Oud-Mossadbaas Isser Harel overleden

De befaamde oud-chef van de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad, Isser Harel, is dinsdagavond op 91-jarige leeftijd overleden in Jeruzalem.

De in Rusland geboren Harel was in 1960 persoonlijk verantwoordelijk aan en betrokken bij de ontvoering van nazimisdadiger Eichmann uit Buenos Aires.Harel wordt beschouwd als de grondlegger van de uiterst effectieve geheime dienst van de joodse staat, volgens velen een van de beste ter wereld.Israël’s first spymaster, Isser Harel, dies at 91 Isser Harel, considered the founder of Israël’s intelligence community, died yesterday at the age of 91 after a lengthy illness.Harel ran the Shin Bet security service for 15 years and the Mossad for 11 years, and was largely responsible for both agencies’ worldwide reputations. But, while he was revered by many for his achievements, he was also frequently reviled as Israël’s equivalent of the KGB.Isser Halperin was born in Poland in 1912 and joined the Zionist movement as a youth. In 1930, he moved to Israël, then still under British rule, and helped found a kibbutz, where he later lived with wife, Rivka. He supported himself by starting an orange-packing business.In 1939, upon the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Haganah, the main pre-state underground; five years later, he was transferred to its intelligence section, which became the basis for the intelligence agencies established by the fledgling state in 1948. Halperin, who had by then Hebraicized his name to Harel, was appointed to head the domestic security agency, the Shin Bet.As Shin Bet chief, Harel tended to conflate the interests of the government with those of the state: He participated in meetings of the ruling party, Mapai’s, central committee and assigned Shin Bet agents to keep tabs on the leaders of rival parties.In 1952, he was named head of the Mossad, Israël’s foreign intelligence service, whereupon he formally transferred control of the Shin Bet to his deputy; in practice, however, he ran both agencies, giving him powers unparalleled anywhere else in the Western world.As he had at the Shin Bet, Harel essentially built the Mossad from nothing into an agency with a worldwide reputation. He established a department to bring Jews to Israël from countries where that was illegal, which presided over the mass immigration of Moroccan Jews in the 1950s; he also developed the Mossad’s ties with overseas intelligence services. He waged unremitting war on efforts by Soviet bloc countries to recruit agents in Israël and successfully unmasked several such agents.The most spectacular episode of his career came in 1961, when the Mossad kidnapped Adolph Eichmann from Argentina and brought him to Israël for trial. This success firmly established the Mossad’s reputation for proficiency and daring.But that same year, he carried daring too far when he initiated a campaign to intimidate German scientists, many of them former Nazis, who were working for Egypt’s arms development program. His agents threatened the scientists and their families and even assassinated some. The German government was furious, and the affair threatened to disrupt the Israëli-German reconciliation then underway. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion therefore demanded Harel’s resignation in 1963.Harel served briefly as prime minister Levi Eshkol’s intelligence advisor in 1965 and served a term in the Knesset in 1969; after that, he devoted himself mainly to writing books.