Latest news with #EliCohen
Mint
3 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Israel-backed Gaza Food Aid Plan Is Facing Dissent and Delays
A contested plan backed by the US and Israel to deliver food aid to Palestinians in Gaza is off to a rocky start, with the top organizer resigning and the scale and schedule of the handouts unclear. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation , a new Swiss-based nonprofit, said it would begin operations on Monday, despite the last-minute walkout by its executive director, who decried what he described as the plan's departure from humanitarian principles. On Monday afternoon there were scattered reports of a single aid center opening in the city of Rafah but no official word as to when and where Palestinians might get rations. The ruined coastal enclave's more than 2 million civilians have been brought to the brink of famine, relief agencies say, by an Israeli aid blockade imposed in March after the last truce with Hamas expired. In parallel, Israel has mounted what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes as the final push to win the more than 19-month-old war. Tanks and troops are under orders to conquer Gaza, rout Hamas holdouts, move civilians to a southern buffer zone and recover the remaining 58 hostages held by the Iran-backed group. On Monday, the military issued evacuation orders to residents of the southern town of Khan Younis. Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people the same day, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials. Whether the 20 hostages believed to be alive will survive the new sweep is a question wracking Israelis, most of whom want to end the war with a negotiated repatriation — even if it leaves Hamas in power. Israeli officials say Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated talks on a deal continue, spurred by the military pressure. The GHF has said that by week's end it will have three distribution stations in the southern buffer zone, with a fourth in central Gaza, for an operating volume sufficient to feed 1 million people. The food operation was held up, says Eli Cohen, Israel's energy minister and a security cabinet member. 'This was meant to begin yesterday — the 25th — but that didn't happen,' he told Army Radio. UN agencies have voiced concern that a limited resumption of food distribution would be insufficient, push civilians into small areas and politicize aid. Israel's strategy is drawing increasing global censure, angering its allies in Europe and isolating it in international forums. The GHF has said it offers 'a pragmatic plan that is able to immediately get aid into Gaza under the conditions as they exist today,' and deemed 'no longer viable' the UN-led mechanism that was in place for decades before Hamas triggered the war by invading Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas warned Gazans it would 'take necessary measures' against any who avail themselves of the distribution centers. Officials have said that the Israeli military will guard the periphery of the sites while US contractors provide security. Recipients will be the heads of Palestinian households, vetted to ensure they are not members of Hamas, and given provisions to last each family a week. Concerns have been raised about how onerous carrying the rations long distances could prove to those already weak from hunger, but the plan aims to limit the chances of Hamas operatives seizing truckloads, Israel has said. In his resignation letter on Sunday, CEO Jake Wood said, 'It is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.' Minister Cohen said Israel rejected an offer for 10 hostages to be released over the course of a two-month ceasefire. Israel backs a proposal by US envoy Steve Witkoff under which half of the living hostages would be freed immediately, and the return of the rest and ending the war would be discussed in the ensuing 45- to 60-day truce, Cohen said. Israel wants Hamas toppled and disarmed and its leaders exiled. Hamas has signaled it could give up Gaza governance, but not its arsenal. Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union, killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel's offensive has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Israel has lost more than 400 troops in Gaza combat. With assistance from Marissa Newman. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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First Post
21-05-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Syria returns belongings of Israeli spy Eli Cohen as a gesture to cool tensions: Report
Syria's interim leadership has agreed to return belongings of the late Israeli spy Eli Cohen to Israel to ease tensions and show goodwill to US President Donald Trump. read more Syria's interim leadership has agreed to return the belongings of the long-dead Israeli spy Eli Cohen to Israel in a bid to reduce tensions and show goodwill towards US President Donald Trump, Reuters reported, citing sources. Israel announced on Sunday that it had recovered documents, photographs, and personal items related to Cohen. The Israeli spy agency Mossad collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency to secure the materials. A Syrian security source, an adviser to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and a person familiar with secret talks between the two countries said the archive was actually offered to Israel by Sharaa as a gesture to ease tensions and build trust with President Trump. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Eli Cohen, who was hanged in 1965 in a public square in Damascus after spying on Syria's political leaders, is still regarded as a hero in Israel. He is Mossad's most famous spy, known for uncovering military secrets that helped Israel achieve a swift victory in the 1967 Middle East war. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Cohen as a legend and 'the greatest intelligence agent in the history of the state.' Eli Cohen was an Egyptian-born Israeli spy renowned for his deep infiltration into Syria's political and military elite during the early 1960s. He was executed by Syria after being exposed through Russian-made devices used to detect espionage activities. Operating under the alias Kamal Amin Thaabet, Cohen posed as a wealthy businessman and advisor to Syria's defence minister, providing Israel with critical intelligence that significantly contributed to its success in the 1967 Six-Day War. With inputs from Reuters.
Reuters
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Exclusive: Syrian leadership approved return of dead spy archive to Israel, sources say
AMMAN/DAMASCUS, May 20 (Reuters) - Syria's leadership approved the handover of the belongings of long-dead spy Eli Cohen to Israel in a bid to ease Israeli hostility and show goodwill to U.S. President Donald Trump, three sources told Reuters. Israel announced its recovery of the trove of documents, photographs and personal possessions relating to Cohen on Sunday, saying its spy agency Mossad had worked with an unnamed foreign intelligence agency to secure the material. However, a Syrian security source, an adviser to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and a person familiar with backchannel talks between the countries said the archive of material was in fact offered to Israel as an indirect gesture by Sharaa as he seeks to cool tensions and build Trump's confidence. Cohen, who was hanged in 1965 in a downtown Damascus square after infiltrating Syria's political elite, is still regarded as a hero in Israel and Mossad's most celebrated spy for uncovering military secrets that aided its lightning victory in the 1967 Middle East war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Cohen on Sunday as a legend and "the greatest intelligence agent in the annals of the state". While Israel has long sought to recover his body for reburial at home, the return of his archive held for 60 years by Syrian intelligence was hailed by Mossad as "an achievement of the highest moral order". Israel has not publicly revealed how the archive came into its possession, saying only that it was the result of "a covert and complex Mossad operation, in cooperation with an allied foreign intelligence service". Netanyahu's office, Syrian officials and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Syria's role in Israel's recovery of the Cohen archive. After rebels led by Sharaa suddenly ousted President Bashar al-Assad in December, ending his family's 54-year-long rule, they found the Cohen dossier in a state security building, according to the Syrian security source. Sharaa and his foreign advisers quickly decided to use the material as leverage, the source added. The Syrian security source said Sharaa had realised that the Cohen archive was important to the Israelis and that its return could amount to a significant diplomatic gesture. Ending Israeli attacks on Syria and improving relations with the United States and other Western countries are vital for Sharaa as he seeks to revive his shattered country after 14 years of civil war. Israel regards Sharaa and his ex-insurgents, who once formed the al Qaeda faction in Syria, as unreconstructed jihadists. Israeli forces staged an incursion into border areas last year and have repeatedly bombed targets in support of Syria's minority Druze sect. This month, Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates had set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria that included efforts to build confidence between the sides. There have also been other indirect channels for talks, according to two people familiar with the matter. In the talks, Syria agreed to measures including returning the remains of Cohen as well as three Israeli soldiers killed while fighting Syrian forces in Lebanon in the early 1980s, a person familiar with those talks said. The body of one of those soldiers, Zvi Feldman, has been returned, Israel said last week. The return of the Cohen archive came in the context of those confidence-building measures and was done with Sharaa's direct approval, the person said. Last week, Trump held a surprise meeting with Sharaa in Saudi Arabia where he urged him to normalise ties with Israel and announced that he would lift sanctions on Syria. Syrian officials have said they want peace with all states in the region, and Sharaa confirmed this month that Damascus had carried out indirect talks with Israel via states it has ties with in order to calm the situation.
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.
CBS News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Possessions of Israel's most famous spy recovered — 60 years after he was executed in Syria
Israel has retrieved thousands of items belonging to the country's most famous spy after a covert operation in Syria. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared some of the 2,500 items from the Syrian archive relating to Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy who infiltrated the political echelon in Syria, with Cohen's widow. Sunday marked 60 years since Cohen was hanged in a square in Damascus. The items recently spirited into Israel include documents, recordings, photos, and items collected by Syrian intelligence after his capture in January 1965, letters in his own handwriting to his family in Israel, photographs of his activity during his operational mission in Syria and personal objects that were taken from his home after his capture. Among the items recovered was a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, Agence France-Presse reported. Suitcases of items brought to Israel included worn folders stuffed with handwritten notes, keys to his apartment in Damascus, passports and false identification documents, missions from the Mossad to surveil specific people and places, and documentation of all the efforts of his widow, Nadia Cohen, begging world leaders for his release from prison. In this undated photo released by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, identity documents of Eli Cohen are displayed. Israeli Prime Minister's Office via AP A Syrian government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters news agency request for comment on how the items had been retrieved from Syria. Cohen, who was born in Egypt to a Jewish family, was sent by Mossad to Syria, where he posed as a Syrian businessman named Kamal Amin Taabet, the BBC reported. After befriending influential political, business and military figures, he was able to obtain secret information, which he passed back to Israel. Cohen's success in Syria was one of the Mossad spy agency's first major achievements, and the top-secret intelligence he obtained is widely credited with helping Israel prepare for its swift victory in the 1967 Middle East War. Eli Cohen managed to forge close contacts within the political and military hierarchy of Israel's archenemy in the early 1960s, ultimately rising to become a top adviser to Syria's defense minister. In 1965, Cohen was caught radioing information to Israel. He was tried and hanged in a Damascus square on May 18, 1965. His remains have yet to be returned to Israel, where he is regarded as a national hero. Isreal previously recovered a watch belonging to Cohen from Syria, the BBC reported in 2018. Details of how Israel got hold of the watch were not disclosed, other than it was returned "in a special Mossad operation." In 2019, actor Sacha Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen (no relation) in a six-episode Netflix series called "The Spy." "We conducted a special operation by the Mossad, by the State of Israel, to bring his (Eli Cohen's) archive, which had been in the safes of the Syrian intelligence for 60 years," Netanyahu told Nadia Cohen on Sunday in Jerusalem. Ahead of viewing the items, Nadia Cohen told Netanyahu that the most important thing was to bring back Cohen's body. Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to work on locating Cohen's body. Last week, Israel recovered the body of an Israeli soldier from Syria who had been missing for more than four decades, after he was killed during a clash with Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982. "Eli is an Israeli legend. He's the greatest agent Israeli intelligence has had in the years the state existed. There was no one like him," Netanyahu said.
