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The National
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Israel's retrieval of Eli Cohen items revives conflicting claims over unmasking of super spy
Israel's revelation that it had recovered from Syria the security file and personal items of one of its most famous spies has drawn an unlikely response in Egypt. There, influential commentators have recalled how one of their own was responsible for Eli Cohen's arrest and execution 60 years ago. Boasting about its own spy in Israel exposing Cohen in 1965 seems to be an appropriate reaction from Egypt, whose relations with its neighbour and former enemy are at their worst since they signed a peace treaty in 1979, only 14 years after Cohen was hanged in a Damascus square. "It's clear that we have seized on the Eli Cohen story to exercise bragging rights," said Negad Borai, a veteran human rights lawyer and a member of the council of guardians for Egypt's National Dialogue, a forum set up by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to help chart the country's future. "It's a message to remind everyone, particularly Israel, that Egypt is a powerful nation," he said of the nationwide reaction to the news about Cohen. The retrieval of the spy's security file and personal items, announced on Sunday, made headlines across much of the region, evoking memories of a time – the 1960s – when enmity between Arab nations and Israel was at its most intense. It also comes at a time when animosity towards Israel has deepened over its war in Gaza since October 2023. The Cohen story has taken on added relevance at a time when many Arabs are criticising what they see as the fateful role played by Israel's spies in the region since the devastating war in Gaza began. Israel has been blamed for the assassination of some of its most high-profile enemies in places such as Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran – killings widely thought to have been made possible by the information its spies provided. "The day of his [Cohen's] execution was a glorious day," declared Amr Adeeb, perhaps the most popular Arab talk show host, on his nightly TV show. "Our own spy attended Cohen's memorial service in Israel while overjoyed that he died," said Adeeb, whose programme Al Hekayah (The Story) is aired by the Saudi-owned MBC network. In a surprise announcement, Israel on Sunday said 2,500 documents and personal items belonging to Cohen were returned to Tel Aviv from Syria in a covert operation carried out by its Mossad spy agency and a foreign counterpart it did not identify. They were presented on Sunday to his widow, Nadia Cohen, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad director David Barnea, a statement from the Israeli leader's office read. Among the recovered items were handwritten letters from Cohen to his family, his will – which he wrote in Arabic shortly before his execution – photos taken during his years undercover in Syria and keys to his upmarket Damascus apartment. Cohen, who forged friendships with key figures in Syria's echelons of power, was arrested in January 1965 and hanged in a central Damascus square in May of that year. His burial place remains unknown to this day. Egyptian intelligence officials, according to many accounts, tipped off the government of then-Syrian president Amin Al Hafez about Cohen's true identity. That narrative took on more credibility when referenced in a book by the late Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a confidant of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's president from 1956 to 1970, who was widely respected for his authoritative writings on the inner workings of the nationalist leader's rule. Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1924 to Jewish parents who had migrated from Aleppo in Syria but his Mossad handlers cooked up an elaborate deception to enable him to work undercover in Damascus. That included a claim to Syrian ancestry, an Arabic name – Kamel Amin Thabet – and a successful export business in Damascus. Cohen's exploits in Syria and the sensitive intelligence he obtained for Israel have been documented in numerous books by authors from Israel and beyond. They were the subject of the 2019 Netflix mini-series The Spy, in which British actor Sacha Baron Cohen played Cohen. According to the Egyptian account, his cover was blown when an Egyptian spy saw Cohen in Israel and recognised him as the same man who had appeared in published photos alongside top Syrian officials and military commanders. Significantly, according to that account, the man who identified him was Egypt's own star spy Refaat Al Gammal, better known as Raafat Al Haggan, who operated in Israel for 17 years under the name Jack Bitton. However, Yosri Fouda, a London-based investigative journalist from Egypt, offers a slightly different version of Cohen's exposure. Writing on Facebook on Monday, Fouda said Al Haggan recognised Cohen from a family photo shown to him by a friend. She told him the man posing with a woman and seven children in the photo was her brother-in-law, Eli Cohen. While Cohen is widely credited for providing Tel Aviv with information that proved crucial in Israel's swift defeat of Syria in the 1967 war, Al Haggan's warning in 1967 to his Egyptian handlers that an Israeli attack was imminent was not taken seriously, according to published Egyptian accounts. Israel seized Syria's Golan Heights, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank during that war. The Egyptian account of how Al Haggan was responsible for the arrest of Cohen is not the only one that has been circulating over the years. Other narratives credit the technical help the Syrians received from their Russian allies that made it possible to identify and locate the Morse code signal Cohen used to relay information to Israel from his apartment in Damascus. Syrian authorities, embittered by the acrimonious break-up in 1961 of their country's short-lived union with Egypt, also claimed credit at the time for exposing Cohen. Like Fouda, Egyptian talk show host Ahmed Moussa was sceptical of Israel's account of how it obtained Cohen's documents and items. He suggested the new Syrian government may have simply handed them over as a goodwill gesture to the US, Israel's chief benefactor and close ally, after interim President Ahmed Al Shara met President Donald Trump last week in Riyadh. Moussa said Israel 'always wanted to look important and strong'. The logical next step was for the Syrian and Israeli governments to join forces in trying to locate Cohen's remains and repatriate them to Israel, he suggested. Syrians have meanwhile taken to social media to express disapproval over the loss of Cohen's possessions, saying it indicated co-operation between the new Damascus regime and Israel. Syrian satirist Mohammad Al Salloum said it undermined efforts to preserve the national memory. "The archives of the Al Assad era belong to all the people and they have a right to access it,' he said, alluding to the authoritarian rule of more 50 years by the late president Hafez Al Assad and his son Bashar, whose regime was toppled in December.
Asharq Al-Awsat
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
From the ‘Past' of Summits... to the Economy of ‘State Builders'
Let us forget, for a moment, that the president of the United States is the most powerful political leader in the world, and that he can annihilate humanity at the press of a button or obliterate the global economy with an 'executive order.' For a moment, let us put that to one side and focus, instead, on two undeniable truths that we must address as Arabs during these extraordinary times in our contemporary history. First, we have the truth of Arab affairs as they currently are, not as we would like them to be. Second economic, technological, strategic, and ideological shifts are sweeping the globe at astonishing speed. The Arab states met on Saturday at a summit hosted by Baghdad, a city that had once been the capital of the greatest empire in history. Sadly, it hosted the 34th Arab League summit under unfavorable circumstances that underlined the inertia of our Arab nation more than they showcased a capacity for overcoming existential challenges. To begin with, state representation was modest. Several Arab capitals have reached the conviction that betting on joint Arab action is futile, with some even rejecting the very idea of a single shared Arab identity. Still, no one is willing to admit it explicitly and bear the consequences. Indeed, the deep-seated distrust brewing 'beneath the ashes' has become apparent to anyone keenly following regional issues and impending decisions. Having practiced obfuscation, denial, disregard, and willful neglect, we have become adept at papering over these truths, undermining most initiatives and political approaches that have any real substance or impact. The Arab failure to address chronic flashpoints and crises reflects this. Although some signs of a breakthrough have emerged, tentatively and timidly, in Syria and Lebanon, it is painfully clear that the Arab states have no shared strategy for alleviating the pain of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. No practical approach for curbing Iranian influence has been developed either, be it Iran's more recent foothold in Yemen or its longstanding hegemony in Iraq, where Tehran-backed militias still have the final say on the ground. And certainly, there are no signs of an imminent end to the chaos in Libya, the escalating crisis in Sudan, or the chronic conflict between Algeria and Morocco. For all these reasons and others, Arab officials have concluded that there is no longer a need to burden the institution of the Arab League with tasks it can no longer undertake - that is, anything beyond the usual generous expressions of fraternity and solidarity and ritualized performative indignation. As for the second truth - the astonishing pace of economic, technological, strategic, and ideological global change - it will affect us. In fact, it has already begun to shape our lives in the Arab world and beyond. I began this piece by stating that the US president is the most powerful 'political' leader in the world to set the stage for developments we must be prepared for and learn to live with. In my humble opinion, there was someone far more important than the 'politician' Trump, despite the success of his Gulf tour. They are the architects of America's future, its global influence, and its political establishment: the executives and investors of technology companies and the industries of the future, particularly artificial intelligence. Among them are Elon Musk, who has now become bigger than a 'kingmaker,' and executives from major corporations, such as NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, BlackRock, Uber, Blackstone, and others that dominate the Fortune 500 list. These are the people leading the charge of America's war against future challengers, chief among them China. Whereas China synergizes the efforts of the public and private sectors in building its techno-economic arsenal, however, Trump's Washington seems to be armed solely with the power of the private sector, gradually eliminating every non-consumerist role for human beings. To put it plainly: Washington seeks neither obstacles nor restraints nor regulatory standards on investment. It has no legal or organizational framework for investment and regulation, firmly opposing any regime or legislative framework that could slow the pace of liberalization and economic openness. This is a crucial dimension of its struggle for the future, particularly with China, that has major political implications for an era in which interest trumps ideology. The very concept of the state itself is now in doubt. The logic of accountability has become a burden on efficiency. The principle of civil liberties has become just a matter of opinion. The idea of a democracy safeguarded by a constitutional political system has become a contentious issue. At best, it is now debatable and applied with discretion. How could things be otherwise? Indeed, the budgets of the giant corporations waging this global battle far exceed those of sovereign states. This brings me back to an American saying I first heard during my freshman year at university: 'If ideology was the weapon of 20th-century wars, then technology is the weapon of 21st-century wars.' It's no coincidence, then, that the phrase 'America's business is business' (though it was said in a different context) is associated with Republican President Calvin Coolidge (who served from 1923 to 1929), a staunch believer in minimizing the role of the state in the economy, see non-interference in market mechanisms at the criteria for assessing government efficiency. In the world of the future, which is rushing toward us faster than we had ever been prepared for, we fear that our societies, unless our cultural awareness and patterns of thinking change, might not succeed in avoiding the pain and enormous costs that these transformations threaten. We could pay a very high price for maturity.
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Fox News host criticizes Trump's relationship with 'terrorist regime'
One of Donald Trump's most vocal defenders on Fox News has seemingly turned on the president after he visited Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Fox News host Mark Levin, who Trump recently tapped to serve on the Department of Homeland Security's Advisory Council (HSAC), did not mince words when he called out the Arab nations for their ties to terrorism. 'Saudi Arabia played a significant role on the 9/11 slaughter of our people,' Levin wrote Wednesday morning after Trump toured the country on a state visit to meet with Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS). 'I didn't hear their Crown Prince even apologize once yesterday for what they did to us.' The show host who normally is very pro-Trump did not name the president in his post slamming the Middle Eastern countries, though the timing of it seems to clearly refer to the recent visit. Levin, who is Jewish, also slammed Qatar's government, likening it to a 'terrorist regime.' In a separate post, Levin wrote: 'Qatar celebrates Hamas terrorist.' Despite the Trump ally's concern over the visit, Trump and MBS appeared to quickly strike up a warm and respectful relationship. But to Levin, the trip was a slap in the face to 9/11 families, who he wrote must be 'reeling from this' visit. 'Qatar protected the leader of the 9/11 attack from the FBI, before he was able to launch his war on America that killed our people,' his lengthy post continued. 'Qatar is a terrorist regime that has murdered Americans. I cannot let bygones be bygones and those Americans who suffered the consequences of what these monarchies did cannot either.' Qatar has historically harbored enemies of the U.S., namely the top leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. For example, Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime leader of Hamas, lived in Qatar's capital Doha from 2017 until his assassination in Iran last year. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, was the birthplace of 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers and some of its residents had been supportive of Al-Qaeda. However, the country designated the Osama bin Laden-led faction as a terrorist group in 2001 shortly after 9/11. It has also since designated the Muslim Brotherhood, Yemen's Houthis, ISIS, Al-Nusra and Hezbollah as terrorist groups. Staying close to each other while attending an economic forum and multiple cultural events, MBS and Trump were seen smiling. Videos of the visit show the pair even getting into one of the president's favorite rides together - a golf cart. MBS chauffeured Trump around a historical section of Riyadh on the golf cart as men dressed in traditional garb, some mounted on horses, surrounded the men on their procession around the site. The Saudi prime minister also personally attended the president's arrival and departure to Riyadh's international airport, greeting and sending off Trump with waves and thanks. 'I can't stop thinking about all the innocent people who went to work that day, and were on those planes, and all the firefighters and police officers who died horrible deaths,' Levin's pointed post said. 'These are terrorists. They don't think like us and they don't love life like us. We must have the guts and wisdom to protect ourselves.' In another post, Levin also took issue with a speech delivered by Trump to the Saudis. 'Actually, POTUS's speech included some of the lines used by the Soros-Koch isolationist crowd about neocons and interventionists,' the Fox News host wrote. Though in that post he did offer his usual praise for the president. 'We don't know the details but if they're great deals for we, the people, that's wonderful. I truly believe the President is the best at making great deals.' Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.
Times
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Trump set to meet ‘terrorist' president of Syria
President Trump is expected to meet Syria's leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who remains designated a terrorist by the US, during his trip to Saudi Arabia this week, The Times understands. Al-Sharaa, an Islamist leader who came to power in January, is expected to meet Trump in a group that includes Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian National Authority, and Joseph Aoun, president of Lebanon. The new Syrian leader, in his push for the lifting of American sanctions imposed against the Assad regime, is expected to offer several concessions including access for US companies to exploit natural resources in a Ukraine-style minerals deal. Al-Sharaa may also offer to hold talks on joining the Abraham Accords, a set of deals to normalise relations between Arab nations and
LBCI
11-05-2025
- Politics
- LBCI
Presidency urges Lebanese media to act responsibly amid municipal elections
According to a statement released by the presidential media office, the Lebanese Presidency called on local media outlets to uphold national, legal, and ethical responsibility during the current sensitive period. It warned against unfounded accusations, fabrications, or false narratives targeting any foreign party friendly to Lebanon, particularly Arab nations, especially in matters that could verge on undermining national interests. While reaffirming its full commitment to the sanctity of freedom of expression, the Presidency reminded stakeholders that this right carries inherent obligations—truthfulness and respect for public order in a democratic society, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The statement concluded by stressing that any violation of these principles would not fall under protected speech but would instead be considered a clear and punishable offense.
