The Lavon Affair
This week we will be discussing a spy story in Israel's early years that left a nasty mark on the young state, with reverberations for the following 20 years. It was called the "Lavon Affair," after Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, "Esek HaBish" or "The Mishap". It revolved around nearly a dozen highly dedicated young Egyptian Jews who were asked, and agreed to spy for Israel against the country in which they were born. Why they were caught and more or less abandoned by Israel to incarceration and for a while, torture in Egypt's prisons to be finally released only 14 years later is a question that has never been answered. This story, known as "Operation Susannah," is thus one of idealism and self-sacrifice, as well as abandonment and an unwillingness to take responsibility.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/lavon.html
The bombings were aimed at Egypt and the USA. (Targets included the U.S. Consulate libraries in Cairo and Alexandria.)
Israel considers this the worst intelligence bungle in its history but only because its agents got caught. Ben Gurion used forged documents to pin the failure on Pinhas Lavon -- Israel's “defense” minister -- and to force him to resign – but Lavon was exonerated in 1960. Of course Israel denied any involvement even after its 1979 “peace deal” with Anwar Sadat.
The Israeli commanders code-name the operation “Shoshana” (“Susannah”) after the fiancée of one of them. They agreed to strike when they heard Stephen Foster’s eminently American song “Oh, Susannah” played on Israeli radio.
To help exonerate themselves from guilt, the Jews claim that their
terroristsheroes were recruited in a “rogue operation” by a “fringe unit of military intelligence,” not by Mossad. They say theterroristsheroes only got caught because their Israeli handler, Avri Elad (a German Jew) turned double agent. They tricked Elad into returning to Israel, and secretly put him in jail for ten years.These days Israel openly praises the anti-American terrorists as heroes, and Israeli schoolbooks celebrate their murderous attacks against the Goyim.
I presume Israel also honors the “heroes” who perpetrated the attack on the USS Liberty.