Isaac Shoshan, Israeli spy who posed as an Arab, is dead at 96
Barak: Generations of warriors learned their trade at his feet
Isaac Shoshan, a Syrianborn Israeli undercover operative who posed as an Arab early in his career, participating in bombings and an assassination attempt, before making major contributions to the country’s espionage methods, died on December 28 in Tel Aviv. He was 96.
His daughter Eti confirmed the death, in Ichilov Hospital. He had suffered a stroke, she said.
Ina tribute on Twitter, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who once served in an Israeli intelligence unit that Shoshan helped conceive, said Shoshan had “risked his life again and again” on behalf of Israel.
“Generations of warriors learned their trade at his feet,” he added, “me too.”
Shoshan was born Zaki Shasho in Aleppo, Syria, in 1924 to an Arabic- speaking Jewish family. He studied at a Frenchlanguage school, learned Hebrew at Orthodox Jewish schools and as a youth belonged to the Zionist Hebrew Scouts. At 18, motivated by his Zionism, he travelled to what was then British- ruled Palestine and within two years was recruited by the Palmach, the Jewish underground fighting force.
Arab Platoon
During his training, he was posted to a secret unit known as the Arab Platoon. Made up of Jews who could pass as Arabs, it was charged with gathering intelligence and carrying out sabotage and targeted killings.
The unit was set up in expectation of “a civil war in Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs,” said Yoav Gelber, an emeritus and a historian of the period.
The unit’s members, most of them immigrants from Arab lands, were trained in intelligence gathering and undercover communications — Morse code, for example — as well as in commando tactics and using explosives. They also underwent intensive study of Islam and Arab customs so that they could live as Arabs without arousing suspicions. Shoshan began taking part in intelligence- gathering operations after the UN voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, setting off clashes that would turn into war.
Murder attempt
But he was soon called on to put another aspect of his training to use: to help assassinate a Palestinian leader, Shaikh Nimr Al Khatib, who was said to be on his way from Lebanon with weapons in February 1948. Badly wounded, the shaikh left Palestine and stopped playing an active role in the war. Shortly afterward, Shoshan and another member of the Arab Platoon were dispatched to a garage in Haifa, Israel, where intelligence indicated that a car bomb was being assembled.
“The owners never suspected us at all,” Shoshan said. “Of course they didn’t want to let our car in, but agreed to allow us in for a moment to use the bathroom.” That was long enough to activate a timed fuse on an explosive device and flee. Minutes later a huge blast shook the entire area, demolishing the garage and several adjoining buildings, killing at least five people. In 1948, after British forces withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared independence, Arab Platoon agents were dispatched to neighbouring Arab countries with the dual goal of gathering information and thwarting perceived threats.
“Although we were sent to gather intelligence, we also saw ourselves as soldiers, and we looked for opportunities to act,” Shoshan said. Sent to Beirut, he and his colleagues bought a kiosk and an Oldsmobile, which they used as a taxi to provide cover for their activities.
Haifa garage bombing
In his two years in Beirut, Shoshan encountered relatives of those killed in the Haifa garage bombing. They spoke with him freely, thinking he was a Palestinian. “Before that I never thought about the people who were killed there,” Shoshan recalled in the book Men of Secrets, Men of Mystery ( 1990), which he wrote with Rafi Sutton, a fellow former intelligence colleague. “And there, in Beirut, an old Arab sat facing me and weeping for his two sons who were killed in the blast that I had taken part in carrying out.” That encounter was one of the events that caused a shift in Shoshan’s thinking, his son Yaakov said later. “Dad always knewthat ifwe only use force,” he said, “it would only lead to more wars, and he always supported the ‘ two states for two peoples’ solution.”
The capture and execution of some Arab Platoon members eventually led Israel to abandon the use of Jewish spies assimilating with Arabs. Shoshan turned to recruiting and managing Arab agents, a role that called on him to turn them into turncoats.
Shoshan was given the responsibility of training the members who posed as Arabs.
He played a part in building the cover story for Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who penetrated the top circles of the Syrian regime in the 1960s but who was ultimately exposed and executed. ( Cohen’s story was recently dramatised in the Netflix series “The Spy,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen.)
Shoshan retired in 1982 but was mobilised from time to time by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to train agents and sometimes participate in operations himself.