The Lavon Affair: Israeli terrorism against US

[Menes]

The Lavon affair, was one of the most bizarre chapters in Israeli history. In 1954, the Israeli secret service set up a spy ring in Egypt to blow up American and British targets. The Israeli covert operation was code-named Operation Susannah. The terrorist hits were to be blamed on radical nationalist elements in Egypt, with the purpose of alienating the United States from Nasser, and preventing the British withdrawal from the Suez canal. Strict censorship ensured that the Israeli public officially knew little or nothing of the affair for many years. The affair was also called HaEsek HaBish or the shameful affair.

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[Menes]

Lavon Affair

The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, which took place in Egypt in the summer of 1954. During this operation, a group of Egyptian Jews, working for Israeli military intelligence, planted bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned targets within Egypt in the hopes that "the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'" would be blamed. It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: העסק הביש‎, HaEsek HaBish).

Operation Susannah

In the early 1950s the United States initiated a more activist policy of support for Egyptian nationalism; this was often in contrast with British policies of maintaining its regional hegemony. Israel feared that this policy, which encouraged Britain to withdraw its military forces from the Suez Canal, would embolden Egyptian President Nasser's military ambitions towards Israel. Israel first sought to influence this policy through diplomatic means but was frustrated.

In the summer of 1954 Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel's military intelligence, Aman, initiated Operation Suzannah in order to reverse that decision. The goal of the Operation was to carry out bombings and other acts of violence in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and American opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the withdrawal.

According to historian Shabtai Teveth, who wrote one of the more detailed accounts, the assignment was "To undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'."

The top-secret cell, Unit 131, which was to carry out the operation, had existed since 1948 and under Aman since 1950. At the time of Operation Susannah, Unit 131 was the subject of a bitter dispute between Aman (military intelligence) and Mossad (national intelligence agency) over who should control it.

Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before, when the Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar arrived in Cairo undercover as a British citizen of Gibraltar called John Darling. He had recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.

Aman decided to activate the network in the spring of 1954. On July 2, they firebombed a post office in Alexandria, and on July 14, they bombed the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theater. The homemade bombs, consisting of bags containing acid placed over nitroglycerine, were inserted into books, and placed on the shelves of the libraries just before closing time. Several hours later, as the acid ate through the bags, the bombs would explode. They did little damage to the targets and caused no injuries or deaths.

Before the group began Israeli agent Avraham Seidenberg (Avri Elad) was sent to oversee the operations. Seidenberg assumed the identity of Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections. Avraham Seidenberg allegedly informed the Egyptians resulting in the Egyptian Intelligence Service following a suspect to his target, the Rio Theatre, where a fire engine was standing by. Egyptian authorities arrested this suspect, Philip Natanson, when his bomb accidentally ignited prematurely in his pocket. Having searched his apartment, they found incriminating evidence and names of accomplices to the operation. Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis.

Colonel Dar and Seidenberg had managed to escape. Two suspects, Yosef Carmon and Hungarian born Israeli Meir Max Bineth committed suicide in prison. The trial began on December 11 and lasted until January 27, 1955; two of the accused (Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar) were condemned to execution by hanging and two acquitted with the rest receiving lengthy prison terms. The trial was criticised in Israel as a show trial, although strict military censorship, at the time, meant that the Israeli public were kept in the dark about the facts of the case, and had been led to believe that the defendants were innocent. There were allegations that evidence had been extracted by torture.

Two of the imprisoned operatives, Meir Meyuhas and Meir Za'afran, were released in 1962, after having served seven year jail sentences. The rest were eventually freed in February 1968, in a secret addendum to a prisoner of war exchange.

Soon after the affair, Mossad chief Isser Harel expressed suspicion to Aman concerning the integrity of Avraham Seidenberg. Despite his concerns, Aman continued using Seidenberg for intelligence operations until 1956, when he was caught trying to sell Israeli documents to the Egyptians. Seidenberg was tried and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In 1980, Harel publicly revealed evidence that Seidenberg had been turned by the Egyptians even before Operation Suzannah.

Political aftermath

In meetings with prime minister Moshe Sharett, minister of defense Pinhas Lavon denied any knowledge of the operation. When intelligence chief Gibli contradicted Lavon, Sharrett commissioned a board of inquiry consisting of Israeli Supreme Court Justice Isaac Olshan and the first chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Yaakov Dori that was unable to find conclusive evidence that Lavon had authorized the operation. Lavon tried to fix the blame on Shimon Peres, who was the secretary general of the defense ministry, and Gibli for insubordination and criminal negligence. Sharett resolved the dilemma by siding with Peres, who along with Moshe Dayan testified against Lavon, after which Lavon resigned. Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion succeeded Lavon as minister of defense. A short time later, Sharett, who did not know about the operation in advance, and who had strongly denied Israel's involvement, resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Ben-Gurion.

In April 1960, a review of minutes from the inquiry found inconsistencies and possibly a fraudulent document in Gibli's original testimony that seemed to support Lavon's account of events. During this time, it also came to light that Seidenberg (the Israeli agent running Operation Suzannah in Egypt), had committed perjury during the original inquiry. Seidenberg was also suspected of betraying the group to Egyptian authorities; though the charges were never proven, he was eventually sentenced to a jail term of 10 years. Ben-Gurion scheduled closed hearings with a new board of inquiry chaired by Chaim Cohen, a supreme court justice.

This inquiry found that the perjury indeed had been committed, and that Lavon had not authorized the operation. Sharett and Levi Eshkol tried to issue a statement that would placate both Lavon and those who had opposed him. Ben-Gurion refused to accept the compromise and viewed it as a divisive play within the Mapai party. After another investigative committee sided with the Cohen inquiry, Ben-Gurion resigned from his post as defense minister. This led to the expulsion of Lavon from the Histadrut labor union and an early call for new elections which changed the political structure in Israel. The specifics of Operation Susannah were not public at the time of the political upheaval.

Legacy

Operation Suzannah and the Lavon Affair turned out to be disastrous for Israel in several ways:

• Israel lost significant standing and credibility in its relations with the United Kingdom and the United States that would take years to repair.
• The tactics of the operation led to deep-seated suspicion of Israeli intelligence methods, such as agents provocateurs and false flag operations.
• The political aftermath caused considerable political turmoil in Israel that affected the influence of its government.

In March 2005, Israel publicly honored the surviving operatives, and President Moshe Katsav presented each with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the state, ending decades of official denial by Israel.

References

• S. Teveth, Ben-Gurion's spy: the story of the political scandal that shaped modern Israel. Columbia University Press, 1996, ISBN 0231104642.
• Hahn, Peter L. United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956: Strategy and Diplomacy. UNC Press. pp. 187. ISBN 0807819425.
• Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall. Penguin Books. pp. 117–119. ISBN 978-0-14-028870-4.
• Black, Ian and Morris, Benny (1992): Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, Futura, ISBN 0802132863.
• Ostrovsky, Victor and Hoy, Claire: By Way of Deception. St. Martin's Press, 1991, ISBN 0-312-92614-6.
• Joel Beinin: Egyptian Jewish Identities. Communitarianisms, nationalisms, nostalgias Stanford Humanities Review, 1996.
• The Dispersion Of Egyptian Jewry Culture, Politics, And The Formation Of A Modern Diaspora Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998. Amer Univ in Cairo Pr, 2005, ISBN 9774248902
• Operation Susannah, Harper & Row, NYC, 1978 ISBN 0-060-11555-6.
• David Hirst. The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East. 1977, 1984, Futura Publications, ISBN 978-1560254836.

 

[Menes]

Israel responded to the scandal with claims in the media that there was no spy ring, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by anti-Semites.

"Honorable Chairman, members of the Knesset. The trial that started two days ago in Egypt against 13 Jews is disturbing everybody and brings about an emotional turmoil and deep bitterness in the country and in the whole Jewish world. Indeed, it must cause concern and anxiety in the hearts of all justice-seeking people around the universe. The Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security has alreadv dealt and will further deal with this serious issue. But at this stage I feel obliged to make a short announcement. In my speech in the Knesset on November 15, I said that the uncontrolled behavior of Egypt, does not indicate that its leadership is seeking moderate approaches and peace. How far Egypt is from this spirit of moderation and peace can be learned from the plot woven in Alexandria, the show-trial which is being organized there against a group of Jews who became victims of false accusations of espionage, and who, it seems, are being threatened and tortured in order to extract from them confessions in imaginary crimes. This gloomy assumption was verified and was revealed to be a cruel and shocking fact, by the declaration of the accused Victorin Ninyo in the military court in Cairo that was published this morning. According to this declaration, she was tortured during the interrogation which preceded the trial and by that torture they extracted from her false confessions to crimes which did not happen. The government of Israel strongly protests this practice, which revives in the Middle East the methods used by the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. The government of Israel strongly rejects the false accusations of the general Egyptian prosecution, which relegates to the Israeli authorities horrible deeds and diabolic conspiracies against the security and the international relations of Egypt. From this stand we have protested many times in the past persecution and false accusations of Jews in various countries. We see in the innocent Jews accused by the Egyptian authorities of such severe crimes, victims of vicious hostility to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. If their crime is being Zionist and devoted to Israel, millions of Jews around the world share this crime. We do not think that the rulers of Egypt should be interested in being responsible for shedding Jewish blood. We call upon all those who believe in peace, stability and human relations among nations to prevent fatal injustice."
-Moshe Sharett, Israel's PM, in his statement to the Knesset. December 13, 1954.

THE LAVON AFFAIR - IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

 

[Menes]

But now, we know they are LIARS!!

Israel honors 9 Egyptian spies
After 50 years, President Katsav presents three surviving members with certificates of appreciation at Jerusalem ceremony
By Reuters

JERUSALEM - After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel on Wednesday honored nine Egyptian Jews recruited as agents-provocateur in what became one of the worst intelligence bungles in the country's history.

Israel was at war with Egypt when it hatched a plan in 1954 to ruin its rapprochement with the United States and Britain by firebombing sites frequented by foreigners in Cairo and Alexandria.

But Israeli hopes the attacks, which caused no casualties, would be blamed on local insurgents collapsed when the young Zionist bombers were caught and confessed at public trials. Two were hanged. The rest served jail terms and emigrated to Israel.

Embarrassed before the West, Israel long denied involvement. It kept mum even after its 1979 peace deal with Egypt, fearing memories of the debacle could sour ties.

"Although it is still a sensitive situation, we decided now to express our respect for these heroes," President Moshe Katsav said after presenting the three surviving members of the bomber ring with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony.

What went wrong in the "Lavon Affair" - after Pinhas Lavon, Israel's defence minister when the plot came to light - remains a matter of debate in a country more used to tales of espionage coups.

The Egyptian agents were ignored

The Egyptian Jews were recruited by a fringe unit of Military Intelligence rather than the premier Israeli spy agency Mossad.

The situation recurred in 1985, when U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for passing military secrets to Israel's scientific liaison office.

"As with Pollard, this (Lavon Affair) was a rogue operation," David Kimche, a former Mossad deputy chief, said. "We knew never to go down that road again."

There is a twist to the Egyptian case - the now widespread belief that the bombers were betrayed to the authorities by their Israeli handler, who turned double-agent.

"The general feeling is that he was the one who caused it all," Kimche said.

Under a veil of secrecy, the handler was tried for contacts with Egyptian intelligence and jailed for 10 years. Meanwhile, the agents locked up in Egypt were ignored, excluded from several prisoner exchanges with Israel after the wars of 1956 and 1967.

Now that they have been officially recognised in Israel, the former agents are campaigning for a full account of their operation to be included in the high-school syllabus.

"This is a great day for all of us, those who were hanged and those who died," Marcelle Ninio, the only female member of the cell, said. "We are happy we've got our honor back."

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3065838,00.html#n

 

[Menes]

They finally figured out what went wrong!!

MI figures out what went wrong in Lavon affair - 55 years later
Israel's plan was to bomb Western targets, make it seem as though Egypt was behind the attacks.
By Amos Harel

Fifty-five years after the notorious failure of an Israeli sabotage operation in Egypt, Military Intelligence has finally gotten around to figuring out what went wrong. The answer? Pretty much everything.

An educational presentation about the 1954 Lavon affair prepared by the MI history and heritage division found that MI had not sufficiently trained the members of the sabotage unit, who were mostly amateurs and included several Egyptian Jews, and had failed to give them cover stories, plan escape routes or otherwise plan for the possibility that they would be caught.

"First and foremost, this is the story of the failure of Military Intelligence, starting with the choice of targets for the network's sabotage operations, the operational planning and the superficial and sloppy training, and ending with the method of execution, which totally failed to carry out the pointless mission, which had no chance of reaching the strategic goal its operators had set: the cancellation of the planned British evacuation of the Suez Canal," stated the MI analysis.

The Lavon affair - also known locally as esek habish, "the rotten business" - was a plan to discredit Egypt's government, then headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, by bombing theaters, post offices and U.S. and British institutions, and making it seem as though Egypt was behind the bombings. The thinking in Israel at the time was that if the British were to give up control of the Suez Canal, it would be left in Egypt's hands, putting Cairo in a better position to exert pressure on Israel.

The agents were told "to undermine the West's trust in the [Egyptian] government by causing public insecurity" while concealing Israel's role in the sabotage.

However, the agents were caught. One committed suicide in prison, two were hanged and four got long prison terms.

Only in 1968 were the prisoners exchanged for Egyptian POWs - a time lag the MI analysis attributes to internal bickering and a preoccupation with assigning blame.

"The intelligence community heads' evasion of responsibility for the operation, like the internal preoccupation with the question of who among the leaders of the political establishment gave the order, led to the fact that over many years, no effort was made to get the 'rotten affair' prisoners released," the analysis found.

Code-named Operation Susannah, the incident led to the dismissal of Binyamin Gibli, the MI chief at the time, and the resignations of then-defense minister Pinhas Lavon and ultimately, the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. In the years after the incident came to light, public debate centered around the question of who gave the order for the operation to go forward.

The educational presentation, which met with harsh criticism when it was distributed to the MI units in September, states that although at least six external committees investigated the incident, the mistakes had never before been investigated and analyzed within MI, the institution responsible for the operation.

MI figures out what went wrong in Lavon affair - 55 years later - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

 

[500]

There were used tiny non fragmental devices which did not kill anyone. Three bombs exploded but no one was harmed.

 

[PakSher]

There will be a day when US will find out who was the actual force behind the 9-11 attackers.

 

[Cheetah786]

There will be a day when US will find out who was the actual force behind the 9-11 attackers.

1. There is no proof at all of who was actually on the hijacked airplanes last 9/11. Even the head of the FBI admits that the only hard evidence are the names used by the hijackers on faked IDs. At least 7 of the men whose names were on those IDs have since turned up alive. Another had died back in 1999. None of the names of the alleged hijackers were on the passenger lists of the four aircraft. We do not know who was on those planes, only that we are supposed to think they were Arab Muslims.

2. The night before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, men using those stolen identities visited bars and strip clubs, making sure they would be noticed and remembered by all they met. Students of Islam will confirm that no Muslim devout enough to be willing to commit suicide would spend the night before he was to meet Allah violating so many of Islam's laws regarding alcohol and nude women. This suggests the planting of a false trail ahead of time, doubly so because we know the identities were stolen. Coupled with the deception of the faked Osama "confession" video tape , it is beyond question that deception and fraud exists in the World Trade Towers case.

3. Contrary to early reports (including a statement by George Bush) of large numbers of Israelis being killed in the 9-11 attacks, only two Israelis died, both passengers on the airplanes. No Israelis working in or near the World Trade Towers died. The foreign press has long rumored that Israelis were given an advance warning not to go to work on 9-11, and in the case of Odigo, an Israeli company with offices located near the World Trade Towers, the existence of a warning message sent before the four aircraft had even left the ground is an established fact. That someone in Israel knew of the attacks ahead of time is beyond question.

4. There is an Israeli spy ring. As in the Lavon Affair, Israeli assets have been trying to dismiss the spy ring story (apparently with the FBI's help) while accusing those who refuse to be silent of "anti-Semitism". The lesson from the Lavon case is that Israel's strident denials and smear campaigns are a sure sign that something is indeed being covered up, even as the "art students" continue to be deported. And, as a US Official stated in Carl Cameron's suppressed story on the Israeli Spy/Bugging Ring, evidence does exist that links the arrested Israeli spies with 9-11, but that this evidence has been classified by the United States Government, probably to keep from looking like total idiots at having been so easily fooled for the Nth time.

The United States has been deceived before by Israeli covert operations with the intention of harming American relations with the Arab nations. Israel has never hesitated to kill Americans (USS Liberty) or allow Americans to be killed (The bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American Marines) when it serves a purpose. And, the fact remains that Israel has exploited 9-11 from the instant when Ehud Barak appeared on the BBC moments after the attacks on the World Trade Towers (holding a prepared speech) to the aggression against the Palestinian people which has escalated non-stop ever since 9-11.

Who is responsible for the World Trade Towers attacks? We truly do not know. What we do know beyond all doubt is that someone went to a great deal of effort to provide an easy and at times all-too-obvious a target to blame. Our nation was fooled by that stunt before. The result was that our money and the blood of our children was spent to attack someone else's enemies.

There is an old saying that goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME!"

There is another saying, "We won't get fooled again!"

 

[somebozo]

Yet israel insists on being a peaceful neighbour while it sponsers al quaida like terrorism in neighbouring countries.

If Israel is expanding on the religious agenda that is their birth right but if Muslims talk about having a co-operative council they are being facist communits..pretty hypocrite is the west.

 

[jabalultariq]

Americans are quite naive when it comes to dealing with Israel. Even if they weren't , you have AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) two big watchdogs , well funded and highly organized pro-Israel organization looking after the interests of Israel in USA

 

[lem34]

There will be a day when US will find out who was the actual force behind the 9-11 attackers.

If Israelis are complicit I dread to think what will become of AIPAC

 

[somebozo]

There were used tiny non fragmental devices which did not kill anyone. Three bombs exploded but no one was harmed.

that is still not an excuse to sponser and justify terrorist activities.

Israel responded to the scandal with claims in the media that there was no spy ring, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by anti-Semites

Anti-Semitism is a political escape card played whenever Israel is cornered.

The whole world under the hoax of anti-semitism has been forced to accept a Zionist perpetuated history of holocaust and it has become almost impossible to research real fact.

 

[lem34]

There were used tiny non fragmental devices which did not kill anyone. Three bombs exploded but no one was harmed.

Can you imagine a terrorist in court turning around in court and saying my lord it was a crappy small bomb

 

[Cheetah786]

Yet israel insists on being a peaceful neighbour while it sponsors Al qaida like terrorism in neighboring countries.

If Israel is expanding on the religious agenda that is their birth right but if Muslims talk about having a co-operative council they are being facist communits..pretty hypocrite is the west.

Damm someBozo it took you 7326 posts to realize what we been saying all along