Incognito? - Eli Cohen

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Incognito

Eli Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt on December 26, 1928. By 1948 he was driven full force into the crisis developing with Syria. At a young age his parents instilled into their intellectually minded son the idea of Zionism with all its complexities. Eli grew up a devoted participant to the cause, and whilst his family moved to the relative safety in Israel, Eli remained behind and helped evacuate the Jews left in the once thriving town of Aleppo. But for the ever-increasing settlements in the north, mortar shells were a common occurrence and the authorities thought it was about time something was to be done to stop it.

When the Golan was captured near the end of the Six-Day war, the settlers led a normal life again and much of the credit of Israel's ability to capture the Golan was due to Eli Cohen - Israel's greatest spy.

Besides its military significance and bounty plantations the Golan produced 30% of Israel's water supply, mostly from snow falling down in winter, melting, and leaking down to Israel's water channels and to the lower valleys of Jordan. Israel tried concentrating all the waters supply to Israel and asked the permission for the go ahead to its Arab neighbours which adamantly refused, and in fact the reverse happened and the Jordanians started building dams to revert all the waters to Jordanian soil. Israel greatly angered by such an offensive act decided to send a spy to infiltrate the Arab council to accumulate information - destination - Syria.

At 29, Eli Cohen offered his services twice to the Mossad - Israel's intelligence body, who disregarded him and put him in the reserves as a desk clerk. At this time Eli must have been getting down hearted, he wanted to help, but where-ever he turned he was not excepted. The agency had concluded Eli had a high IQ, he was brave and clever and was articulate in French, English and Arabic, but with all this conclusive evidence they thought Eli to have too much self importance, a lot of inner unrest and calculated risks unnecessarily.

In August 31, 1959 he married a pretty Iraqi-born Jew Nadia Majald. He had a low paid job as an accountant, which became unsteady and he came mostly to live off his new wife's finances.

By 1960 the tension with Syria was at an all time high, and the Mossad needed a spy to infiltrate in the Arab community to provide vital information on the enemy's defences. Eli's files were looked over and the

Mossad changed their mind after all Eli spoke many languages fluently including Farsi. He was born in a Arab country he had an oriental

complexion and was willing to jump into the heat of the action when necessary. What was there to lose!

The Mossad asked Eli if he wanted to accept the job, he declined. But after a month Eli lost his job and was only to willing to accept, now.
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"He was taught high speed evasive driving techniques, map reading, sabotage and, most importantly, radio transmissions and cryptology." Without these instrumental skills an operative has no hope of surviving long in enemy territory. Eli Cohen identity was changed to Kamal Amin Ta'abat, despite his change of identity Kamal, as he was now called, had the unmistakable Egyptian accent, which had to be changed to Syrian-Arabic. An Iraqi Jew, was chosen solely to teach Kamal, his lessons included learning Moslem and Arabic customs.

Intelligence was foreign to Kamal and this proved a whole new ball game. He had ...

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