The Jewish Story: Eli Cohen, Hero of Israel

Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world said David ben-gurion the image of a working and an intellectual people of a people that can fight with heroism well I sure know how to work and I like to bring my intellect to bear on every fight in which I engage because I'm Roth Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 26 le Cohen hero of Israel you know it's a truism that there are stories that just tell themself and there are people who seem to have been born for the role that they play we're about to meet one of them in just a minute but before we do I want to offer a bit of a frame for what's about to follow because we've visited many times in the Jewish story this question of the great man theory of history this idea that there's an argument between historians over whether one person ever really matters on the historical scale now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that single actions never matter after all Gavrilo Princip managed to touch off a war which killed 20 million people with a single bullet but if he'd never shot Archduke Ferdinand wouldn't World War 1 have happened anyway I mean Princip didn't create the social political and economic forces that transform Ferdinand's death into a global conflict and perhaps something would have set them off anyway even without the shot he fired in the age of Netflix there are more people today who know the story of Elliot Cohen then surely ever were or at least they think they know it and part of that story has always been framing him as someone who saved the nation in the lead-up to the war of 19 to 67 I'm not going to undermine that idea but we will touch on the various professional opinions about whether it's completely true or not toward the end what interests me right now is the fact that we all want someone like Elliot Cohen to be a hero because historians might argue about whether Napoleon was the product of revolution or whether he actually himself personally produced a new Europe or whether any individual is really an essential element in the face of these massive social forces but the average person really just wants a hero not to save them on the historical stage but to inspire them in their own life and that brings me to another point we saw last episode how Israeli identity is in major flux in the 50s in 60s in that episode I was interested in unfolding a bit about how the breathing room gained by Israel after the Sinai campaign actually opened up a space for reflection him about where we were and what we've done to get there and of course what lay ahead in many ways as soon as the existential threat is removed for even the slightest moment from the Young State of Israel all the questions of Jewish history come pouring in and that process that reflection and refinement of the identity which emerged from it isn't going to stop but together with it we're going to find this incredible spirit of heroism which has not faded and in fact has guided the Jewish people at this point in our story for millennia it's a powerful mixture of personality that seeks growth only found through personal challenge and does so on behalf of the nation now I've waded through a lot of conflicting histories to put together the story you're about to hear and if there's one thing I can say for sure is that Elie Cowan embodies a critical element of Israeli identity there I say a critical element of Jewish identity because he was a hero spying as Rudyard Kipling says in his novel Kim is about living with many identities and Elie Cohen came to know this well before his end he himself was actually born in Alexandria Egypt in 1924 but his father originated in Aleppo Syria a coincidence for his son in the years of head growing up Ali's family were both religiously observant and zionists along with the rest of the Egyptian Jewish community they watched with pride and horror the hanging of Eliyahu Bates URI Eliyahu paquimé the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne British Minister resident of the Middle East one can only imagine that watching two young Jews with his own name go to the gallows for the sake of the Jewish people made a very deep impression on the twenty-year-old Cohen in general life in Egypt was never easy for the Jews I mean after all go read the Torah but in 1947 Elie tried to enlist in the Egyptian army rather than pay the head tax which was expected of a young Jew in his day and he was rejected on the grounds of questionable loyalty seeking some outlet he then enrolled in university but was soon forced to leave due to harassment by the Muslim Brotherhood which had a strong presence on the campus but things really began to deteriorate in the wake of Israel's victory in the 1948 war of independence there was no large-scale expulsion of Jews of Egypt has occurred in other Arab lands but there was rioting confiscation and imprisonment became increasingly common without just cause many Jews at this point including Elly's family left Egypt but he remained the free officers revolution of 1952 which eventually brought Nasser to power you can go back to episode 13 of this season to hear that story brought with it yet another wave of anti-semitic and anti scientist persecution this time L himself was arrested on suspicion of engaging in Zionist activities but released almost immediately which apparently was a mistake on the part of the Egyptian police because he was in deep with espionage even then we've spoken at length about the 1954-55 false flag up operation Susana right that was the attempt to destroy the Egyptian relationship with Western powers in hopes of keeping written on the Suez Canal whose failure blew up into the LaVon affair which actually undermined an Israeli government you can actually go back to episodes 14 and 24 of this season if you want the full story once again to Jews paid with their lives on the Egyptian gallows this time le wasn't just a bystander he was in the midst of it he was in fact aiding that Israeli commando unit from within the local community and fortunately for him despite the suspicions of the police they were unable to establish any link between le and the accused at least Egyptian identity came to an end at last at least in its full sense in the wake of the Sinai campaign of 1956 now whatever you deem to be the political results of the war the outcome for the Jews of Egypt was almost universally negative in the immediate aftermath of the trilateral invasion by Britain France and Israel NASA issued a proclamation stating that all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state and promised that they would soon be expelled as a result some 25,000 Jews almost half of the community left for Israel Europe and the US and South America the rest waited to be expelled until after the six-day war in order to quiet the international community thousands were forced to sign declarations that they were actually leaving voluntarily and that they had agreed to the entire compensation of their assets a thousand more were in prison just ensure they went quietly le was actually amongst those who were forcibly deported to Italy but for a Jew and a Zionist leaving Egypt not always such a bad thing in Naples le contracted the Jewish Agency and soon he was on a boat to Israel it was time to go home at least for a little while the first stop in Israel for Elly was the coastal city of bottom where his parents had settled when they left not so many years before now I can imagine that any 32 year old would have found it more than a bit difficult to move back in with his parents however le faced a deeper challenge his mind was still on the underground life his youngest brother Abram tells the story that one time soon after Elie arrived and began sharing his bedroom Avram walked into the room unannounced Elie hastily shoved some papers he was reading into the suitcase lying in his bed and after a few minutes of small talk he got up and left now what younger brother could resist such a temp looking to see that Ellie was really gone and taking every precaution to leave everything just as he'd found it Aram opened the case and went through Ellie's things what he found is irrelevant what matters was Ellie's reaction upon his return only a half hour later taking one glance up around the room at a Suzy entered he turned to her arm and asked if he'd enjoyed his tour of Ellie's stuff the younger brother was too astonished to lie and deny what he'd done he simply asked Ellie how he knew the answer was a small thread that Ellie had left on the lid of the case which was now lying on the floor this is not the behavior of an average person and indeed Ellie immediately set out to find a job upon his arrival in Israel and it's very specific job he wanted to work in the intelligence services with his experiences in Egypt his master of French Arabic and Hebrew it seemed he was a shoo-in the first inquiries led Ellie to the Egyptians immigrant Club in Tel Aviv and where to his good fortune he found it under the direction of one sir mono who had studied with him back in the Jewish school of Alexandria sir mono in turn gave Ellie the address of an office on Allenby Street in downtown Tel Aviv what Intelligence Agency he arrived at is actually a question which is an argument between the chroniclers of his story you can read all the books and decide for yourself and that's really probably itself a product of the fact in 1957 all these agencies were pretty hard to tell apart they weren't really formal intelligence organizations they were more like clubs that had been formed by the men who created them out of their underground and wartime relationships so either way by all accounts Ellie wasn't shy he boasted of his experience in Alexandria of his language skills and most importantly he declared loud and clear his willingness to work in any Arab land to which he might be sent there's again deep disagreement over why Ellie failed and in fact ended up behind a desk after his first encounter with the intelligence services some say there was just simply no need for his work at that moment he may have been the right man but not at the right time others claimed it was a reflection of Ashkenazi prejudice it's yes Nick irony of his life they call it that the same characteristic which made Elly useful to the intelligence services was exactly what kept his peers on Israel's margins being an Arabic speaking Jew in those years was useful if you were a spy in real life it was a handicap to be overcome there's a third camp which actually say there was a strain of recklessness which showed right away in Ellie's behavior and that led to his initial rejection and perhaps his ultimate downfall no matter what side you take behind a desk easing D where he landed drawing 170 pounds a month together with other Jews from Egypt in Iraq translating Arabic documents that was a pretty good living by the way in Israel in 1957 but perhaps because of that it simply couldn't last in less than a year he and the rest of the team were let go it was a sign of Elly's character and his abilities that he soon found another job this time as an accountant in the supply department of how much beer Humaira Kazi he was inspecting the retail shops which sold the mayor of mash beer the cooperative's goods which by the way at that point in Israeli history was more or less everything you could get in Israel at the time I mean this is true socialism at least job HUD was no doubt aided by his younger brother Maurice Maurice had fled Egypt before him with the rest of the family and having been in the country longer had mastered the life of Israeli much more thoroughly than his older brother by 1957 he was working as a postmaster he was a reserve officer in the IDF and he was married for too long in fact Maurice would be recruited himself into the intelligence services without Elly ever knowing at a certain point as we'll see his job as a Mossad postman with CLE zone coded messages passing through his very hands but the most important thing to Elie at this point of the story was the fact that Maurice like I said though younger brother was already married because it was through Maurice and his wife that Elly would meet his bride-to-be Nadja Raja Nadja Michelle was born into a wealthy cultured family in Baghdad one of eight children according her own account the family's connection to Israel began with her oldest brother Sami who in Baghdad led an underground communist group which was active against the Iraqi regime the Iraqi secret police were pursuing him and he actually was sentenced to death in absentia after he escaped the Iran and then Israel in 1949 an interesting sight note Naja went on to marry of course the most famous spy in Israeli history while Sami now known as Sami Michael is currently one of Israel's best known authors and left-wing activists he kept up his communist activities upon arrival in Israel as we saw last episode the Israeli Communist Party was the real primary seedbed for the development of Palestinian nationalism all his books are considered controversial because in the beginning he wrote about the aspirations and struggles of both Jews and Arabs side by side and Sami was among the first in Israel of any cultural stature to call for the creation of an independent Palestinian state but Nadia wasn't so politicized she and her remaining family were among the first waves of raki Jews who fled Iraq and were really expelled in 1951 overnight she went from the affluent life of gardeners and nannies into the hard poverty of the muhabba wrote the transit camps go back to episode 4 of this season if you don't recall how difficult that was but contrary to many of the stories told about the ma borrowed some wish we touched on there Naja's account of her life at this point is overwhelmingly positive and she says we lived there for six years but the joy in our hearts was great because it was our state it was our people and material matters did not make the difference it was a positivity that would remain consistent in the years of head as I said Ellie's brother Maurice was the first to make the link between him as the story goes maurices wife asked him to pick up some dresses at a shop owned by her sister hella and as he was waiting a pretty young woman entered the shop after giving him the once-over the young woman Hass hella in Arabic when's your acquaintance of this nice-looking guy easy Ashkenazi Helly answered with pride that maurice was her brother-in-law and that being an Egyptian he spoke Arabic as well the young woman blushed in embarrassment but nonetheless she turned to Maurice and said if you were a bachelor I can introduce you to my sister Nadia Maurice applied with a smile if your sister not is as pretty as you I will gladly arrange for her to meet my brother and the rest as they say is history Elian Naja were married in a modest ceremony in Tel Aviv in a synagogue in 1959 while he was working as an accountant for the much beer it was a middle-class existence which differed from many of their fellow immigrants from Arab speaking nations in fact the summer they got married 1959 saw the outbreak of the wadi sali riots the first racial violence Tamar Jewish society in Israel they began on July 9th when police confronted a resident of the wadi Salib a poor neighborhood in downtown Haifa whose air residents had fled in 48 and was now populated by North African immigrants according to the police reports Yaakov elkrief was drunk and disturbing the peace and when he began behaving wildly and hurling empty bottles at the police sent to arrest him he was shot and seriously wounded what resulted should be familiar to anyone who reads the news today resin is surrounded the police vehicle and dragged an officer out of it and he was saved only after warning shots were fired meanwhile rumors quickly raced through the neighborhood that elkrief had actually been shot dead and several hundred watt easily residents march on Haddad Kamel a predominantly Ashkenazi district smashing shop windows and setting cars on fire in Wadi Salib itself the mob targeted the headquarters of them up high that's the Labour Party basically and the Histadrut the Israeli trade union the ultimate symbols of Ashkenazi power in the end 13 police and two demonstrators were wounded two days later sympathetic riots broke out in other large communities of North African immigrants in Tiberias embarrass Eva McDonough emic it was later claimed that these were not spontaneous outbreaks but rather part of a local movement the kudos dates phone Africa Union of North African immigrants that they were the ones involved planning them David Ben hawlucha one of the movements founders was actually sent to prison and ran for the next Knesset elections while incarcerated he failed but you can't blame him in many ways the Sawadee sadly riots are just a taste of what's to come in Israeli culture with the rise of the Israeli Black Panthers in the 1970s it's a story will tell but it lies ahead for now Elie and Nadia were actually living the Israeli dream in late 50s but Ellie was far far too Restless a soul for middle-class life you know out there in the world they say where there's a will there is a way and here in Ami's rail we say that there's only one will in the world in that will will have its way no matter how you hold on that question there are any numbers of opinions about how Elly eventually made it into the intelligence work he's so deeply desired maybe it was just persistent in his requests and that persistence eventually paid off maybe his original rejection was only in order to place him under observation for a really big job and maybe God was just waiting for the right time in place where he could be the right man for the role no matter which side you choose everyone agrees that sometime in late 1960 Elly Cohen was under observation by the Mossad that elite counterintelligence agency founded by ben-gurion in 49 and to this day answerable solely the Prime Minister's Office field agents washed Elli for several weeks while others combed through his background and he was by all accounts the perfect recruit high intelligence with a near photographic memory unswervingly loyal to both his family and his employer hard-working good-looking and with more than a touch of natural charm the only real challenge was his recent marriage domestic bliss and international espionage rarely go well together at his final trial Elli recalled his recruitment like this one day a man named Salman came to see me he told me that they kept an eye on my work and found that I was suited to a more responsible task he asked me if I was willing to work for intelligence and go to Europe or an Arab country I told him I just married and didn't have the urge to travel my wife was a nurse before we got married but she had to quit work when she became pregnant and I had to work overtime now however you think the world works that reply might have been a mistake because sure enough he suddenly found himself let go from his position and how much beer though Ellie would later deny that any pressure had ever been placed on him to join the fact remained that an intelligence job was now the only immediate option for feeding his family Nadia was understandably worried when he lost a job she'd become pregnant as he noted soon after the wedding and it was a very difficult time to find decent work for anyone especially for new immigrants from Arabic speaking countries Ali's response was typical don't worry I'm an educated man I'll find a new job he was by all accounts always ready to take care of things himself and after two weeks he announced her I found a job a very interesting job so he fudged a bit on what it actually was Ellie told Naja he was now involved in weapons purchases for the state but in reality had been recruited into among the intelligence branch of the Israeli Defense Forces Ellie began learning his new craft at Israel's school of espionage a source of much legend they taught him how to follow how to lose a tail map-reading small arms fighting sabotage he learned photography and film development encryption in Morse code they work to perfect his photographic memory a critical tool and it started with toss random items onto the table keys ball a pack of a cigarettes and then snatched them way after only a few seconds demanding that Ellie described them in exhaustive detail but Ellie wasn't being trained to be just another spy he was going live as they say here in Israel although many people out there watch how to probably already know what that is it means to become an Arab in fact since the pre-state days the shoe had recruited Jews from Arab lands into the Palmach Arab section in many ways that Arab section served as a precursor the Mossad if you want to read a great book on that check out mati Freeman's recently published spies of no country tells a fan story but for now Ellie Cohen was being trained to go deeper into the Arab world than any other Israeli spy ever had or at least that were aware of and so together with his spy craft came intensive instructions in Quranic studies the order of Muslim prayer le learned to change his accent and dialect in Arabic from Egyptian to Syrian facilitated by the fact that his father had come to Alexandria from Aleppo something which of course was well known to his recruiter and finally Ali's instructors decided the time had come to craft him a cover story which is how Kemal Amin sahabat was born Baba was a businessman whose parents were of Syrian origin but it emigrated to Lebanon he himself was born in Beirut but moved with his family to Alexandria at the young age of three the family then left together Egypt for Argentina in 1946 at the behest of an uncle who had invited Tabas father to join him in business one after another the three characters of his story then died father mother uncle Ali meaning Thoth is then left as an orphan in Argentina with a bankrupt business which of course by the grace of Allah he builds back up into a lucrative enterprise his handlers had chosen Argentina because at the time it was home to a large expatriate Syrian community many of whom were very sympathetic to the baddest revolutionary movement which was even then threatening the stability of the government in Damascus from the left as comma I mean--the abet le would be perfectly positioned to become another supporter and as a wealthy businessman one with money to burn now ultimately his destination was Syria but for Ellie and tobot the road to Damascus ran through way knows onyx mara meet soon to be the head of the Mossad described the final phase of Ellie's training like this Ellie learned the language of an exporter importer to Syria he was like a chameleon absorbing everything before my very I le Cohen faded and Thaba took over everyday Ellie became more confident more certain and keen to prove he who carry off the role he was like a world champion marathon runner to peek at the start of the race but he could be running for years we done all we could to shown how to pace his new life to live the life the rest was up to him we all knew that there was no big goodbye or send-off he just slipped out of Israel the way all my spies went and on February 3rd le Cohen told Naja he was leaving the country on a top secret arms purchase mission a story she believed until his capture four years later a Ministry of Defense car drove them together to load Airport outside of Tel Aviv so that she could say to buy and there he boarded an El Al flight to Zurich but once he arrived in Zara in route to Argentina he switched his passport Elli Cohen the Israeli was no more now there was only the Syrian businessman Kamel Amin Bobby and he had much work to do Ellie's arrival in Buenos Aires was uneventful and that itself was a major victory he'd come to the country only months after the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann and the Argentinian government was still loudly denouncing Israel in the UN for their violation of their sovereignty within days Ellie had met his controlling officer known to him only as Al Rahma and settled down to master the Spanish language in over the coming weeks he proceeded to craft his character opening a bank account in an Arab bank buying the flashy clothes and sports cards which were typical of the young Syrian bachelor in Buenos Aires and turning up at all the favorite haunts of the communities elite by all accounts kammath Abbot was an instant social success particularly amongst the left-leaning badness within the expat community his new contacts quickly included a Badal atif a la shun the baddest editor of an Arabic Spanish weekly paper and Amin al hafi Syria's new military attache to Argentina LFS was a rising star in the Syrian military his last post was actually commander of army training but his bath his views were too extreme for Damascus at the time and so they'd shipped him off to South America where they thought he'd be safe and this was a fortunate coincidence for Elly and Israeli intelligence because little more than two years after they met in the wake of the Baathist revolution to come el ha Fez would actually be President of Syria now one of the greatest arguments in Ellie's story is just how close he was to el Hafez and maybe we'll touch on it soon one thing has been on dispute having a relationship with such a powerful person that stretched back to Argentina opened many doors to Ellie once he reached Damascus but he wasn't there yet and all these parties when everyone he met Ellie expressed his patriotic desire to return to Syria and together with that he declared his willingness to invest large amounts of his hard-earned money in a bath east regime which won him many friends very quickly meanwhile Avraham Ellie's controller was extremely impressed with his new asset the information was providing the behavior displayed so much so that his reports to Tel Aviv caused the powers-that-be to accelerate their plans it suddenly became the talk of Syrian Buenos Aires c'mon Amin tobot would soon be taking his first trip to the Syrian homeland now it wasn't just Ellie's performance driving the timing of the operation Israeli intelligence was gripped by a growing sense of desperation about the Syrian front you might recall that back in 1958 only a few years ago in our story Nasser zzip had joined with Syria in a political union as the first step in realizing his pan Erebus dream the resultant United Arab Republic was meant to unify the political and military infrastructure of the two countries and to what end while all it takes is one glance the mat to see that the only thing they needed to ignite themselves territory into a pan Arabic union was to eliminate Israel but the truth is the uar was never a happy marriage and when in the summer of 1961 Nasser announced a sweeping program of nationalization something which by the way he used to control the Egyptian economy a group of Syrian businessmen and their military allies decided that they'd had enough the resultant conservative Antonacci regime which overthrew the uar in syria was under Abell and short-lived but it did pave the way for the bath s revolution which still rules the country today in Israel wanted a man on the inside to watch it unfold so Ali's first stop of the way from when Osiris to Damascus was actually returned to Israel in December of 1961 his father shot will passed away and Ali was allowed to come home for the funeral and for Shiva the traditional seven days of mourning he was allowed to come for six of them actually because duties still called when le told his family that he must leave before Shiva endand they were shocked but as his younger brother Abraham recalled he told us he must leave for a business trip he's a grown man we cannot tell him what to do nor could he tell them where he was actually going back to the birth plan of the father they were still mourning when Ali boarded his plane back to Italy he carried with him a powerful miniature radio transmitter amongst the most advanced in the world of the time hidden in the false bottom of electric food mixer his electric shaver was a long-range antenna the aspirin in his kit was actually cyanide for use on any enemy or himself in the last extreme even his toothpaste tubes and jars of face cream were filled with chemicals to make high explosives as the commander of omens elite unit 131 told him before he left this was the topless this is the real thing for which you've been trained and on January 10th 1962 , a beam Bobbit bordered the cruise ship a story out of Genoa bound for Beirut his first-class quarters in free-spending ways of course 1le many friends amongst the other Arab passengers just as they'd done in Argentina it was on board their story that Ellie made a friend who had accompanied him for his full three years in Damascus maajid Sheikh Allah rode hard was a man of the world like Bobbitt speaking many languages including German and seemingly also with money to burn the two drew quite close on the journey and in every conversation Ali that is Bobbitt told Maajid about his inherited capital and his burning desire to invest it in Syria as they approached their destination Majeed told Ellie he planned himself to travel by car from Beirut to Damascus and of course invited him to join it was only natural to say yes and so after a day's rest in Port Ali found himself traveling through the mountain roads in Majeed alle rods private car now there's something you need to know according to documents from US intelligence Majeed sheikh al arid was no innocent bystander in fact he'd worked as a paid informant for the Americans from 1951 through 59 and it's unclear what he was doing on that ship perhaps this is why as they approached the border crossing between Lebanon and Syria I'll explain to Ellie that he had friends who could arrange a smooth crossing in the border just for the sake of a few hundred Syrian pounds and so at the cost of a non-refundable loan of 400 pounds majeeda Nelly sat drinking coffee as all ARDS friends took care of the paperwork when Al jr. custom officer had the audacity to try and open the bags which actually contained Ellie's spy equipment their boss scolded them loudly they've already been checked certainly hard had no idea who come on I mean tobot really was but nonetheless it was through his agency that Ellie Cohn arrived in Damascus without so much as a search of his personal effects five days after arriving having managed to rent an apartment Ellie Cohen transmitted his first message back to headquarters in Israel I have arrived now there's no end to the stories which I could tell you about Ellie Cohen's work as a spy the work which earned him the title of our man in Damascus and of course because of that there's also no end to the arguments between authors historian spies and his family members about which stories are actually true or false in February of 62 Ellie officially joined the bath party promising to become a true example of the air of a struggle it was an act that became particularly significant when only a year later the bath is took power through yet another coup and Ally went on to attend the sixth national convention of the bath in October of 63 whereas generosity and his contacts gave him access to most activities even some of the closed session all the time of course transmitting back to base his life in Damascus centered around his flat situated near the General Staff headquarters simply by mapping the traffic in and out and noting when the lights were on and off he was able to provide critical day-to-day intelligence on enemy activities add to this the role he played amongst the Damascus elite now you may be familiar with the image painted of le as the orchestrator of wild Syrian parties with all kinds of illicit alcohol and ladies some historians can test that image and actually claim that count I mean Bobbitt led such a frugal bachelors lives that it caused some people to begin to question his cover whichever side you take most people agree that his apartment became a rendezvous of choice for senior government men and women with whom they would otherwise rather not be seen as they say and that certainly gave him access to all kinds of information there's further controversy about Ellie's relationship with Syrian President I mean a la Fez like I mentioned some say that they had no more than a passing acquaintance once he reached Damascus which of course helped his status but put him in no direct connection others claim that al Hafez saw Ellie as a confidant in fact at le aided him when he had cancer and he indeed was considered for the post of deputy defense minister before he was caught bottom line everyone agrees with the assessment of the Mossad chief mérimée that Ellie's greatest contribution to Israeli security was the close relationship he built with decision makers in the Syrian government in his guise as stop it le toward the Golan Heights repeatedly memorizing the placements of armaments and fortifications this was information that would prove critical when Tahoe and the Israeli army stormed that plateau in only a few years in the last moments of the six-day war he was also able to assist Israel in defeating serious plans to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River their goal was to choke that newly built national water carrier we spoke about a couple of episodes ago now the Syrian plans were public knowledge so it's a misnomer to say that Elia uncovered them but the precise information he provided allowed the Israeli Air Force to destroy the Syrian efforts before they ever got underway but some say that as his time in Damascus drew on Ali became over-compliment perhaps even a bit reckless his handlers knew from the outset that Elly's biggest shortcoming was the belief he could do everything himself this may have actually been his downfall in the end his brother Maurice tells the story like this by 1963 Maurice was serving in the Intelligence Unit which was responsible for encoding and decoding transmissions and he eventually learned that a certain subset of his messages were from Damascus a fact that seemed irrelevant at the time and then came a strange coincidence one day a message came with a postscript which he decoded to read did not get the singer sewing machine I sent her now there were no such words in his codebook as Nadia or singer sewing machine so he asked his commanders for clarification they replied that this was a top-secret code for which he didn't have security clearance and he should forget he ever saw it which Maurice might well have done if he hadn't happened to visit his sister-in-law Nadia that very day and found her cooing of the brand new sewing machine that Ali had just sent her from abroad many other hints followed and as the evidence mounted Maurice became convinced that the man behind the messages he was receiving was none other than his brother le and that he was taking progressively more and more risks le was in Damascus from 1962 until his capture in 65 but his cover as an importer exporter allowed him to take covert trips to Israel under the guise of going abroad for purchases and one of those visits le brought a pair of house slippers for his daughter they were beautiful velvet with golden embroidery and they've been made in Syria maurice who at this point was already quite suspicious as le where he'd bought such nice slippers and his brother answered without hesitation from the Lafayette Gallery in Paris but Maurice wasn't going to let it go then why is the shoe size written in Arabic he said what is this an interrogation and replied le I told you about there in France maybe they were imported from an Arab country tried change the subject le then asked if Maurice had gotten a phone line finally for his new apartment Maurice replied yes and gave him the number but as le began to write it down his face turned red Maurice was reading off to him the number of his very own apartment in Damascus now at this point Maurice had overstepped his boundaries Epirus and told to forget everything which happened but the thing he couldn't forget was how dangerous a situation le found himself in in his heart maurice knew he had a choice to make he could blow ali's cover ruin his own career but forces returned to israel and really save his life or he could bury the secret in his heart and perhaps hold some responsibility for how this story ends as with so many of the other elements of this spy story the question of how the Syrians realize , Amin Baba was really an Israeli intelligence officer is far from certain from 1963 on the Syrian intelligence agent he had begun to suspect that there was a leak somewhere within the highest level of government circles the Israelis just knew too much about what they were thinking and most agree that on January 24th 1965 when Ali was taken in a pre-dawn raid he was located by honing in on the transmissions from his secret radio the question is what lay in between the suspicion and the capture and the answer is it's impossible to say but there's a powerful story which in my research seems to be central and I think it offers us one last insight into exactly what it was le was doing in Damascus because this is a story in which he may have risked his entire mission not to mention his life to kill a single man but not just any man in the wake of the Eichmann trial of 1961 which I hope you remember from the Jewish story its rol the legendary head of the Mossad had become preoccupied with hunting down the surviving Nazis some say obsessed lezin had it that he drew up a list and declared there are people who are marked too now eventually this obsession actually led to a breakdown between he and ben-gurion and his subsequent retirement from office but even his successor Mehra meet continued the hunt and so imagine the excitement in Tel Aviv when Ali sent an encrypted message informing them he'd identified Franz rod Mahara the rod Maher had been the head of d3 the so-called Jewish desk of the German Foreign Office from May 1940 until April 1943 in which capacity he attended the Wannsee conference meaning he was part of formulating the final solution Rademacher was actually captured after the war and stood trial at Nuremberg but he jumped bail while his conviction was on appeal and fled to Syria which is where Elie found him and it happened by coincidence over lunch with his old friend Maajid chief a lard during the meal I lard told Ellie that just a few days earlier he'd met with a man named rosolio and in the course of their conversation he let it slip that rosolio was actually the Nazi war criminal franz rod maher hiding right there in damascus le fame disbelief and he challenged all art it wasn't possible he knew a real live Nazi offended maajid telephone rod Maher and 40 minutes later the three receded together in the living room of Rod Maher safe house it was only a 10-minute walk from where Ali lived and when he relayed the information to his superiors in Tel Aviv some historians claimed he was told to keep his eyes on the prize others that he was given the green light either way the result was a letter bomb crafted carefully from the chemicals that he'd smuggled into the country and sent care of Franz rod Maher which unfortunately did not kill its intended target but it may have been the clue which Syrian intelligence was looking for I think we have to appreciate what this teaches us about Ellie at a certain point he wasn't just there for the thrills he wasn't bored by the domestic life and the middle-class existence as some people like to claim he was seeking to defend and avenge the people of Israel now the Syrians knew majeeda lard he knew what he was an informer for the Americans and apparently the documents show they were also aware of that three-way meeting between hee le and rod Maher only a fool that's a Nazi hide in their country without keeping a close eye on them because they knew under the guise of our Soviet Rademacher himself was up to his neck in espionage now what would you do if you witness a meeting between a Syrian businessman and two known spies you would assume the business man's dealings were not all aboveboard and in fact the testimonies of Ahmed sway Donny head of Syrian intelligence and of the officer who broke in Delhi Cohen's apartment in January of 1965 indicate that the Syrians had begun to monitor le months before he was caught and that they had no idea until he was in their hands that Kemal I mean tobot was actually a Zionist spy I'm sorry to say but it may just be a reality that no truly heroic story has a happy ending Ali was seized by Syrian intelligence in January of 1965 but he didn't stand trial for another two months according to many sources an interval which was filled with torture too horrible to describe from febrile March 19th Ali stood before a military tribunal denied even the most basic legal defence but it didn't really matter his guilt was a foregone conclusion and indeed the trial ended with a sentence of death please world leaders politicians religious figures from across the spectrum were to no avail and on May 18 1965 before an angry crowd of thousands gathered in Damascus square le was led to the gallows now the Syrians in a particular twist of horror televised his execution and so his wife and family watched in absolute absolute horror as he was hanged by the neck until dead it was only later that Nadia received his parting letter perhaps the single mercy shown to him by his aunt I'm begging you my dear Nadia not to spend your time in weeping about something already pasts concentrate on yourself look forward for a better future don't forget also your dear family give them my best regards don't forget to pray for the soul of my late father and of mine receive all of you my last kisses and blessing Elly Cohen and as his brother Maurice likes remember Elly went to the gallows saying Sh'ma Israel the last words of a hero of Israel I'd like to thank some folks like to thank everyone that gives their hard-earned money for helping to make this show happen - keeping it free and widely available I want to invite you to join them but right now to my website Jewish story dot Co in an upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron and you can click on it for a little bit of her podcast support if that's too much then you can always send me an email at Ralph's Mike foyer at gmail.com or a personal message on Facebook and I'm happy to share with you details about how you can dedicate a show to someone with you today or in the memory of those that have passed I want to thank the Land of Israel network that the Land of Israel comm for creating a platform that aroused me to reach so many amazing people want to thank our days Institute VAR des dot org dot IL for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of teaching so many wonderful Jews and I want