years later.
So what about the death of Avner Israel? “Oh,” Manor shrugged. “I am ashamed of this affair. Since then, our intelligence operatives never let even the most dangerous Israeli traitors, who deserved punishment, die in their hands.”
The Israeli intelligence community blossomed from a spy service called Shai (an acronym for Sherut Yediot , the Hebrew words for “Information Service”). It was the intelligence branch of Haganah, the largest underground organization of the Jewish community in Palestine. The Haganah, and its various units, including the Palmach strike force, battled both the Palestinian Arabs and the British until the latter left on May 14, 1948.
That June 30, half a dozen men dressed in khaki arrived at Shai’s office in Tel Aviv. It was a unique group, in a unique situation. In the midst of its first war—as the neighboring Arab states had invaded newborn Israel—they grappled with finding ways to satisfy the country’s security and defense requirements while constructing a durable democracy. The men who gathered on that memorably hot, humid day were the founding fathers of the secret agencies that would become the Israeli intelligence community.
They had vast experience in covert operations: spying, smuggling, and gathering information by all means, however ruthless—spearheading the struggle for Zionist independence. Some had been active with British forces in Europe and North Africa, in the name of defeating the Nazis.
But when it came to democracy, they had only been observers and never full participants. They had seen the British at work, as intelligence operatives combating the Jewish underground movements in Palestine and as politicians in the Mother of Democracy back in London. And they liked both.
Their problem, however, was that there was no instant recipe for defending a nation at war without stomping on its democratic values, especially in the Middle East, where Western notions had no natural constituency.
The commander of Shai, Isser Be’eri, cleared his throat for attention. “I have just come from a meeting with ha-Zaken ”—“the Old Man,” he said, a reference to David Ben-Gurion, the charismatic first prime minister of Israel, who was also directing the war as his own defense minister.
The Shai officers unconsciously sat a bit more erect, as an announcement from the white-haired oracle of Israel appeared forthcoming. At the age of 62, Ben-Gurion was the nation’s elder statesman and guiding light, bar none.
Ben-Gurion had just finished telling the Shai chief that Israel’s defense would have to include intelligence. Not good intelligence, but great intelligence.
Shai, the Haganah’s intelligence arm, would digest itself and other pre-state Zionist underground groups to produce several agencies in a community. All of them would initially bear names starting with Shin Mem —the Hebrew initials for Sherut Modi’in (Intelligence Service), followed by a single digit, as in the British style of MI5 and MI6. Formalizing a new structure for the intelligence community would take eight months.
On February 8, 1949, just before the first general election to the Knesset—Israel’s parliament—and before the signing of armistice agreements with the Arab nations, Ben-Gurion summoned his top advisors and made official this new division of labor for the security agencies. Military and civilian functions would be separated, and the community was meant to be fitting for a modern state that had won its war of independence. Ben-Gurion’s division of labor went as follows:
Military intelligence : Be’eri had announced in June 1948 that he would henceforth head the dominant agency in the new community, then called the Intelligence Department of the army. Known later as Aman, the acronym for Agaf ha-Modi’in or “Intelligence Wing,” the unit was assigned widespread functions, including collecting information on Arab armies, censoring Israeli newspapers and
So what about the death of Avner Israel? “Oh,” Manor shrugged. “I am ashamed of this affair. Since then, our intelligence operatives never let even the most dangerous Israeli traitors, who deserved punishment, die in their hands.”
The Israeli intelligence community blossomed from a spy service called Shai (an acronym for Sherut Yediot , the Hebrew words for “Information Service”). It was the intelligence branch of Haganah, the largest underground organization of the Jewish community in Palestine. The Haganah, and its various units, including the Palmach strike force, battled both the Palestinian Arabs and the British until the latter left on May 14, 1948.
That June 30, half a dozen men dressed in khaki arrived at Shai’s office in Tel Aviv. It was a unique group, in a unique situation. In the midst of its first war—as the neighboring Arab states had invaded newborn Israel—they grappled with finding ways to satisfy the country’s security and defense requirements while constructing a durable democracy. The men who gathered on that memorably hot, humid day were the founding fathers of the secret agencies that would become the Israeli intelligence community.
They had vast experience in covert operations: spying, smuggling, and gathering information by all means, however ruthless—spearheading the struggle for Zionist independence. Some had been active with British forces in Europe and North Africa, in the name of defeating the Nazis.
But when it came to democracy, they had only been observers and never full participants. They had seen the British at work, as intelligence operatives combating the Jewish underground movements in Palestine and as politicians in the Mother of Democracy back in London. And they liked both.
Their problem, however, was that there was no instant recipe for defending a nation at war without stomping on its democratic values, especially in the Middle East, where Western notions had no natural constituency.
The commander of Shai, Isser Be’eri, cleared his throat for attention. “I have just come from a meeting with ha-Zaken ”—“the Old Man,” he said, a reference to David Ben-Gurion, the charismatic first prime minister of Israel, who was also directing the war as his own defense minister.
The Shai officers unconsciously sat a bit more erect, as an announcement from the white-haired oracle of Israel appeared forthcoming. At the age of 62, Ben-Gurion was the nation’s elder statesman and guiding light, bar none.
Ben-Gurion had just finished telling the Shai chief that Israel’s defense would have to include intelligence. Not good intelligence, but great intelligence.
Shai, the Haganah’s intelligence arm, would digest itself and other pre-state Zionist underground groups to produce several agencies in a community. All of them would initially bear names starting with Shin Mem —the Hebrew initials for Sherut Modi’in (Intelligence Service), followed by a single digit, as in the British style of MI5 and MI6. Formalizing a new structure for the intelligence community would take eight months.
On February 8, 1949, just before the first general election to the Knesset—Israel’s parliament—and before the signing of armistice agreements with the Arab nations, Ben-Gurion summoned his top advisors and made official this new division of labor for the security agencies. Military and civilian functions would be separated, and the community was meant to be fitting for a modern state that had won its war of independence. Ben-Gurion’s division of labor went as follows:
Military intelligence : Be’eri had announced in June 1948 that he would henceforth head the dominant agency in the new community, then called the Intelligence Department of the army. Known later as Aman, the acronym for Agaf ha-Modi’in or “Intelligence Wing,” the unit was assigned widespread functions, including collecting information on Arab armies, censoring Israeli newspapers and
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