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Eli Cohen.
On June 18 this year, pro-Khalistan leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia province of Canada.
After this, the country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had expressed in the Parliament the possibility of Indian agencies being behind this murder.
India has termed all such allegations as baseless and has denied any role in this murder.
But this is not the first time that a country has been accused of carrying out an intelligence operation in another country.
Such allegations have been made against countries like America, Russia, Israel, China and Britain many times before.
India and Pakistan have also accused each other many times of carrying out various activities under intelligence missions.
It is not possible to talk about such a mission and not mention Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad. So let’s read about the 5 top missions carried out by Mossad:
Operation Finale 1960
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Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann.
In 1957, Fritz Bauer, the chief prosecutor of the West German state of Hesse and a German citizen of Jewish origin, contacted Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and informed them that Adolf Eichmann was alive and living in a secret base in Argentina.
Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann had for a long time been the head of the ‘Jewish Department’ in the ‘Gestapo’, Adolf Hitler’s infamous state secret police. During his tenure, the most atrocious program named ‘Final Solution’ was launched.
Under this program, thousands of Jewish citizens living in Germany and surrounding countries were taken from their homes to concentration camps and were serially murdered.
The Holocaust, known as the Holocaust, was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately 4 million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies across Europe between 1933 and 1945.
After Germany’s defeat in the Second World War, Adolf Eichmann was captured three times but he escaped from arrest each time.
Fritz Bauer got the news of Eichmann’s stay in Argentina from a Jew living there, whose daughter and Eichmann’s son were having an affair.
Although the Israeli intelligence agency did not take this information very seriously in the beginning, but later after investigating in their own way, they found it to be true.
In his book ‘The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann’, Charles Rivers writes, “Eichmann may have been an officer of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but at one time in Nazi Germany his status was no less than that of a general. During this time, he used to report directly to Hitler’s core team.”
After the news of Aikman’s hiding in Argentina was confirmed, the head of Israel’s Mossad appointed Rafi Aitan as the commander of the mission under which the agents would try to capture him alive and bring him back to Israel.
The Mossad team rented a house in Buenos Aires, which was given the codename ‘Caselle’. Meanwhile, it was learned that Argentina will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its independence on May 20.
It was decided that Israel would also send a delegation to Argentina under the leadership of Education Minister Abba Ibn. To carry it, Israeli Airlines Alli provided a special aircraft ‘Whispering Giant’.
The plan was to kidnap Aikman and throw him out of this plane without informing the Israeli Education Minister.
Aikman used to return home every evening at 7.40 pm by bus number 203 and would walk a short distance to reach his home. It was planned that two cars would take part in this operation and they would be kidnapped in one car.
Aikman was caught as soon as he got off the bus.
On the night of May 20, Aikman was dressed as an Israeli Airlines worker. A false I-card was placed in his pocket in the name of Ze’ev Zikroni and the next day his plane landed in Tel Aviv.
This news was put before the world two days after his arrival in Israel.
After being found guilty in 15 cases in the months-long trial, he was sentenced to death.
Operation Wrath of God
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The body of an Israeli athlete killed in an attack by a Palestinian attacker at the Munich Olympics.
It was the year 1972 and the Munich Olympic Games were going on in Germany.
On the night of September 5, Israeli athletes were sleeping in their flats in the Munich Olympic Village when suddenly the entire apartment echoed with the sounds of machine guns.
Eight fighters of the Palestinian ‘Black September Liberation Organisation’, dressed as players, entered the apartment and fired indiscriminately, killing 11 Israeli players and a German policeman.
Just two days after the incident, Israel bombed and destroyed 10 PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon.
The report of an Israeli parliamentary committee released many years later mentions what Israel had planned to do at that time.
According to the report, “Prime Minister Golda Meir had formed ‘Committee Zvi Zamir, the then head of Mossad, was in charge of the counter-operation.
Simon Reeve’s book ‘One Day in September’ mentions how Israel spent a long time preparing for this operation, so that the Munich attackers hidden in any part of the world could be found.
Simon Reeve writes, “On October 16, 1972, agents shot PLO Italy representative Abdel-Wael Zawaitar in his home in Rome, marking the beginning of a long-running alleged Israeli reprisal.”
Subsequently, on April 9, 1973, the Mossad launched a joint operation in Beirut, in which Israeli commandos arrived at night on an empty Lebanese beach in missile boats and patrol boats.
By noon the next day, Mohammed Yusuf or Abu-Yusuf, the head of Fatah’s intelligence wing that ran the ‘Black September Liberation Organisation’, Kamal Adwan and PLO spokesman Kamal Nasser were dead.
Some experts also believe that Israel continued this operation for the next five years.
Mossad’s hold on Syria (1962–65)
image source, BBC/PUNEET KUMAR
Israeli spy Eli Cohen.
Relations between Syria and Israel were particularly bad in the 1960s. Communities living on Israel’s northern border were receiving repeated threats from the Syrian army on the Golan Heights, which was increasing uneasiness in Israel.
There was a need for an agent inside Syria to detect the intelligence political and military plans being made against Israel in Syria and to extract the correct news. He found a person for this job in Eli Cohen.
Eli Cohen was born in Egypt and was the son of Jews of Syrian origin, who had previously tried to get a job in the Israeli intelligence agency but was rejected both times.
However, in 1960, Mossad decided to recruit Eli Cohen as a spy and started training him to go to Syria and spy.
After this, Eli Cohen was sent to Argentina to create his new identity as a successful businessman born to Syrian parents.
There he got himself involved in many organizations and groups of Syrian immigrants.
Apart from befriending diplomats, politicians and senior military officers, he also befriended a person who later became the President of Syria.
In 1962, the Ba’ath Party formed the government in Syria and Cohen was looking for this opportunity.
Making good use of his contacts in Argentina, he became the confidant of many top officials while living in Syria.
In the book “The Mossad: Six Landmark Missions,” author Mark E. Vargo writes, “At one time Cohen was even considered a candidate for Deputy Secretary of Defense and could make any kind of business deal or agreement in Damascus. . This was the period when, while gifting expensive gifts and expensive liquor to Syrian officers, he collected all the intelligence information from them and passed it on to Mossad.”
Eli Cohen informed the Israeli government in 1964 that Syria was planning to cut off Israel’s water supply by building a large canal near the Jordan River.
Mossad passed the information on to the government and immediately Israeli planes foiled the plan by heavily bombarding heavy water diversion equipment and camps.
Eli Cohen had made such inroads into the Syrian government that he once went to inspect the Syrian-Israeli border, sitting next to top military officers for several days. Complete details of border security and the actual number and strength of the army then reached Israel secretly in the hands of Mossad.
Frustrated by the leaking of intelligence, Syria’s intelligence took help from officials of the ally Soviet Union.
In 1965, Eli Cohen was caught by Syrian and Soviet authorities using highly sensitive detection equipment while sending an intelligence message to Israel.
Cohen was sentenced to death and hanged in the center of the capital, Damascus. Cohen is still remembered as a patriotic hero in Israel.
Mission Iran
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A nuclear power plant in Iran.
Relations between Israel and Iran have always been tense. Especially regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
But the book ‘Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service’, published in 2012, not only mentions Israel’s intelligence efforts to ‘contain’ Iran’s nuclear program but also shows how this agency Performed dangerous missions in real life just like the James Bond films.
According to the authors of this book, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, “To stop Iran from making nuclear weapons, Israel tried to sabotage their centrifuges. To this end, the Mossad set up Eastern European front companies, which allegedly sold defective insulation to Iran. “Due to their combined use, Iran’s new centrifuges became useless.”
“Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service” also reports that in January 2010, an adviser on Iran’s nuclear program was “killed by an explosive device hidden in a motorcycle parked near his car.”
According to a report published in the New York Times newspaper, “In 2011, the head of the Iranian nuclear project was going somewhere in his car when a motorcyclist passing by him stuck a small device on the rear windshield of the car. “A few seconds later, the device exploded, killing the 45-year-old nuclear scientist and injuring his wife.”
Not so long ago, in 2021, the uranium enrichment program at an Iranian nuclear site suffered a major setback when a massive explosion knocked out power at the site, knocking out the centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Experts are of the opinion that “the power cut was the work of Mossad even though the organization did not take any official responsibility.”
Revenge from Hamas
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After an investigation that lasted almost a year, the Palestinian organization ‘Hamas’ accused Israel’s Mossad agency of murdering one of its commanders living in Tunisia, Muhammad al-Zwari.
In fact, on December 15, 2016, Muhammad al-Zawari was shot by bullets fired from a moving car near his residence in Sfax, Tunisia.
Zwari was a professional aeronautical engineer who designed and built a variety of drones for Hamas and reportedly for Hezbollah.
According to some unconfirmed reports, he also designed an unmanned naval ship that could attack other ships from underwater.
No concrete evidence could be found to identify the killers and all that was found was a mobile phone SIM and a rented car which was registered in the name of a third person.
The killing of Hamas’ high-tech weapons experts was said to be different from earlier operations because the Mossad had reportedly started targeting not only the attackers but also the support system behind them.