Did You Know...
Eli Cohen was Israel's Greatest Spy?
On May 18, 1965, the Government of Syria executed Eli Cohen, despite protests from world leaders and Israel. He was never allowed a defense at his trial. He was brutally tortured during interrogation in defiance of international humanitarian law and his body was never returned to his family.
On May 18, 1965, the Government of Syria executed Eli Cohen, despite protests from world leaders and Israel. He was never allowed a defense at his trial. He was brutally tortured during interrogation in defiance of international humanitarian law and his body was never returned to his family.
He is best known for his work in Syria, where he developed close relationships with the political and military hierarchy and became the Chief Adviser to the Minister of Defense. He was eventually exposed and executed in Martyr's Square, Syria in 1965 with the television cameras rolling for the entire world to see. The intelligence he gathered is claimed to have been an important factor in Israel's success in the Six Day War (1967 Arab-Israeli War).Eliahu ben Shaoul Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew (Dec. 26, 1924 - May 18, 1965), is regarded as one of the most successful agents Israel ever recruited.
On August 31, 1959, he married a beautiful Iraqi-born Jew, Nadia Majald. He worked as an accountant. Employment was not always steady, and he soon had to rely more on Nadia to help support their marriage, which would quickly lead to children.
Eli was drafted to the secret service on May 24, 1960. On June 10 they informed him that he passed all the tests to be a spy. To be a spy Eli needed to have two basic things:
1) To look like an Arab.
2) To know how to speak Arabic.
And Eli had both of these.He worked as a Mossad agent in Damascus, Syria under the alias of Kamel Amin Thaabet كامل أمين ثابت (commonly pronounced Saabet) from 1962 until his exposure and execution on May 18, 1965.
During those years using this alias, Cohen gained the confidence of many Syrian military and government officials, and sent intelligence to Israel by radio, secret letters, and occasionally in person. His most famous achievement was when he toured the Syrian fortifications on the Golan Heights. He was the only civilian to receive private tours of military installations, even being photographed in the then Syrian controlled Golan Heights with high ranking Syrian officials looking over into Israel.
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| Eli Cohen weds Nadia, August, 1959 |
Eli’s influence on Syrian officials helped Israel beyond measure. Cohen suggested that eucalyptus trees should be planted around Syrian military bunkers and mortars on the Golan Heights that were targeting Israel. That way Cohen argued, the trees would provide natural cover for the outposts (eucalyptus trees grow very quickly), preventing soldiers and personnel from suffering the effects of heatstroke. After his suggestion was implemented by the Syrian military, Cohen passed on the information to Israeli intelligence, then the Israeli Air Force (IAF)—using the newly planted trees as a guide—easily destroyed the majority of those bases during the Six-Day War. The mature trees are still evident today when visiting the sites.
Cohen also learned of an important secret Syrian plan to have three lines of bunkers and mortars right behind each other in order to trick the Israeli military, which would expect only one.
Trial and execution
Eli became far less careful in his transmissions to Israel, sometimes calling once or even twice a day - and almost always at the same time, at 8:30 in the morning. The transmissions became longer as well. Some attributed this to a sense of cockiness (despite the fears he had expressed in November 1964), due to the ability and ease he had moved about in the highest echelons of Syrian power. Others have attributed the carelessness to an almost suicidal tendency - perhaps, it was later surmised, he had been in the undercover world too long, but knew he couldn’t get out of it. Because of that, perhaps he just tired of the whole charade.
The Syrians and their Russian advisers were alarmed by the intelligence that was seeping out of the country. The highly vigilant Russian security experts, equipped with very sensitive technical intelligence-gathering equipment, pinpointed the source of the transmissions in the Syrian capital - and it was Eli’s home. In January 1965, hired Soviet experts caught him in the act of sending a radio message after large amounts of radio interference brought attention. After a trial, he was found guilty of espionage.
Despite many appeals, including from Pope Paul VI and the governments of France, Belgium and Canada, to persuade the Syrian government to commute the death sentence, he was publicly hanged by Syria on 18 May 1965 before a crowd of more than 10,000. After his execution, a white parchment filled with Anti-Zionist writing was put on his body and he was left hanging for six hours.According to his brother and fellow Mossad agent, Maurice Cohen, Eli Cohen was third in line to succeed as president of Syria at the time he was discovered.
Eli's brothers, Abraham and Maurice Cohen led the campaign to return his remains. Maurice died in 2006. Eli's widow, Nadia, has since led the campaign.
The film The Impossible Spy is a depiction of his life. He is featured at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
A memorial stone for him was been in Garden of the Missing Soldiers in Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
It is for these reasons Eli Cohen is known as Israel’s greatest spy.
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