The Secret Israeli Officer Spy

By Ehud Neor

Who was he working for?

Inexplicably, while the entire Israeli army, including the highly regarded Israeli Air Force, was frozen in inactivity for ten critical hours while the citizens they existed to protect were being slaughtered in the most brutal way, a certain Israeli individual, a reserve officer not called-up, donned his uniform and insinuated himself into the most sensitive command posts of the Southern Command, and weaselled his way into top-secret mission-critical staff meetings where plans were being made with verified intelligence for commando raids to rescue hostages. This individual, who cannot be named by court order, took extensive notes and recorded meetings and photographed top secret documents with his smartphone, and then proceeded to share this information with unauthorized recipients. Only a sharp-eyed female officer who refused to be brow-beaten by the imposter and insisted on verifying his credentials, brought to his immediate arrest.

It turns out that he is a well-known personality in Israel, “connected,” as they say, as are the individuals who received the top secret information from him. So he was quickly shuffled off to a psychiatric prison to allow for an attempt to bury the issue and avoid the widespread embarrassment that was inevitable, if not to avoid felony charges against him and the recipients.

What was the damage done by this piece of excrement? What we have been allowed to know, probably because it is so easily deductible, was that all of the raids and activities planned that he got wind of had to be cancelled. That’s what we know, and even that is enough. Hostages could have been rescued.

The court-order against releasing details of the fiasco has become a joke of late. Who believes that any information revealed could harm the war effort? It is obviously an attempt at a high-level coverup, and it might work, because more than Israeli citizens want to know the truth, there is an overwhelming sense that whatever that truth is, it will be so dismal and depressing that it might be best to leave things be until we finish the war with Lebanon and Iran. How’s that for a conundrum?

Who was he working for? How was it that when the entire defence apparatus was discombobulated, he made a beeline to the most sensitive locations, not to assist in the belated attempts to roll back the terrorist tide, but to gather intelligence and quickly distribute it to unauthorized recipients? He knew where to go, and he knew what he was looking for. It seems that his efforts were an attempt to cover up something else. Like I said, dismal and depressing.

Who is he and who was he working for?

I have to admit at the start, that I am not an intrepid reporter. This story has been background noise for Israelis since soon after October 7. It is just that of late, whenever the story is mentioned on the news, everyone in the studio, and in on-line forums, hints that even though there is a court order not to reveal the name of the spy, everyone in Israel knows who it is, and if you do not, then a quick internet search will reveal the name. They have been saying this for months now, and I, the diligent student, would search the internet and…not find anything conclusive. In truth, as minor details about the case continued to trickle out, I lost all interest in the identity of the traitor, though I would still do a quick internet search every time the story popped up. What concerned most Israelis was:

• Who sent him? Who was he working for?
• How did he have the precise knowledge of what to look for and where to find it?
• What explains the efficient and almost immediate transfer of this top-secret intelligence to a rarefied list of unauthorized senior military reserve officers (including two retired Generals, it is said)?

There are two main characters behind the efforts to put some sunlight on this scandal. The first is member of Knesset Almog Cohen, a bulldog of a man—an ox of a man—who is determined to break through the legal stonewall hiding the details of this affair. The other is a retired high-ranking police officer named Avi Weiss. He has been appearing on right-wing TV channels. Both have been saying for almost a year now that when we, the Israeli public, finally hear the details of the affair, we will be stunned.

Last night Avi Weiss announced that he has succeeded in proving the identity of the spy without violating the court order, and explained how he did it so that anyone could do it. By cross-referencing two voluntarily-signed lists of protest groups against the court reforms that were being put forward by the government until the war broke out, Weiss was able to point out a single name that appeared on both lists, and (convincingly, I believe) label this individual as the spy. Within minutes the lists were supplied to the forum (Rotter Scoops), and the name became revealed without being named, and as such, without violating the court order.

It turns out, if Weiss is correct, that the spy was a highly regarded figure in the Israeli high-tech world, as well as being an active-reserve fighter pilot.

Therein lies the rub, for of all the founding myths out of which the heart of Israeli culture beats, none is more sacred than the myth of the heroic Israeli Air Force. The normative Israeli now stands with his actual heart broken in the face of two Earth-shattering facts: The mighty Israeli Air Force failed to appear in the battle for over 10 hours, and that one of the air force’s best and brightest spent the day gathering and dispersing mission-critical intelligence that ensured that no abductees could be rescued while the recuing was good during the initial phase of the battle.

Who sent the spy?

It seems clear that the interest of whoever sent him was to prevent any immediate actions by Israeli commando teams. This party could have two reasons for desiring this outcome.

1. The party wanted to make sure that Hamas would succeed in holding on to the hostages.
2. The party had human assets embedded with Hamas and did not want them to be compromised or endangered.

That second point is less nefarious, but no-less damaging to the cause of rescuing the hostages.

How did the spy know what to look for and where to find it?

This is simple. Only a state actor could have this type of top-secret intelligence, and only a state actor would have a ready-to-go contingency plan to foil the Israeli military at the precise moment they were preparing to engage the enemy.

What explains the efficient and almost immediate transfer of this top-secret intelligence?

This too is simple. It’s a full-blown conspiracy. Many are involved. An earthquake is coming.

Now that the identity of the traitor-spy is known, other details will begin to come to light. In that event, the court-order will probably be cancelled. Stay tuned.

First published in A Pisgah Site