Nathan Abrams, a professor of film studies in the UK, has written an opinion piece in The Conversation, the title of which says everything you need to know about it: “Mossad Agents Were Suave and Effective on Screen, Now They’re Ineffective Blunderers.” Is he right? In another brush with the…
Funding Israel’s Spooks
In case you’ve been dying to know how the Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel’s CIA and FBI, respectively) are funded in the state budget, Haaretz is there for you with an explanation of how Israel keeps its secret agencies’ money secret. Apparently, the appropriations are masked in a line item…
Mossad Looking for a Few Good Spies
It had to happen: the Mossad, Israel’s answer to the CIA, is taking applications online. According to Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot, if you’re one of those “challenge-loving people,” you’re “needed for an interesting, unconventional and dynamic position.” It involves “short and numerous trips abroad” as well as an “unconventional…
Mossad’s “Borrowed” Passports: Worth the Trouble?
Ben Zygier passport (screen capture from Channel 10, via Haaretz) An interesting recap article in Haaretz today reviews the recent history of Mossad’s practice of “borrowing” passports from recent immigrants to use in operations. The hook: it appears Ben Zygier – the so-called Prisoner X – may have…
Criminal Element: The al-Mabhouh Caper, and a Book Giveaway
Doha 12 is inspired by a real-life incident: Mossad’s 2010 assassination in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. I’ve written a summary of this operation and its fallout for the good folks at Criminal Element, and now it’s available for your delectation. As an added incentive to check it out,…
Mossad, Admitting the Obvious
Israel has finally admitted what was one of the most ill-kept secrets from its “secret war”: it assassinated PLO second-in-command Abu Jihad in 1988. The story, released on Thursday in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper (although I have yet to find it on ynetnews.com, the English-language online version), claims Mossad worked…
Mossad Chief: “A woman can lead the Mossad”
A follow-on article to the Israeli business magazine Globes’ interviews with female Mossad agents (mentioned in this post)extensively quotes the agency’s director, Tamir Pardo, on his attitudes toward female operatives. In short: he’s all for them. A couple of the more interesting quotes: “Women start at the Mossad at younger…
Another Mossad Book, and Another Mossad Scandal
Another Mossad Book Thirty-year CBS correspondent Dan Raviv has (with co-author Yossi Melman) completed Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars, a book about the history of the Mossad. The Hebrew-language version is already a bestseller in Israel. This interview in the Jewish Press discusses some of the highlights. Of…
Mossad’s Women: Out of the Shadows
Some of Mossad’s female agents have spoken semi-on-the-record to Lady Globes, an Israeli monthly women’s magazine, about their lives in “secret warfare.” You can read the English-language wrapups in the Times of Israel (includes a link to the original article, in case you read Hebrew) and RT-Novosti (somewhat different quotes…