Israel Recovers Troves of Documents Belonging to Its Most Famous Spy

New York Times

19-05-2025

For decades, Israel has been trying to recover the remains of Eli Cohen, one of its most famous spies, who was executed in Syria in 1965.
While that goal remains elusive, intelligence services and the prime minister's office on Sunday implied that they may have gotten one step closer by acquiring documents and personal affects from Syria that belonged to Mr. Cohen.
The trove of 2,500 items includes documents and photographs from Mr. Cohen's years undercover, information about his final moments, personal artifacts taken from his home and handwritten letters to family members, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
The Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, worked together with an allied foreign government to retrieve the archives, the prime minister's office said. It did not elaborate on which country helped and when exactly it had recovered the documents. It was not clear how the government acquired the documents.
During his three years as an undercover agent in Syria in the early 1960s, Mr. Cohen fostered close relationships with top Syrian officials and provided substantial information to Israel, including about Syria's military, its relationship with the Soviet Union and power struggles within the leadership. Syria was Israel's main rival in the region at that time.
Two years after his death, Mr. Cohen's information helped Israel achieve victory in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, also known as the Six-Day War, and seize the Golan Heights from Syria.
It was unclear if the documents shed light on where Mr. Cohen was buried.
The announcement came just days after President Trump met with the president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, in Saudi Arabia as Syria tries to reintegrate itself into the international community. At the meeting, Mr. Trump urged Mr. al-Shara to improve Syrian relations with Israel.
In Israel, the announcement about Mr. Eli's documents and personal effects was received as a unifying moment at a time of division between Mr. Netanyahu and the country's intelligence services. 'Everybody can agree it's a good thing,' said Yitzhak Brudny, a professor of history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 'It's not controversial.'
'It's a symbolic thing,' Dr. Brudny said. 'Eli Cohen is a symbol of success and failure.'
Mr. Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1924, to Syrian Jewish parents. He moved to Israel in 1957 and joined the Israeli military intelligence service three years later.
The Mossad sent him to Damascus, where he was to pose as a Syrian businessman. Mr. Cohen befriended top Syrian officials under his new name and identity, Kamel Amin Thaabet. (In 2019, Netflix turned Mr. Cohen's tale into a six-part series.)
While working as a spy in Damascus, Mr. Cohen sent dispatches in Morse code to his Israeli bosses. He was caught after the Syrian Army intercepted one of his messages.
Though there had been claims that Mr. Cohen transmitted to his Israeli handlers too often, David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, said in 2022 that Mr. Cohen was caught 'simply because his transmissions were intercepted and triangulated by the enemy.'
In January 1965, the Syrian authorities arrested, interrogated and tortured Mr. Cohen for about a month until his trial. He was sentenced to death and publicly hanged in Syria in May 1965, at Marja Square in Damascus, his body swaying on the rope for hours.
It was not the first time that the Mossad had dedicated significant time and resources to recovering some of Mr. Cohen's belongings. In 2018, Israeli intelligence recovered a wrist watch that belonged to Mr. Cohen in a complex operation in Damascus.
Nadia Cohen, Mr. Cohen's wife, has long campaigned for the return of her husband's remains so that a proper burial could take place.
Sophie Ben-Dor, Mr. Cohen's daughter, on Monday reiterated the need for the return of her father's remains in an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet. She said it wasn't just about recovering his bodily remains, but 'about a country's moral duty to look after its people.'