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The Lavon affair was a failed Israeli covert operation, codenamed Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the summer of 1954.
Sep 18, 2024 · The 'something' was named 'Operation Suzanna'. Israel dialled up Colonel Mordechai Ben-Tsur to get together a motley group of Egyptian Jews who were to be trained to carry out the attacks. Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel's General Security Service, were both involved in Operation Suzanna.
Mar 30, 2022 · Pinchas Lavon (1904-1976) was an Israeli politician, minister, and labor leader best known for the infamous “Lavon Affair,” the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt in the ...
Oct 17, 2023 · The Lavon Affair, also known as Operation Susannah, was a failed Israeli covert operation conducted in Egypt in the summer of 1954. The operation ultimately became known as the Lavon Affair...
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The Lavon Affair is a spy story in Israel's early years that left a nasty mark on the young state, with reverberations for the following 20 years. It's name derived from Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, though it is also referred to as \"Esek HaBish\" or \"The Mishap\".
Revolving around nearly a dozen young Egyptian Jews who agreed to spy for Israel against their home country, the affair taps into a story of idealism and self-sacrifice as well as abandonment and an unwillingness to take responsibility.
Why would such young Jews risk their lives for an Arab country in which they were born, for a country - Israel - which until 1952 they had never seen? And why would Israel decide to open up a cell of native Jews to spy for them?
For Israel, sources of information were drying up in Egypt after the War of Independence of 1948. Perhaps more than half of Egypt's approximately 80,000 Jews had left for Israel by mid-1950. Egyptian Muslims were more openly hostile and distrustful of those Jews who remained, which led many Jews to sever any connection they had with Israel. Israel ...
The Israelis, meanwhile, did not want the British to leave. The British presence guaranteed a buffer of sorts to an attempted Egyptian invasion of Israel. With the British gone, there would be nothing to stand between Egypt and Israel but the vast wastelands of the Sinai. After the trial the men were transferred to Tura Prison. Moshe Marzouk and Sh...
Thus the Israelis approached a number of native Egyptian Jews, who recruited others, usually from among their own social circle. These Egyptian Jews were ready to spy against Egypt because they never regarded themselves, nor did others regard them, as Egyptians. They attended Jewish schools, their social contacts were limited almost exclusively to ...
Moshe Marzouk, an extremely bright young man studying to be a doctor when he entered the spy ring, was born in Cairo to the Karaite sect. The Karaites are a Jewish sect founded in Persia in the 8th century CE, recognizing only the written Bible - meaning the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Karaites reject the oral, Talmudic tradition and...
Shmuel Azar, Victor Levy and Robert Dassa were born in Alexandria, a much more cosmopolitan city than Cairo. One could hear French, Italian and Greek as much as Arabic in Alexandria's broad, straight thoroughfares lined by French style buildings..
All three boys were born in Egypt. Robert Dassa's family was one of those that settled in Egypt on the way from Yemen to Palestine. In his pictures in prison, Robert, with his jet-black hair, dark complexion and mustache looked the most Egyptian of all.
An Israeli agent by the name of Avraham Seidenberg was sent to take over the organization of the spy ring from his predecessor, Avraham Dar. Seidenberg was a good choice for such a dangerous mission - taking into account that he was an Israeli unlike the Egyptian Jews, and thus had more of a chance of his cover being blown. Yet he had little to los...
As Philip lay on the ground, he saw startled and frightened faces looking down at him. While somebody shouted \"Take care! He may have another bomb!\" Philip heard a police sergeant say \"Don't worry, don't worry. We were waiting for them. These are the people who set fire to the American library.\" He was taken by ambulance to a hospital. After be...
'I told them I was manufacturing dyes.' 'Sure,' said the governor sarcastically. 'There's a good market for them, praise be to Allah.'\"
The prison guards would sometimes hang the prisoners up with their arms tied behind their heads, and beat the prisoners savagely until they fainted, and sometimes even died. The truth is that this treatment was not only meted out to the Jewish spies - Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were fierce opponents of Nasser's secular, sociali...
After months of this kind of treatment they were finally brought to trial. The verdict was predetermined from the start, a fact which was known as long ago as 1956. The sentences were a compromise between the extremists of the new government, who wanted all of the spies put to death, and those more moderate members of the government, \"who preferre...
Moshe Marzouk publicly took responsibility for the group and everything that they had done. The presiding Military Judge, General Digwi was taken aback by the admission. On only one point did Moshe concede to his companions' pleas not to reveal more about their activities; and that was not to admit that they had undergone military training in Israe...
Isser Harel served as head of the Shin Bet and the Mossad from 1952-1963. He became a giant in early Israeli intelligence, responsible for the capture of Adolph Eichmann and many other operations, as we shall see in a few weeks. Isser Harel was known to act on his instincts - which often proved him correct. He began to suspect Seidenberg. He ordere...
To soften the blow, Seidenberg was asked to write reports on his activities in Egypt and Germany. He was given access to archives, and years later, it was discovered that he took some of the top-secret documents he then had access to. He served a short prison term, but after his discharge, his father in Austria became ill and Avraham Seidenberg wen...
Isser Harel tricked Seidenberg to come back to Israel by offering him a nice position business-wise, while maintaining a connection with Intelligence. Seidenberg did come back to Israel at the end of 1957.
A senior Intelligence officer interviewed Seidenberg about a new position, while two other senior Intelligence officers concealed themselves \"in the neighboring room with the door slightly ajarWhen Avraham Seidenberg settled in his chair, the interviewing officer presented the first question: 'Tell me, Avry, could you swear by everything holy that...
The Lavon affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, codenamed Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation, a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American, and British-owned civilian targets: cinemas, libraries and ...
The Lavon affair was a failed Israeli covert operation, codenamed Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the summer of 1954. As part of a false flag operation, a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian-, American-, and British-owned civilian targets: cinemas, libraries, and ...
