Mossad

The Mossad is the national intelligence agency of Israel. Among its primary responsibilities are espionage, covert action, and counterterrorism outside of Israel’s borders. Mossad is the Hebrew word for “institute” and is short for the HaMossad LeModi’in U’LeTafkidim Meyuchadim, or Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. It was formed in 1949, shortly after the nation of Israel was established by the United Nations. As is the case with most intelligence organizations, Mossad operations are highly classified and much of its activities, structure, and leadership are highly guarded state secrets. For example, it was not until 1996 that the director of the Mossad was publicly acknowledged by the government. The agency has the authority to operate outside of Israel’s constitution and has often been criticized for its controversial methods. Chief among these are targeted assassinations allegedly carried out by its agents in foreign nations.

Background

Archaeologists believe the ancient kingdom of Israel was formed sometime around 1080 BCE on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle East. The nation was said to have been split in two around 931 BCE, with Israel to the north and the kingdom of Judah to the south. Israel was conquered and destroyed by the Assyrians around 722 BCE. Judah fell to the Babylonians around 583 BCE, and many of its people were taken back to Babylon as captives. The Jewish people eventually returned to their homeland, but the region fell under the control of a series of conquerors during the next few centuries. By the time of the Roman Empire, the region was known as Judea. After a Jewish revolt against the Romans from 132 to 136 CE, the Emperor Hadrian ordered a brutal crackdown against the Jews. Those who were not killed or enslaved were forced into exile. In an effort to remove any trace of Jewish history, Hadrian ordered the name of the province changed to Palestina.

For almost two thousand years, the Jewish people remained scattered across the ancient Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Then, in the late nineteenth century, a nationalistic movement called Zionism took root among many Jews. Zionists felt it was their right to reestablish a Jewish homeland in their ancestral kingdom in the Middle East. From 1882 to 1914, an estimated seventy-five thousand Jews settled in Arab-controlled Palestine, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans sided with Germany in World War I (1914–1918), and after the German defeat, the empire was dissolved and its lands were divided up among the victorious Allies. Great Britain took control of Palestine. British leaders wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in the region, but that idea was met with fierce opposition from Arab Palestinians.

During World War II (1939–1945), more than six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, a systematic program of extermination organized by Nazi Germany. Many Jews had fled to Palestine before the war to avoid Nazi persecution. Many more arrived afterward. When the horrors of the Holocaust became known after the war, support for a Jewish homeland grew among the international community. In 1947, the United Nations announced a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. On May 14, 1948, the nation of Israel officially became an independent state. The next day, five Arab nations invaded Israel. A cease-fire ended the conflict in 1949, but the incident touched off decades of war and violence between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Overview

In the years before Israel became a state, several Jewish intelligence organizations operated secretly in Palestine. These organizations supported the Zionist cause and often used violence in pursuit of their goals. When the nation was established, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, believed Israel needed a coordinated intelligence operation to oversee these groups and ensure Israel was protected against the hostile countries that surrounded it. In 1949, Ben-Gurion signed an order creating a three-part Israeli intelligence operation. The Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, was the organization assigned control over intelligence operations within Israel; Aman was given control of military intelligence; and the Central Institute for Coordination of the Intelligence and Security Services was formed to oversee foreign intelligence operations. This agency was reorganized as the Mossad in 1951.

All three agencies were placed under the direct control of the prime minister’s office. Their existence was such a closely guarded secret that even speaking the names Shin Bet or Mossad in public was illegal until the mid-1960s. Ben-Gurion named Reuven Shiloah as the first director of the Mossad. The agency was then located in Tel Aviv in a location known as the “Red House.” It was later moved to another location in Tel Aviv. Because the Mossad and the other intelligence agencies were not publicly acknowledged, they were not bound by the same constitutional laws as Israel’s citizens and other institutions. For example, Israeli law did not allow the death penalty, but the Mossad conducted a number of assassinations of those deemed threats to Israel. The agency referred to these targeted killings as “negative treatment.”

The Mossad continued to maintain strict secrecy of its inner workings in the decades after its existence was publicly acknowledged; however, it relaxed its original security restrictions and acknowledged some limited details about its operations. The Mossad is divided into several specialized departments. The largest is the Collections Department, which coordinates foreign espionage operations. The department is responsible for maintaining agents who work in official offices and unofficial “stations” around the globe. The Political Action and Liaison Department is responsible for political contact with foreign nations that may not be able to conduct public diplomatic relations with Israel. For example, the Mossad was instrumental in secret peace negotiations with the Arab nations of Egypt and Jordan. Openly working with the Israeli government would have caused anger among the more radical elements of their populations; additionally, the Israeli government would have faced criticism from radical elements among its own population.

The Metsada, formally known as the Special Operations Division, is responsible for sabotage, paramilitary operations, and assassinations beyond the borders of Israel. The Lohamah Psichologit, or LAP, handles psychological warfare, propaganda, and targeted deception operations. The Research Department produces daily intelligence reports from more than fifteen geographical regions around the world. A section of this department is specifically tasked to investigate the nuclear weapons capabilities of Israel’s enemies. The Technology Department oversees the development of advanced technologies to support the Mossad’s activities.

The agency conducts its operations in the belief that its actions prevent terrorist attacks on Israel and Israeli targets in other nations. The Mossad also conducts activities to rescue Jews from hostile foreign countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel. Two of the largest such operations occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s when the Mossad helped secretly evacuate thousands of Jews from the African nation of Ethiopia. The country had fallen under control of a Communist dictator who had outlawed Judaism and began imprisoning Jews.

Although the Mossad’s activities are largely kept secret, the agency has acknowledged some high-profile operations after they have been completed. One of the most noteworthy was the 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a top associate of German leader Adolf Hitler and helped develop the plans for the Nazi’s “final solution” to exterminate the Jews during the Holocaust. He was briefly captured after World War II, but he managed to escape and flee to Argentina in 1950.

In 1957, Israeli authorities heard rumors that Eichmann was alive and living under an assumed name in South America. Mossad agents were dispatched to Argentina where they spent several years following up tips on Eichmann’s whereabouts. By 1960, the agents were able to discover Eichmann’s alias and definitively identified him as their target. On May 11, 1960, Mossad operatives abducted Eichmann as he walked home and took him to a safe house. Under interrogation, Eichmann eventually admitted his identity. He was sedated, dressed as an Israeli airline pilot, and flown out of the country under the pretense he was ill. He was taken to Israel where he underwent trial in 1961. Eichmann was convicted of his crimes in December 1961 and hanged in June 1962.

The Mossad was also involved in hunting down and killing those it felt were responsible for the 1972 murder of eleven Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. The athletes had been taken hostage by a Palestinian group called Black September and killed when a rescue attempt went wrong. In late 1972, the Mossad was authorized to hunt down and kill the leaders of Black September and several Palestinian officials Israel claimed had supported the terrorist group. Mossad agents were assigned names from a list of about twenty to thirty-five people and given orders to assassinate their targets. Some of the targets were shot, and others were killed by carefully hidden explosive devices. In 1973, the agents misidentified their target and accidentally killed a waiter in Norway.

The operation was suspended, but resumed in 1979 when Mossad agents killed the alleged mastermind of the Munich attack, Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh was killed when a car bomb exploded as his vehicle was traveling down a street in Beirut, Lebanon. Four bystanders were also killed when the bomb exploded.

Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, Mossad remained active in operations around the world, though it continued to operate with a high level of secrecy. Many of Mossad's operations centered on countries considered hostile to Israel, including Iran. A key objective of the Mossad during the first decades of the twenty-first century was preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. For example, in 2018 Mossad agents infiltrated an Iranian nuclear archive in Tehran and stole documents related to the Iranian nuclear program.

Mossad was also accused of being responsible for the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists during the twenty-first century, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Iran's nuclear program, who was killed by a remote-operated machine gun in 2020 near the resort town of Absard. While Israel did not explicitly take responsibility, Yossi Cohen, who served as the head of Mossad until June 2021, hinted at the agency's involvement and a number of anonymous sources within the Israeli intelligence community confirmed suspicions of Mossad's role in Fakhrizadeh's death.

By the early 2020s Mossad had an alleged 7,000 employees, making it one of the biggest intelligence agencies in the world at that time. In addition to its intelligence and counterintelligence operations, it also was involved in other operations. For example, in 2017 the agency established a venture capital fund which invested in various tech enterprises.

Mossad remained a central component of Israel's intelligence services, though it was not immune to internal as well as external criticism. For example, on October 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian political organization and armed force classified as a terrorist group by Israel and a number of other countries, launched a series of attacks on military and civilian targets in Israel which killed an estimated 1,200 people and led to Hamas taking a number of hostages. In the wake of these attacks, as Israel launched a massive military attack against Gaza, Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services were scrutinized for failing to foresee and prevent this attack, the deadliest on Israeli territory in decades.

Bibliography

Bergman, Ronen. Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. Random House, 2018.

Bergman, Ronen, and Farnaz Fassihi. “The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine.” The New York Times, 18 Sep. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-fakhrizadeh-assassination-israel.html. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023.

Bergman, Ronen. “The Secret History of Mossad, Israel’s Feared and Respected Intelligence Agency.” New Statesman America, 15 Aug. 2018, www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2018/08/secret-history-mossad-israel-s-feared-and-respected-intelligence-agency. Accessed 23 Dec. 2018.

Geller, Doron. “Israel Military Intelligence: The Capture of Nazi Criminal Adolf Eichmann—Operation Finale.” Jewish Virtual Library, 2018, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-capture-of-nazi-criminal-adolf-eichmann. Accessed 23 Dec. 2018.

Kim, Juliana. “Hamas' Attack is a Staggering Failure for Israel's Intelligence and Security Forces.” NPR, 9 Oct. 2023, www.npr.org/2023/10/09/1204577965/israel-intelligence-security-hamas-gaza. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023.

Mossad, www.mossad.gov.il. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023.

“Olympics Massacre: Munich—The Real Story.” Independent, 22 Jan. 2006, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/olympics-massacre-munich-the-real-story-5336955.html. Accessed 23 Dec. 2018.

Pike, John. “Mossad: The Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks.” Federation of American Scientists, fas.org/irp/world/israel/mossad/. Accessed 23 Dec. 2018.