2024 started fast.
More precisely, the suffering, the state of war and the tension inherited from last year are still there.
The number of civilian casualties is increasing by the day as Israel says the Gaza war could last for a whole year.
In addition to diplomacy and politics, intelligence services are also working.
Two important developments of the week took place on the same day in two different countries, Lebanon and Turkey.
On October 7, Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader and Deputy Head of the Political Bureau, was killed in Lebanon with information provided by Israeli intelligence, which was at the center of criticism after Operation Aqsa Flood.
On the same day, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) carried out an operation against Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad in 8 provinces centered in Istanbul.
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Following the operation, 34 people were detained.
Of the 34 suspects referred to the Judgeship, 15 were arrested, judicial control provisions were applied to 11 suspects and 8 suspects were handed over to the Provincial Migration Administration for deportation.
The suspects were accused of planning reconnaissance, surveillance and kidnapping of foreigners living in Turkey.
It is alleged that Israeli intelligence service officials contacted these people on social media, gave them the names of Israeli and Palestinian activists who worked in favor of Palestine after the war and asked them to follow them.
The suspects are said to have followed the targeted individuals based on the name information they received, even taking photos of some of them and sharing information about them with Israel.
In fact, it is known that this is not the first move against Israel’s Mossad-linked spy network in Turkey.
It is stated that the latest step is a continuation of a series of operations such as Muteni, Nekpet, Neoplaz, Mole, which have been ongoing since 2021.
Since then, several people have been arrested in Turkey with links to Israel’s top spy agency.
Of course, operating in other countries is part of the nature of the spy business.
However, Ankara is convinced that the Mossad did not inform the domestic intelligence authorities and has been conducting activities against Turkey within Turkish borders.
This is not the first time the Mossad has faced such accusations.
There have been many operations and scandals throughout history that have pitted Israel against many different countries, including the United States.
As fikrikadim.com, we examined the 5 most notable failed operations of the Mossad in the last 50 years and the turbulent moments within the organization
1- Attempt to assassinate Hamas leader with a poisoned Coca-Cola can
Despite a new peace agreement between Israel and Jordan at the time, members of the Kidon Unit, which oversees Mossad’s assassination operations, wanted to retaliate for the July 1997 Hamas attack on a Jerusalem market that killed 16 Israelis and wounded 169 others.
The target was Khaled Meshaal, a prominent figure in the organization who was not the Hamas leader at the time.
When the Mossad team arrived in Jordan in September 1997, Israel was led by Benyamin Netanyahu, who had been elected prime minister a few months earlier.
Netanyahu wanted the operation to be secret.
That’s why one of the Mossad scientists suggested the use of a new poison that kills on contact but cannot be detected at autopsy.
The proposal was accepted.
Mossad agents posed as Barry Beads and Sean Kendall, carrying fake Canadian passports, posing as tourists in the Jordanian capital Amman.
Their plan was to wait for Meshaal to arrive in his SUV and then poison him as he walked home.
The agents would open a shaken Coca-Cola can, distract Meshaal with exploding Coke, spray the poison on his neck with a spray can, and then move quickly away through the crowd.
But the house didn’t fit the bill.
As the assassins approached Meshaal, his young daughter suddenly jumped out of the vehicle.
After her, both Meshaal and his driver ran after her.
The Mossad team leader on the ground tried to alert Beads and Kendall to abort the mission, but the two did not heed the warning.
They were locked on the target, improvising on a stage that unfolded outside the plan.
As they approached the Torch, Kendall opened the can of Coca-Cola.
But as they expected, the box did not explode after shaking.
This time Beads stepped in.
And he tried to spray poison on Meshaal.
But this time Meshaal’s driver realized what was happening and hit the Mossad agent with a newspaper.
Beads managed to get a few drops of poison into Meshaal’s ear, but the “target” fled the scene.
Afterwards?
The agents posing as tourists were arrested by Jordanian police.
The assassination attempt caused outrage between the Israeli and Jordanian governments and strained relations between the two countries.
When King Hussein threatened to jail the Mossad agents until Netanyahu gave him the antidote to the poison, Netanyahu ordered, “Give me the antidote!”
In the end, Israel was forced to release Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in exchange for the release of Beads and Kendall.
Beads and Kendall were able to return to Israel after being handed over to the Canadian embassy.
The Canadians, on the other hand, were very annoyed that Mossad agents were using fake Canadian passports, but they were probably as polite as ever.
2- The head of the Mossad, the victim of his love or his cock: Yossi Cohen
She received a gift of $20,000 from Australian businessman James Packer for her daughter’s wedding and guaranteed her daughter a high-paying job in Dubai through the United Arab Emirates government.
But the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, was not only interested in his daughter.
It was his secret affair with a stewardess, whose identity is still a mystery, that really put him on the spot.
An investigative report in 2021 revealed that Cohen, the former head of the Mossad, had disclosed state secrets to the stewardess he was having an affair with and her then-husband.
According to the HaMakor investigative program, Cohen’s secret affair dates back to late 2018.
Cohen boasted of knowing various secret details about the operations of the Mossad, the worldwide intelligence organization, and provided information about their double trips.
The stewardess was not identified, but the cheated spouse did not hide herself.
Guy Shiker, a well-known figure in Israel’s financial markets, recounted what he had heard and even witnessed, not only in court but also in front of the press.
He told me a lot of stories about the Mossad. He has a big mouth. He told me that the Mossad was ‘spying’ on the doctor of a famous Arab leader”
Shiker said that Cohen sent messages to his wife in which he called her “my princess” and “my beauty,” and that he lashed out at the Mossad director, saying, “You are destroying a family right now.” He also said that Cohen shared some details about his management style at the Mossad:
He said to me, ‘When I was appointed head of Mossad, listen carefully, within 10 days I fired six senior officials… because they were not loyal to the system, they were not good. They thought I was their best friend when I was their equal. When I was appointed, I fired them without mercy.”
Cohen, of course, denied the allegations.
He said he never shared security secrets or information he shouldn’t have shared.
Shortly before the incident, Cohen had come under fire for an interview in which he implied that the Mossad had blown up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility at Natanz, detailed a 2018 operation in which the Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear archive from a Tehran warehouse, confirmed that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist who was murdered, had been a Mossad target for years, and said that Israel was serious about its commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Since leaving the Mossad, Cohen has faced several accusations of ethics violations.
Cohen’s term as head of Mossad ended in June 2021 and he was replaced by David Barnea.
It was Benyamin Netanyahu who appointed Cohen.
3- Mossad kills Moroccan waiter instead of terrorist
Five years had passed since the Six Day War.
Israel and the Arab countries continued to arm themselves.
The 1972 Summer Olympics were taking place.
The address was Munich, where the brutality of terrorism rather than the universality of sport would come to the fore.
Armed militants from the Black September organization took eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, resulting in the deaths of the hostages and a policeman.
A year later, 1973…
Mossad agents wanted to capture Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of the Black September terrorist organization, which they blamed for the Munich massacre.
Israel was seeking revenge.
They received information that Salameh was in Norway.
Operation “Wrath of God”, also known as “Operation Bayonet”, has been launched.
In fact, the operation had already begun with the shooting of Palestinian translator Wael Zwaiter in Rome and the car bombing in Paris of Mahmoud Khamshari, the alleged leader of Black September.
At first it was claimed that Zwaiter had no connection to the terrorist organization and the attacks.
But the real scandal was to take place in Norway.
The summer Olympics in Munich would be avenged years later in Lillehammer, a small Norwegian town of 20,000 people that would host the Winter Olympics.
Mike Harari, the young and inexperienced leader of the Mossad team, found the man they thought was Salameh.
But this Moroccan waiter was none other than Ahmed Bouchiki.
The Moroccan waiter bore an unfortunate resemblance to Salameh, the man responsible for the Munich attacks.
The fact that Bouchiki was mistaken for Salameh was the handiwork of Kemal Benamane, a courier for the Black September organization and then a double agent for the Mossad.
Bouchiki was shot dead on his way home from work.
The aftermath is chaos…
The small Norwegian town had not recorded a single murder in almost half a century.
The presence of twelve strangers in the town had already been noticed by the public and the police.
That’s why the police were nearby when Bouchiki was killed.
Harari and part of the team managed to escape, while six agents were arrested by Norwegian police and charged with murder.
In court, agents confessed in embarrassing detail about Mossad’s covert activities and assassination methods.
In the wake of the scandal, Mossad abandoned all its safe houses and secret phone numbers in Europe one by one.
It happened to a young waiter, 30 years old.
4- Civilians die while avenging Munich
Five years after the Lillehammer disaster in Norway.
Once again, the Mossad was still on the trail of Ali Hassan Salameh, whom it blamed for the attack on the Munich Olympics.
This time they didn’t want to make a mistake.
But the Israelis did not know that Salameh had become a CIA pawn in the intervening years.
The CIA hoped to use Salameh’s status and connections within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to prevent potential attacks on the United States.
Washington’s move allegedly even saved then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from assassination.
The CIA’s hired agent, Israel’s number one target at the time, was doing his job well.
However, it was also said that Salameh refused to be paid for his services.
The CIA paid for the expensive honeymoon, even though he said he only wanted to promote better relations between Americans and Palestinians.
Mossad then requested information about Salameh’s relationship with the CIA.
To allay Israeli suspicions, the CIA flatly denied any involvement with the terrorist.
So the Mossad thought they could get back to work.
It was the last days of 1978.
Erika Chambers was sent to Beirut to find Salameh.
She presented herself as a British woman working for a charity that cares for Palestinian children.
Soon other Mossad agents had found the terrorist.
They immediately set about learning his daily routine.
Salameh, who married Rizk, regularly shuttled between PLO headquarters, the home of his first wife and two children, and Rizk’s apartments.
January 22, 1979…
The Israelis rented a Volkswagen.
They loaded it with explosives and parked it on Salameh’s favorite route.
As Salameh’s Chevrolet drove past the Volkswagen, the explosives were detonated with a radio transmitter.
The blast killed nine people, including Salameh and his bodyguards who were following him in a Land Rover.
An eyewitness would describe what he witnessed as follows:
It was hell. It was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it before, not even in Beirut. It felt like the whole city was on fire. Lots of dead people, burnt vehicles and young bodies lining the streets. Then I saw Hassan Salameh get out of a car and fall to the ground. People told me who he was.”
Israel had finally achieved its goal.
However, there were many civilians among the dead.
5- The man who pitted Israel against the US: Pollard
It was 1985.
Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested by the FBI for spying for Israel.
Pollard provided the Mossad with thousands of classified documents, some of which were allegedly passed on to other countries. The incident caused a major rift between Israel and the United States.
And who was this man who pitted two allies against each other?
Jonathan Jay Pollard was born in Galveston, Texas in 1954 and was an American Jew.
His father was a respected scientist.
Pollard studied at Stanford University.
Then, in 1979, he joined the US Naval Intelligence Service in Suitland, Maryland, as an intelligence analyst.
Over time, he rose through the ranks.
This meant he had access to sensitive information.
He was recruited by Israeli agents in May 1984.
For the next 18 months, he became the plaything of Israeli Air Force Colonel Aviem Sella, then on training leave in New York.
In exchange for a lot of money…
Pollard provided Israel with almost unlimited information on the Middle East and other countries.
The information was transmitted through the “Scientific Liaison Unit”, an independent intelligence network run by former Mossad officer Rafael Eitan, which has been operating in the Israeli Defense Ministry since the 1960s. For 18 months, Pollard was paid for his services.
He traveled to Israel and Europe.
He was promised asylum if the incident was discovered.
The Israelis claim that his hiring was not authorized by any Israeli defense minister or cabinet, but this is not credible in the US.
When FBI agents began tracking Pollard and his wife, the couple fled to the Israeli embassy in Washington, seeking political asylum.
But they were removed from the embassy and arrested on November 21, 1985.
The arrest and the statements sparked public outcry, including from the American Jewish leadership.
Israel was in danger of open conflict with the Reagan administration and the US Congress.
The US has requested Israel’s cooperation in the investigation.
On December 1, 1985, then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres authorized the interrogation of relevant Israeli persons by US officials.
That was not his only commitment.
Israel was to return all documents obtained through Pollard, dissolve the Scientific Liaison Unit and punish the Israelis responsible.
Pollard was never brought to trial.
As part of the deal, his then-wife Anne accepted a five-year prison sentence.
In June 1986, he pleaded guilty to espionage charges.
Nevertheless, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in March 1987.
In 2015, he was conditionally released after 30 years in prison.
