OCTOBER 10 • 2019 | 45
The Spy
The real Eli Cohen behind
Netfl
ix’
s new miniseries.
JOSEFIN DOLSTEN JTA
F
or Borat, his 2006 film, Sacha Baron
Cohen went undercover as a made-up
Kazakh journalist who travels America
and gets unwitting targets to share his boor-
ish and sometimes bigoted opinions. In Who
Is America, he creates a variety of characters
who manage to get prominent Americans to
say shockingly offensive things.
In The Spy, a Netflix six-part miniseries
garnering much viewership, Cohen once
again goes undercover, but in a very different
way. The actor/filmmaker portrays the real-
life Eli Cohen, a daring Israeli agent who
embedded himself in the upper echelons of
Syrian society in the 1960s and provided
crucial intelligence to the Jewish state.
According to My Jewish Learning, Eli
Cohen was born in 1924 in a Jewish family
in Alexandria, Egypt. Like many Jews in
Arab countries, his family left Egypt when
Israel was established, as they faced increased
anti-Semitism. But Eli Cohen stayed behind
to finish his degree in electronics. He also
was active in Zionist activities in Egypt, for
which he was at one point arrested, and took
part in Israeli spy missions there.
In 1956, he was expelled from his native
country along with many other Jews. He
then immigrated to Israel, where he joined
military intelligence the following year. He
attempted to join the Mossad but was ini-
tially rejected. He married Nadia Majald, an
immigrant from Iraq, and settled in Bat Yam.
In 1960, he was recruited to join the
Mossad for a special mission in which he
was to pretend to be a Syrian businessman
returning to the country after having lived
in Argentina. The goal was to gather intelli-
gence from high-ranking Syrian politicians
and military officials.
Cohen wasn’
t allowed to tell anyone of
the plans and told his wife he was working
abroad for Israel’
s Defense Ministry.
Ahead of the mission, Cohen learned to
speak Arabic in a Syrian accent rather than
his native Egyptian. He “became” Kamel
Amin Thaabet and lived in Argentina for a
some time to build a name for himself in the
Syrian expat community. There he gained
the trust of Amin al-Hafez, who would later
become Syria’
s president.
In February 1962, Cohen moved to
Damascus. He quickly infiltrated the highest
levels of Syrian society. He would entertain
high-ranking politicians and military officials
at extravagant parties. The drunk guests
would often end up blabbering about their
work to Cohen, who was sober but would
pretend to be intoxicated. He made friends
with many guests and ended up receiving
classified military briefings and coming along
to visit Syrian military sites.
Cohen would send intelligence back to
Israel using a hidden radio transmitter.
He returned to his family only a few times
during his mission. On his last visit, in 1964,
he told intelligence officers he wanted to
come in from the cold because he was con-
cerned a new Syrian intelligence commander
did not like him. But intelligence officers
convinced him to go back one last time.
The next year, Syria found out about
Cohen by tracing his intelligence transmis-
sions to Israel.
He was convicted in a trial without a
defense and sentenced to death. Israel des-
perately tried to commute his sentence and,
despite requests from world leaders and Pope
Paul VI for clemency, Cohen was hanged
publicly that May.
His remains have yet to be returned,
despite pleas from his family. Reports earlier
this year said a Russian delegation removed
his remains from Syria in an attempt to
bring them to Israel. Last year, Israel was
able to retrieve Cohen’
s wristwatch from
Syria and return it to his family.
Information provided by Cohen is
thought to have been crucial to Israel’
s
victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. For
example, on a trip to the Golan Heights,
Cohen suggested to an army officer he
should plant trees to provide shade for
troops stationed there. Those trees helped
Israel identify where Syrian troops were
located. Levi Eshkol, the late Israeli prime
minister, credited Cohen’
s intelligence
with saving countless Israeli lives and
“having a great deal to do” with Israel’
s
victory in the Six-Day War.
Cohen wasn’
t the only Israeli who went
on such a mission, though he’
s perhaps
the most well-known one.
Israel “took a lot of ideas from the
Soviet-style of playing the spy game,” in
sending out citizens on long-term spy
missions where they had to adopt false
identities, said Dan Raviv, author of Spies
Against Armageddon, a history of Israeli
intelligence.
A memorial for Eli Cohen in the Golan Heights
AVISHAI TEICHER/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/JTA
Sacha Baron Cohen as
Eli Cohen in The Spy.
NETFLIX/JTA
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