Monjer Motsley, Hafez al-Assad’s associate, says Syrian intelligence blew the Mossad spy Eli Cohen’s cover when he couldn’t recite the five pillars of Islam. Mossad sent inexperienced operative Eli Cohen to Syria without teaching him basic things about his legend of a Muslim businessman. Motsley claims Assad immediately spotted Cohen’s Jewish facial features. Syrians hanged Cohen in 1965.
Syria discovered Eli Cohen through Mossad’s errors | |
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Most western authorities on the Eli Cohen story lay the blame for his tragic loss squarely at his feet: that his isolation and fatigue led to his reckless radio transmissions to Israel. How credible then is the story from Eli Ben-hanan’s “Our Man In Damascus” and the International Hebrew Heritage Library that it was Kol Israel’s rebroadcast of very sensitive military and political information from Cohen, overheard by the Syrians, that helped to compromise him? Care to comment?
Who knows…