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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