by the way served in intelligence in the past, realized the mistake he had made, retraced his steps, and luckily - he disappeared. Years later I met him , and he asked me about that day. He was interested in whether I was at work when he saw me. I answered him that I was indeed at work, and added that he almost caused my death. So there are also unplanned events of this kind."

"Head of the Caesarea Division"

On the Sukkot holiday you are expected to participate in a spy story evening as part of the Storytelling Festival that will be held at the Givatayim Theater (October 6-17).

There will surely be quite a few stories there, but I am interested in the stories related to your work with the senior officials of the Mossad over the years.

What experiences do you remember from them?


"In the 1970s, I was a participant in a large and sensitive operation in Europe, and the head of the Mossad in his own right, Yitzhak (Hakka) Hofi, who was very beloved by us, came to the briefing. After the briefing ended, we began arranging the equipment, and he indifferently went to the sink and started washing dishes. We told him, 'Commander , leave,' but he said: 'You deal with what is necessary, I will clean the dishes. And if you act shamefully, I will clean up after you'. He was an amazing man."


Part of your service at the Mossad was while Mike Harari, who is considered a walking legend, was the head of the Caesarea Division, the operations division of the Mossad.

"I knew him rather superficially, because I was in another operational unit. Years after he retired, in 2014, Mike wrote his book 'The Operation Man,' and I was asked by the Haaretz book supplement to write a review about him. I wrote a sympathetic review, but I pointed out that the book is rather unnecessary, because the censors obviously did not approve the really fascinating stories. I also wrote that his name was involved, under obscure circumstances, in the case of the overthrow of the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and I also pointed out that there were factors that made sure to drip into the media thick hints about Harari's involvement in the drug trade. He is of course He had nothing to do with these things. But anyway, he called me after the review was published, and asked me to come to him together with my friend D, who was a celebrated fighter in the Mossad. D's eldest son was even named Mike, after Harari.

"Mike received us at his home and asked why I wrote so and so. I explained to him, he understood, and even told me that I was right. Then I told him that there was an error in the book, and I saw how it was written. 'What do you mean,' he asked. I answered that in the successful operation to locate the Stellar missiles In Rome, in addition to the soldiers of Caesarea, the members of the operational unit in which I served also participated. He replied, 'Why not?', until my friend D explained to him that this was indeed the case. We parted as friends."

Ephraim Halevi was the commander of the operation in which you participated in Sudan, to evacuate Jews from Ethiopia.

You have memories of him too.


"Efraim is a man I greatly appreciate. I will never forget that we returned to Israel in the spring of 1982. We were several operatives who completed successful operations, in which we rescued nearly 1,000 Ethiopian Jews from what later became known as the resort village in Sudan. A real Zionist James Bond operation. We landed in Ben-Gurion , we are all tanned, and Ephraim received us in the corner. He took out a neatly folded piece of paper, and said in his English accent - 'Guys, Prime Minister Menachem Begin received an overview of what you did. He was very excited, and asked to give you the following.' He read We have what Begin wrote about courage, Zionism, and much more. Most of us were not at home for a long time, and at one point we asked him to make it shorter. He was so offended by Begin's name, and to this day I will never forget his look when he became aware of our lack of politeness. But luckily, he loved us is very".

You also worked with Shabbati Shavit.


"There is a story, I don't know how true it is, according to which every time they talked at the Mossad about a possible operation and wanted to invite me to participate - my daughter said, 'Why him?' The movie 'Munich,' by Steven Spielberg. I sat next to him, and between us sat a guy named Y', who was also a fighter in Caesarea and one of the exterminators in Operation 'Wrath of God.' About the film and Spielberg, and that it is a distortion of reality, and that it is against our moral code. He got off the stage, and at the end of the screening I walked next to him towards the car. I told him that you need to know who to be offended by, and I asked him why he had to go up on stage and say these things. He answered me : 'I couldn't get over it'".

On another matter, earlier this month the head of the Mossad, Dedi Barnea, spoke at the annual conference of the Institute for Anti-Terrorism Policy at Reichman University.

What did you think of his speech?


"I have a little difficulty understanding the flurry of appearances by the heads of the organizations, and on the other hand - I am also against being ignored. Dedi Barnea is of course old and experienced, and of course he knows why he said the things, and he certainly had a good reason to say them.

"In any case, years ago I said that I believe that the Mossad needs a spokesperson, just as the General Security Service has a type of spokeswoman. I think it is essential for all kinds of situations. I will give you one example: a few years ago the former head of the Mossad called me, very shortly after His retirement. He asked me if I could get him the phone of the Channel 2 news system, as he wanted to comment on a certain matter. Among other things, the speaker function can help with such issues."

In conclusion, I would like to ask you - from your acquaintance with the Mossad officers, what distinguishes Mossad heads compared to other senior Mossad officials who did not briefly head the organization?


"I think that an extraordinary personality structure is required for this. It is difficult to put a finger on it. As someone who has worked on the fringes of the most serious problems of the State of Israel, I do not envy the subjects of senior positions such as the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, the head of the Mossad or the like "About. In my eyes, these are the five most complex and complicated positions in the world, and I have a hard time understanding how a normal person meets this burden."


For suggestions and comments: Ranp@israelhayom.co.il

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Source: israelhayom

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