TEL AVIV – Isaac Shoshan, a Syrian-born Israeli secret agent who pretended to be an Arab early in his career, participating in bombings and an assassination attempt, before making major contributions to the country’s espionage methods, died on 28 December in Tel Aviv. He was 96 years old.
Her daughter Eti confirmed her death at Ichilov Hospital. He had suffered a stroke, she said.
In a tribute on Twitter, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who previously served in an Israeli intelligence unit that Shoshan helped to conceive, said that Shoshan “risked his life several times” on behalf of Israel.
“Generations of warriors learned their trade at his feet,” he added, “me too.”
Mr. Shoshan was born Zaki Shasho in Aleppo, Syria, in 1924 into an Arab-speaking Jewish family. He studied at a French language school, learned Hebrew in orthodox Jewish schools and as a young man he belonged to the Zionist Hebrew Boy Scouts. At the age of 18, motivated by his Zionism, he traveled to what was then Palestine ruled by the British and in two years he was recruited by Palmach, the Jewish clandestine fighting force.
During his training, he was assigned to a secret unit known as the Arab Platoon. Composed of Jews who could pass for Arabs, he was accused of collecting information and carrying out sabotage and selective murders.
The unit was set up in anticipation of “a civil war in Palestine between Jews and Arabs,” said Yoav Gelber, professor and historian of the period.
The unit’s members, mostly immigrants from Arab lands, were trained in intelligence gathering and secret communications – Morse code, for example – as well as command tactics and the use of explosives. They also underwent an intensive study of Islam and Arab customs so that they could live as Arabs without arousing suspicion.
Shoshan began participating in intelligence gathering operations after the United Nations voted in 1947 to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, triggering clashes that would turn into war.
But he was soon called on to implement another aspect of his training: helping to assassinate a Palestinian leader, Sheikh Nimr al-Khatib, who was said to be on his way to Lebanon with weapons in February 1948.
Armed men were supposed to shoot the sheik’s car, and Mr. Shoshan, as an apparent Arab spectator, was instructed to “run back and appear to be helping, but actually to make sure the sheik was dead and, if not, to stop. finish the job off with my gun, ”he said in an interview in 2002.
The sheikh was actually shot in his car – the killers “shot him with machine guns,” said Shoshan – but he survived after British soldiers prevented Shoshan from reaching him. Severely wounded, the sheikh left Palestine and stopped playing an active role in the war.
Shortly thereafter, Shoshan and another member of the Arab Platoon were dispatched to a garage in Haifa, Israel, where intelligence indicated that a car bomb was being mounted.
“The owners never suspected us,” said Shoshan. “Of course they didn’t want to let our car in, but they agreed to let us in for a moment to use the bathroom.”
That was enough to activate a timed fuse in an explosive device and escape. Minutes later, a huge explosion rocked the entire area, demolishing the garage and several adjacent buildings, killing at least five people and injuring many others.
In 1948, after British forces withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared independence, agents from the Arab Platoon were dispatched to neighboring Arab countries for the dual purpose of collecting information and preventing perceived threats.
“Although we were sent to gather intelligence, we also consider ourselves soldiers and look for opportunities to act,” said Shoshan.
Sent to Beirut, he and his colleagues bought a kiosk and an Oldsmobile, which they used as a taxi to cover their activities.
On one occasion, the unit was ordered to plant a bomb on a luxury yacht owned by a wealthy Lebanese. (They were told that Adolf Hitler had used it during World War II.) Intelligence suggested that the ship would be converted into a fighter for use against the Jews. The guaranteed explosion did not sink the yacht, but damaged it enough to ensure that it could not be used for military operations.
The team’s most significant operation – a mission to assassinate Lebanese Prime Minister Riad al-Suhl – should have taken place in December 1948. Shoshan and the others devised a plan to kill the Prime Minister while following his moves. But the operation was canceled at the last moment by major Israeli leaders, much to Shoshan’s disappointment, for his report.
In his two years in Beirut, Mr. Shoshan found relatives of those killed in the Haifa bombing. They spoke to him freely, thinking that he was a Palestinian.
“Before that, I never thought of the people who were killed there,” recalled Shoshan in the book “Men of Secrets, Men of Mystery” (1990), which he wrote with Rafi Sutton, a former intelligence colleague. “And there, in Beirut, an old Arab sat in front of me and wept for his two children who were killed in the explosion that I participated in.”
This meeting was one of the events that caused a shift in Shoshan’s thinking, his son Yaakov said later. “Daddy always knew that if we just used force,” he said, “it would only lead to more wars, and he always supported the ‘two states for two peoples’ solution.”
The capture and execution of some members of the Arab Platoon eventually led Israel to abandon the use of Jewish spies assimilated to Arabs. Shoshan went on to recruit and manage Arab agents, a role that required him to turn them into traitors.
“He ended up being blessed with a talent for that job, too,” Sutton, the coauthor, said in an interview. “Agents are a troubled group and you have to know when they are lying to you or telling the truth and how not to allow them to extort you and take control of the relationship between you, without impairing your willingness to work with you. “
Later, Shoshan asked for the resumption of the assimilation program, which led to the formation of Sayeret Matkal, a espionage unit for special military operations. The unit was created to carry out intelligence collection in the heart of enemy countries, in part through combatants trained to use Arab cover. Among its members were a young Benjamin Netanyahu, now prime minister, and his predecessor, Barak, who commanded it.
Mr. Shoshan was given the responsibility to train members who posed as Arabs.
He played a role in building the cover story for Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who penetrated the most important circles of the Syrian regime in the 1960s, but who was eventually unmasked and executed. (Mr. Cohen’s story was recently dramatized in the Netflix series “The Spy,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen.)
Ms. Shoshan retired in 1982, but was mobilized from time to time by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to train agents and sometimes participate in operations herself.
In disguise, he would play the role of an old Arab who could pretend he needed help – enter a building to make an urgent call, for example, or make casual contact with a recruiting target. An older man, his handlers believed, was less likely to arouse suspicion.