Spies Against Armageddon (32 page)

A lasting lesson for the Mossad, Aman, and smart political leaders in Israel was to be open to the possibility of genuine surprises. For a country as small as Israel, with many enemies all around, many unknowns could constitute dangerous threats; but others might offer pleasant opportunities.

Israeli leaders tended to emphasize the negative possibilities, often because they contended that their country was too small to permit errors. In light of the Holocaust—and Begin often invoked its memory—prime ministers felt that it was their job to protect the entire Jewish people from calamities.

That sense of duty, though always weighed against the realities of domestic and international politics, continued to be a powerful factor in determining what Israel and its intelligence community would do.

Chapter Thirteen

Jewish Intelligence

“This was my finest hour” was a phrase used often by almost every head of the Mossad, reflecting back on the exciting times of his professional career. More than any other achievement, they spoke of the help they were able to give to fellow Jews.

“Of all the operations and activities that I was responsible for, the strongest and most exciting experiences were saving our Jewish brethren from countries of oppression and bringing them over here,” Zvi Zamir reminisced. “It was a great humane deed.”

The intelligence community—which, from the beginning, included units devoted to facilitating immigration to Israel—executed clever and often dangerous operations to get people out of Iran, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, the Soviet Union, and other far-flung Jewish communities that were hopelessly isolated. That was after an initial flurry of immigration from Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, and other Arab countries where Jews were made to feel unwelcome by anti-Jewish and anti-Israel governments.

The whole notion of “Jewish intelligence,” intent on ensuring the safety and success of millions of Jews around the world, was a self-appointed mission. The individual communities only rarely requested assistance. Israeli envoys came to them, helped them, and generally got them out. Many moved to Israel, but others chose to go to America, Europe, or Australia. The main intent was to get them to safety.

The founding fathers of the Jewish state—and its intelligence community—believed that those projects were an almost mystical calling: important steps toward reversing the ancient exile that had turned a once-united people into a Diaspora.

These were highly sensitive missions, however. Jews scattered around the world were not Israeli citizens. Their home countries could object very strongly to interference in the lives of their nationals. The Jews receiving uninvited aid could suffer from a kind of split personality—as well as accusations of dual loyalty hurled by the non-Jewish majorities all around them.

As unique and touchy as it was, Jewish intelligence seemed natural. Israel calls itself the Jewish homeland, and it has a Law of Return that grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who reaches its soil and asks for it.

Israel also had a powerful strategic motive. Immigration represented a chance rapidly to make the new state stronger and, in population terms, bigger. If more people meant greater national security, the intelligence community was sure to be involved.

The launching pad for action in this sphere was the pre-state clandestine agency that focused on illegal immigration,
ha-Mossad le-Aliyah Bet
, “the Institute for Aliyah B.” Its original work focused on sneaking Jews into British-ruled Palestine. Similar work continued and even expanded after Israel was born in 1948.

While 6,000 Israelis, mostly young, were losing their lives on the battlefields of the 1948-49 War of Independence, the secret operatives of Aliyah B were setting up bogus companies to arrange flights for Jews out of Iraq and Yemen—two of the Arab countries whose armies had invaded the newborn Israel. The agent in charge of this network of clandestine travel was Shlomo Hillel, who would rise in the next three decades to be a cabinet minister and speaker of the Knesset.

Posing as fictitious British businessman Richard Armstrong, Hillel chartered airplanes from an obscure American airline to extract, in 1949, almost every single one of the 50,000 Jews of Yemen. This operation, code-named “Magic Carpet,” was relatively easy.

For the Iraqi operation, Hillel/Armstrong had help from a sayan, a British Jew working in the aviation industry. They made sure to give a maintenance contract to the Iraqi prime minister’s son, and things went remarkably smoothly after that indirect bribe—known in the Middle East as
baksheesh
, and a truly quotidian expense for Israeli intelligence.

The Shah of Iran, ruler of the neighboring country, was happy to cooperate by facilitating travel arrangements. From May 1950 to January 1952, Hillel’s exit route managed to bring nearly 150,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel by air. The direct flights were known as “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah,” named for the two Jewish leaders who led their people back to the Holy Land from exile in Iraq—then called Mesopotamia—23 centuries earlier.

Thanks to the secret agents of Aliyah B, the population of Israel nearly doubled—to more than one million Jews—in the first four years after independence.

Aliyah B was an economic empire and an operational masterpiece. No nation has had anything like it: a huge organization involved in the global conveyance of Israel’s most important asset, people. Built around a massive undercover travel agency, Aliyah B owned over 60 ships and airplanes and countless cars and trucks. Their movements were well coordinated by a worldwide network of quasi-legal radio transmitters.

Aliyah B agents formed direct relationships with political leaders, often in nominally hostile nations: not only Iraqi prime ministers, but also Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian politicians. Contacts at the highest levels were tapped to explore routes for the safe passage of Jews to Israel.

Some of the airplanes became the first El Al airliners. Aliyah B refugee boats helped form the core of Israel’s national shipping company, Zim. The experience acquired by operatives worldwide helped Israel’s new navy. Aliyah B also had some of Israel’s finest forgers and field agents, whom the Mossad would later put to good use.

The masterpiece was torn to bits, as part of modernizing Israel’s intelligence structure. Aliyah B was disbanded in March 1952, and its missions were divided into two. One part was given to a newly established intelligence unit, Nativ (“Path”), which stood outside the major agencies. The other assignments were tasked to a unit—given the name Bitzur (“Fortification”)—inside the newly established Mossad.

Successive prime ministers and policymakers understood that immigration was contributing to the Jewish state’s strength and national security. So, while intelligence structures and units altered their names and changed management through the years, this covert work—unique to Israel—continued apace.

Israeli secret agents, under diplomatic cover or posing as foreigners, were sent to nations where Jews lived in difficult circumstances. They set up dummy corporations, opened bank accounts, recruited corrupt or sympathetic local officials, befriended border-crossing guards and airport and seaport managers, and bribed key government figures.

As with Aliya B, these missions were supplemented by financial assistance from Jewish philanthropists and strong support from many community organizations. Towering above them all was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the JDC, often called “the Joint”), a ubiquitous and often secretive welfare organization.

When needed, Nativ and Bitzur—with the Joint’s assistance—mobilized international public opinion to apply pressure on Arab governments, the Soviet Union, and Russian-controlled regimes in Eastern Europe to allow Jews to emigrate. They rallied the support of Western governments, labor unions, human rights organizations, and the media. Gaining enthusiastic backing from American Jewish organizations, it became fashionable to chant slogans on behalf of freedom for Soviet Jewry.

The division of labor was clear. Bitzur, acting from within the Mossad, was tasked with bringing Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, as well as organizing defensive tactics against anti-Semitic violence—even providing self-protection plans to Jews in Europe and South America.

Nativ’s territory was the Communist bloc, and it occupied itself only with immigration issues and gathering intelligence that could help sneak Jews out. The issue of self-defense in these countries, with their authoritarian regimes, was considered too risky.

Nativ’s director was Shaul Avigur, the longtime head of the former Aliyah B. He began by sending operatives into the Soviet Union, which had the world’s second-largest Jewish community: three million strong, second only to the six million of the United States. Elie Wiesel, the educator and activist, called his brethren in Russia “The Jews of Silence,” making that the title of his book on the issue.

Avigur’s first aim was to establish contact with the key Jewish communities spread all over the vast republics of the Soviet Union. Nativ would then try to awaken Jewish culture and religion—hoping later to turn the wave from simple Judaism to Zionism—the desire to migrate to Israel. Nativ’s diplomats’ and agents’ work included slipping pocket-sized Jewish calendars and Hebrew-Russian dictionaries into the jackets of Jews in synagogues. They also distributed prayer books, Bibles, newspapers, and books in Hebrew, even though they knew that the Soviet authorities considered these to be “anti-state propaganda.”

Avigur chose his envoys carefully. They had to be volunteers who demonstrated “high Zionist motivation.” And they had to know Jewish traditions and customs.

It would be best, he felt, if they were young married couples with children. Youthful strength would help them tolerate long and uncomfortable train rides across Russia. Single men were not preferred, because Soviet authorities might try to ensnare them in sexual temptation and blackmail—the classic “honey trap” of intelligence agencies.

There was a major change just after the Six-Day War of 1967. After the Soviet clients, Egypt and Syria, were soundly defeated, Moscow showed its anger at Israel by cutting diplomatic relations. They were not reestablished until the dissolution of the Soviet Union 23 years later.

One Communist country in Europe continued to have full diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, and that was Romania. Its leader was a megalomaniac, Nicolae Ceausescu, but Israeli intelligence knew how to play him like a virtuoso’s violin.

Most important for Nativ was that he agreed to allow several thousand Romanian Jews to leave for Israel each year. But Israel had to pay a kind of head tax for each and every Jew. The price per capita varied, depending on education, location, and the person’s importance to the authorities. The payments were disguised as “compensation” to Romania for the investment the nation had made in these citizens. It was truly a simple trade: people, in exchange for ransom.

Ceausescu played an interesting double game when it came to Palestinian terrorist groups. He offered shelter to the notorious Abu Nidal and his murderous gang, even providing training and light weapons. At the same time, Romania spied on them and collected valuable information about the radicals’ travels and plans.

The Nativ operative entrusted with “the Ceausescu account” was Yeshayahu (Shaike) Trachtenberg-Dan, a former Aliyah B man whose first covert work was for the British army, parachuting behind Nazi lines in Europe. Born back in 1910 and remembered as “Shaike Dan,” this white-haired peripatetic immigration spy in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s went to Bucharest, Romania’s capital, twice a year with a suitcase full of cash. On the way, he would stop in Vienna and hand a substantial sum to a Romanian diplomat who happened to be one of Ceausescu’s relatives. Only then would Dan receive a visa to proceed.

In Bucharest, he would meet with Romanian officials and give them the rest of the money. The corruption was barely hidden, and for Nativ it was a fact of life rather than cause to be offended. Americans who worked for the Joint often helped to set up Dan’s meetings with the right people.

In this way, nearly all of the 200,000 Jews of Romania emigrated to Israel from the mid-1960s until the collapse of Ceausescu and his regime in late 1989. Israel paid around $400 million, half of it to the dictator, his family, and cronies. That worked out to $2,000 per Jew, and Israeli intelligence had no regrets about it.

In the Soviet Union, the end of formal diplomatic ties made Nativ’s work more difficult. There were no more cover jobs in an Israeli embassy in Moscow, and no diplomatic immunity should an Israeli operative get into trouble.

On the other hand, there was a dramatic increase in the religious and Zionist consciousness of Soviet Jews: an awakening prompted by Israel’s exciting six-day victory over the Arabs. Many more Jews started defying the law by listening to news and commentary, in Russian, from Kol Israel (the Voice of Israel) on their shortwave radios.

Nativ saw an opportunity for success in towns where nothing good had been happening for many years. Unable to send in many Israelis, Nativ helped arrange visits to the Soviet Union by Zionist youth activists from North America and Western Europe. They entered as tourists, but in their suitcases were Hebrew dictionaries and Jewish prayer books.

No one epitomized the sea change more than a young Russian student who was a proud Jew—not something safe or wise to be in the decades of Communist rule—and practically shouted that fact to the skies.

His courageous tale began in mid-February 1967, when he dared to approach the front gates of the Israeli embassy in Moscow. A Soviet policeman tried to block his path, but the young man told him to shut up and rushed into the Israeli compound.

One of the diplomats invited him into the building, all the while suspecting that the entire incident might be a provocation by the KGB. He asked the student what he wanted.

“To go to Israel,” he replied.

“Who are you?” the diplomat asked.

“My name is Yasha Kazakov, and I am a 19-year-old Jewish student at the Moscow Transportation Institute.”

Kazakov, who eventually would move to Israel and change his name to Yaakov Kedmi, recalled: “They at the embassy clearly did not know how to behave toward me. The diplomat said, ‘If you’re serious, come back in a week.’ ”

When Kazakov left the embassy, KGB officers were waiting for him. “They asked what I was looking for in the embassy, and I invented the excuse that I was looking for information about my grandfather, who had disappeared during the war.”

Four months later, when the Soviet Union announced that it was severing relations with Israel, Kazakov walked to the United States embassy and—using his already tested technique—rushed inside. “It was a little more difficult,” he recalled, “because security was tighter and it was a longer run.”