Son of Sophia and Saul. Born on December 6, 1924 in Alexandria, Egypt, brother of seven, Eli’s parents immigrated to Alexandria from the city of Aleppo in Syria and made sure to maintain a traditional Jewish-religious character in their home, where he spoke Arabic and French. , Photographed and shot in a boat in the Mediterranean, studied and was educated at the Jewish Community School, where he excelled in his achievements and demonstrated outstanding skills in the fields of mathematics and engineering, and had an excellent memory. He was a member of the Maccabi youth movement and a member of the Maccabi youth movement As a Jew with Zionist awareness, I was filled with pride at the establishment of the State of Israel, and his initial contact with the Israeli intelligence community was created in 1952 when he was twenty-eight years old.In the same period, the IDF’s intelligence apparatus operated secret cells In Egypt. Because of his friendship with the activists in one of the cells, they asked him to rent a room for them in the city. Beyond that, he had no involvement in their activities. After the cell was exposed, in an affair that was later known as the “shameful affair,” Eli was arrested for questioning by the Egyptian police and immediately released for lack of evidence. However, his name and picture were put on the list of suspects. His friends, for whom he rented the room, Dr. Moshe Marzuk and Sami (Shmuel) Ezer, were tried and executed by hanging, and Eli decided to enlist in Israeli intelligence to continue their path and avenge their death. After the Sinai Campaign in 1956, mass arrests of Jews were carried out in Egypt, and Eli was arrested for fear of revealing the secret of his visit to Israel and the course he had undergone in Israel, but when he arrived at the police station it became clear that the Egyptian authorities arrested thousands of Jews Without investigation, and he found himself with a large group of Jews in a detention camp. Hundreds were deported to Etel A year later, at the age of thirty-three, Eli and his family immigrated to Israel, many of whom came from the Jewish community in Alexandria, settling in Bat Yam because of their proximity to the sea and in accordance with their economic abilities. Two years after his immigration to Israel, Eli married his wife, Nadia, from Iraq: “In 1958 we met and fell in love with him at first sight. I saw a trustworthy reliable man, and I loved his body movements. I was eleven years younger than him … At first I was afraid to enter into a serious relationship, I was afraid of the burden, of the unknown, but Eli reassured me. It was not long before I saw him as a life partner. “The two bought an apartment in Bat Yam and lived modestly:” For the little we had, we were Simcha. “We did not have any property, but we felt we were all equal.” The first job I was employed with when I immigrated to Israel was in the framework of one of the IDF’s intelligence units, as a translator of Western materials Hebrew. After his request to integrate into a more operational activity was rejected, he chose to try his luck in the civilian market. The work he received, in “The Central Mashbir,” gave him financial security, but he felt that another vocation awaited him. Therefore, in 1960 left this position. Landia said he would be fired but would soon find another job, and after a few weeks he was admitted to the unit called “The Mossad.” Landia said that he had been hired for a secret factory connected to the government,Skating, photography, including microfilms, adaptations to the area and to the Arab population, the study of prayer, the Koran and the customs of Islam, a visit to the mosques and the adoption of the Syrian dialect. Eli was sent to engage in secret missions. He was chosen to serve as a spy in Syria, and for this he was given a cover story: he was given the name Kamel Amin Tabet and a fictional identity of a businessman who lived in Argentina and decided to return to his homeland. Eli informed Nadia that as part of his work he must bring spare parts for Israeli weapons. His “short” trip to Buenos Aires lasted eight months. During which they corresponded and Nadia described how Sophie, their eldest daughter, was crawling, that her teeth had grown and that she was already saying “mother” and “father.” None of his acquaintances had any idea that he was spying on behalf of the state. Eli was absorbed into the Syrian-Lebanese community in Argentina. He knew its leaders and was equipped with letters of recommendation, which would help him penetrate the centers of power in Damascus. “From this trip to me came a completely different man,” Nadia said, “with a mustache, he gained weight, he came back with a very high self-confidence and I was Simcha … I saw that he loved what he was doing, that he was exhausting his abilities. He wanted to come all his life. ” In August 1961 he left Argentina for me. During his vacation in Israel his father died, and immediately after the shiva he was forced to leave his family. In January 1962 he traveled from Italy to Beirut on his way to Damascus, and on the deck of the ship he connected with another immigrant who had also returned to the homeland and through which he began to establish ties with the Syrian elite. He later returned to Damascus and continued his mission of infiltration into the Syrian political echelon in March 1962. During those months, a military coup took place in Syria and the Ba’th party came to power. Kamel Thabet, who is Eli Cohen, From his point of view, he moved to the circle of decision-makers in Syria, and during his years of service, Eli handed over to his operators over 100 telegrams containing highly important information about Israel’s security. , Transactions, cooperation with the Soviet regime, the deployment of the army, its fortifications, and the order of the forces in general and the Golan Heights in particular.Ili created maps with accurate diagrams of the Syrian army’s fuel deposits and reports on aircraft movements. In the meantime, his second daughter, Irit, was born and in October 1964, Eli Cohen returned to Israel in preparation for the birth of his third son, Shai. At the same time, the Syrians began to promote plans to diversify the waters of the Jordan River in order to disrupt the regular water supply to Israel and cause a major crisis. On his return to Damascus, at one of the new Syrian elite parties, he dubbed the contractor who was in charge of building the diversion facility. The IDF managed to attack the facility efficiently, using tanks and planes, and destroy all Syrian equipment that was intended to divert the sources of the Jordan River, until it could not be rehabilitated. The IDF succeeded in thwarting this plot, thanks to the information it provided me. As an activist in the party, one of the loyalists of President Amin al-Hafez, senior military officers shared sensitive and vital information and invited him to patrol the bases in order to advance their careers. Sometimes they trusted him so much that they gave him details of embarrassing military mistakes that even the Syrian president himself had not heard of. For the information he gave me about the new tanks, planes and cannonsAcquired by the Syrians and the deployment of the army in the Golan, had a decisive influence on Israel’s victory in the northern arena in the Six-Day War, two years after his death. His advice to the Syrians to plant eucalyptus trees for camouflage purposes around their fortifications at the level helped our forces locate them accurately. Levi Eshkol, then Israeli Prime Minister, said that Eli Cohen’s actions saved the lives of many divisions of soldiers, and the information he provided led to the great victory in the war. During those years, Nadia alone raised their three children. “Nadia said:” He used to sit around the house for days and nights and decipher maps. He made an effort to see maps of tiny buildings and some of them to build mosques, buildings, soccer fields, and basketball courts. When I asked him what he was doing, he replied: ‘You know I’m a curious person.’ He really was. And I believed and still did not understand. “At the beginning of September 1964, he was formally appointed to the rank of Major, and was one of the most tense periods in the history of the Syrian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflict. , Began to suspect that Syria was operating a mole. In January 1965, advanced surveillance equipment for the detection of radio broadcasts arrived in Syria from the Soviet Union. For the purpose of installation and frequency reset, a nationwide wireless shutdown was decided on January 7. Among the many details of their information, Cohen was exposed, missing this important detail. As a result, the means of locating the Soviet media experts operating in Syria managed to locate the signal that emanated from the transmitter in his apartment. On January 24, 1965, Syria officially announced the exposure of spy Eli Cohen. After undergoing a series of harsh torture and interrogations lasting about a month, his trial began on 22 February. The trial took place in front of a military court and closed doors. The judge accused him of treason, for the entire Syrian leadership regarded him as an Arab. Eli Cohen, for his part, replied: “I am not a traitor, I am an emissary.” “What is your country, Israel, you are Egyptian, your country is Egypt,” the judge said. Five months after being captured by the Syrian security forces, Cohen was hanged in front of everyone in Marja square in the Lev of Damascus. Before his execution, he was allowed to meet with Rabbi Nissim Andibu-Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of the Damascus Jewish Community, who strengthened his spirit and prayed with him on the customary prayers. The rabbi testified that he had met a broken, yet determined, person who wanted to inform his family that he had fulfilled his duty to the end and remained faithful to his people and country. After saying “Kaddish” to the memory of his father, his last wish was to write a farewell letter to his wife and children: “Dear Nadia, my dear family, I am writing these last words to you in the hope that you will always remain united. And my dear Nadia, you are entitled to marry another man to be the father of our children, and on this subject you are completely free, I ask you not to grieve for what happened, but to look at the future, I send you last kisses. My soul. ” Major Eli Cohen fell in combat and was raised to the gallows in Damascus on May 18, 1965. He was forty-one when he fell. Survived by Raya – Nadia, three children – Sophie, Irit and Shai; Mother – Sophia, and seven brothers and sisters – Odette, Morris, Ezra, Sarah, Zion Ephraim and Abraham. After his death he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. A monument was placed in his memory at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. To this day, the Syrians refuse to discuss the return of a suspectHis death. Eli Cohen’s brother-in-law, author Sami Michael, Nadia’s brother, said Eli Cohen was the most famous Israeli agent, and his exploits still nourish and nourish the imagination of many people. “He was a hero who gave his life in the service of his country, and the people owes a great debt to his memory for his contribution to security.” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said at a rally in memory of Eli Cohen: “… Even thirty years later, the legend of Eli Cohen lives within us … The intelligence fighter in Israel is a target, different from any other fighter … He is alone, he is also the soldier and he is also the commander. His own adviser, who is also the executor … far from the house, is far from the family he loved, always anonymous, always under an assumed identity, and he must not be mistaken … Eli Cohen was alone in Damascus, working alone, eating alone and sleeping alone. In the darkness of the night to the radio and cut his ears, looked around him during the day, and opened his eyes … There is no thank you lesson to which the State of Israel owes them … Eli Cohen was one of the best in the group, Time, and also allows us to act … “after the death of Eli Cohen became a symbol and model of sacrifice and giving to his people, his country and his homeland. His heroic life story is part of the curriculum and many students and students choose to write works about Eli Cohen, our man in Damascus. His name has been immortalized in numerous institutions and sites throughout the country: streets, buildings, synagogues, libraries, learning centers, parks and groves. The settlement Eliad in the Golan Heights is named after him. Countless newspaper articles, three books, a film, and television programs recounted his life story, his special activity and his death. In 1987, a documentary about him was produced by an Egyptian director. The film, called “The Impossible Spy,” was broadcast on the Al Arabiya network throughout the Middle East. The website www.elicohen.org.il provides extensive information about Eli Cohen’s heritage and the love of Israel. This fallen hero is a “maklan” – a hero whose burial place is unknown.
