Biography Of Eli Cohen – Free PDF Download

GOLAN HEIGHTS

• From 1948 until 1967, Syria was in more of a position to express her dislike and wish to put an end to the Jewish state by firing mortar shells from the Syrian occupied Golan Heights.For 19 years, Jewish settlements in the north were under constant threat of Syrian guns.
• When the Golan was captured in 1967, at almost the end of the Six-Day War, settlers in the north could finally breathe a sigh of relief. And much of the credit for Israel’s ability to capture the Golan was due to Eli Cohen, Israel’s greatest spy.

EARLY LIFE

• Eli Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on December 26, 1924 . “His parents, Syrian Jews from the thriving town of Aleppo, had always instilled in their educationally minded son the traditions of the Jewish people.
• In January 1947, Eli enlisted in the Egyptian Army. Later that year, he left university and began studying at home after facing harassment by the Muslim Brotherhood.
• His parents and three brothers left for Israel in 1949, but he remained to finish a degree in electronics and to coordinate Jewish and Zionist activities.

RISING

• The government initiated an anti-Zionist campaign in 1951, following a military coup, and Cohen was arrested and interrogated over his Zionist activities.
• Egyptian authorities uncovered the spy ring and sentenced two of the members to death. Cohen had aided the unit and was implicated, but they found no link between him and the perpetrators.
• The Egyptian government increased their persecution of Jews and expelled many of them, and Cohen was forced to leave the country in December 1956.

SPY

• He emigrated to Israel with the assistance of the Jewish Agency. The Israel Defense Forces recruited him in 1957 and placed him in military intelligence, where he became a counter-intelligence analyst.
• His work bored him and he attempted to join the Mossad, but he was offended when the Mossad rejected him, and he resigned from military counterintelligence.
• For the next two years, he worked as a filing clerk in a Tel Aviv insurance office.In 1959, he married Nadia.They had three children.

SPY

• The Mossad recruited Cohen after Director-General Meir Amit, looking for a special agent to infiltrate the Syrian government.
• Cohen was then informed that the Mossad had decided to recruit him and underwent an intensive six-month course at the Mossad training school.
• He was then given a false identity as a Syrian businessman who was returning to the country after living in Argentina. To establish his cover, Cohen moved to Buenos Aires in 1961.
• In Buenos Aires he moved among the Arab community, letting it be known he had large amounts of money.

SPY

• Cohen moved to Damascus in February 1962 under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet.Mossad had carefully planned the tactics that he was to use in building relationships with high-ranking Syrian politicians, military officials, influential public figures and the diplomatic community.
• Cohen provided an extensive amount and wide range of intelligence data to the Israeli Army between 1961 and 1965.
• He sent intelligence to Israel by radio, secret letters, and occasionally in pers. His most famous achievement was the tour of the Golan Heights in which he collected intelligence on the Syrian fortifications there.

SPY

• Cohen made repeated visits to the southern frontier zone, providing photographs and sketches of Syrian positions.
• Cohen was able to find out that the Syrians planned to divert the Jordan River headwaters.Newly appointed Syrian Intelligence Colonel Ahmed Su’edani trusted no one and disliked Cohen.
• In January 1965, Syrian officials increased their efforts to find a high-level spy using Soviet-made tracking equipment and assisted by Soviet experts.

UNCOVERED

• Syrian security services broke into Cohen’s apartment on January 24 and caught him in the middle of a transmission to Israel.
• Cohen was found guilty of espionage by a military tribunal and sentenced to death under martial law. He had been repeatedly interrogated and tortured.
• The governments of Belgium, Canada, and France tried to persuade the Syrian government to commute the death sentence,but the Syrians refused.

HANGED

• Cohen was hanged in the Marjeh Square in Damascus on May 18, 1965. Syria refused to return Cohen’s body to his family in Israel, and his wife Nadia sent a letter to Amin al-Hafiz in November 1965 asking his forgiveness for Cohen’s actions and requesting his remains.
• Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied family requests for the remains.

HANGED

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