The covert operation that this week has killed twenty people in Lebanon and left more than 3,000 injured after the manipulation of the pagers and walkie talkies of Hezbollah terrorists is one of the greatest milestones in the history of global espionage. Although Israel has not commented on these attacks, all fingers point to its secret services and, in particular, to the Mossad, an organisation surrounded by an aura of infallibility and efficiency forged over the years. However, this aura is not equivalent in Israel, where the actions of these super spies are increasingly questioned and are considered to be capable of destabilising a region that is already on the brink of disaster.
“It’s an operation for Hollywood, not for the reality of the region,” sums up Gideon Levy, writer, columnist for the daily Haaretz and Solokov Prize winner for journalism. Levy, who has condemned, among other actions, the siege of Gaza, affirms in statements to this newspaper that the Mossad’s feat, in addition to radicalizing the conflict, will serve to further strengthen militaristic thinking in Israeli society. “But this way of thinking that believes that war and armed actions are the solution is what will lead us to a catastrophic situation,” he says.
The Mossad and its operations have helped foster a way of thinking in Israel that justifies armed actions of all kinds with arguments related to protecting the country. This influence is based on decades of actions by spies that are part of the country’s most epic history. The various milestones of their existence also reflect the evolution of the conflict in the region.
The Mossad was created in 1949 by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion as an intelligence-gathering agency. Its first operation that bordered on the impossible took place in 1960, when it kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi leaders linked to the Holocaust, in Argentina. This action not only had heroic overtones but also allowed the newly born State of Israel to settle accounts with those responsible for the systematic extermination of Jews during World War II.
The second Mossad action that further increased Mossad’s fame yielded results in 1967, when the Israeli Defence Forces succeeded in conquering the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War. The information that facilitated the attack was provided by agent Eli Cohen, a Jew of Egyptian origin who managed to infiltrate the Syrian Army headquarters. According to a widespread, unconfirmed and unrefuted legend, the spy not only obtained all the secret documents of the Syrian general staff, but also convinced the generals to camouflage all the bunkers in the Golan Heights with eucalyptus trees. When the war began, Israeli pilots only had to bomb the eucalyptus forests to wipe out the entire Syrian defence. Cohen was arrested and hanged in the centre of Damascus in 1965, in front of television cameras. The Israeli secret services thus created their first martyr, a hero killed after achieving an unprecedented military victory for his country. They also gave full meaning to the agency’s motto: “By deception you will make war.”
Israeli spies also participated in other almost mythological memorial actions, such as the liberation of a hundred Jewish passengers from an Air France plane hijacked by Palestinians and landed in Uganda in July 1976. The information obtained by the Mossad enabled a commando to travel 3,500 kilometres to Entebbe, free the passengers, kill the terrorists and return to Tel Aviv. But everything had changed four years earlier.
Munich tragedy
The murder of eleven Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists of Black September had set in motion a revenge operation ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meier. The intelligence services then began to assassinate Palestinian terrorists – or those suspected of being such – using all kinds of methods, from bombs in phones or beds to street shootings. The Mossad was transformed from an intelligence agency into an operational branch charged with carrying out all kinds of punitive or coercive actions, including assassinations. This decision changed the rules of the game in the Middle East. The deaths created a spiral of violence in which suicide attacks were mixed with declared wars such as the Yom Kippur war or the invasions of Lebanon that gave rise to Hezbollah.
“It was all tragic and we are back to that situation,” says journalist Gidon Levy. “A large part of Israeli society thinks that only war is the solution, and the mentality that accompanies the actions of the Mossad has been established in the highest spheres.” Writer and journalist Yossi Melman, author of essential books on Israeli espionage, has a similar opinion. “The operation against Hezbollah is spectacular, but how does it change the situation?” he says.
To understand the attack against the Shiite militia in Lebanon, one must take into account a context that fully affects the current Mossad, led by the military man David Barnea. First of all, Israeli society has still not forgiven the historic failure of October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas militants managed to attack Israel from Gaza, murder more than a thousand citizens and kidnap 250 people. The legend surrounding the spies shattered like a glass falling from a window. Therefore, their intervention against Hezbollah vindicates them. “But what also happens is that the majority of the Israeli population supports any kind of action against Hezbollah, since it is considered the most dangerous enemy, much more so than Hamas,” says Gideon Levy. The death of twelve Druze children on an Israeli football field on July 27 by a Hezbollah missile and the evacuation of thousands of Israeli citizens from the border are key factors in analysing the latest operation.
“The sky is the limit”
But despite the success of the penetration of Hezbollah by Israeli agents, there are also voices such as that of expert Yossi Melman who question some of its consequences. “In 1967, in the Six-Day War, the Israeli air force destroyed 400 Egyptian fighter planes while they were in their hangars thanks to intelligence operations. This allowed them to cross the Sinai and conquer it in less than a week. That is what should have happened with the operation against Hezbollah. It should have been the first shot of a larger campaign. It has not happened and the surprise has been lost.”
Melman has no doubts about the brilliance of a covert operation which, according to the little that is known at the moment, involved setting up a factory in Hungary for pagers and communication devices, then selling thousands of these devices, loaded with six grams of pentaerythritide, to Hezbollah and detonating them simultaneously. This mission was also carried out while the armed organisation was obsessed by Israeli electronic surveillance of its communications, which points to an infiltration of its leadership. “It has been shown that for the secret services, the sky is the limit,” says the writer.
But Melman doubts some of the issues that have been made public, such as whether the operation was carried out early out of fear of being detected by terrorists. “In my opinion, Netanyahu, obsessed with improving his standing in the polls, pulled the trigger. And perhaps, with that, we have lost the jewel in the crown. If Israel intends to invade Lebanon, Hezbollah will react with thousands of rockets and missiles against soldiers and civilians throughout Israel. The penetration of their communication system has been exposed and without a doubt, in Lebanon and in Iran, consequences will be drawn and we will have to start from scratch,” Melman laments. “Perhaps we have ruined an espionage tool that took years to set up, perhaps more than a decade.”
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