Munich To Exploding Pagers: Why Mossad Is Respected, And Feared

Ask any expert or even a layman, which they think the world’s premier and most effective spy agency is and the odds are that Israel’s Mossad will be in their top three.  

Formed in 1949 as the Institute for Co-Ordination, the Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, or Mossad, is known for its global reach, the commitment of its officers, the precision with which it carries out its operations, and the large amounts of time – often years – it spends planning them. The intrigue, spycraft and tools used in the operations have all the ingredients of a movie and it is, thus, no surprise, that several blockbusters – including ‘Munich’, ‘The Impossible Spy’ and ‘The Angel’ – have been made on them.

The image has been bolstered with Israel’s operations this month in Iran in which several top military officials and scientists were killed and nuclear sites were targeted. 

The success, however, has not been without some very big failures, notably Operation Sussanah or the Lavon Affair of 1954, under which the agency planned to conduct false-flag bombings in Egypt to destabilise the regime of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and stop the British from withdrawing their troops from the Suez Canal zone. The agency recruited a group of Egyptian jews to carry out bombings and planned to blame it on the Muslim Brotherhood and other elements within the country, but the group got caught when a bomb exploded prematurely. The fallout was so massive that Defence Minister Pinhas Livon had to resign.