Transcription
[Music] Foreign. Israel's National Intelligence Agency was established on December 13, 1949, by order of the first Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, as an organization responsible for combating terrorism, collecting intelligence, and carrying out operations abroad. Some consider Mossad a deep state organization with more power than the Israeli government, and it is one of the most active intelligence agencies in the world.
Through its specialized unit called Kudun, Mossad has been responsible for carrying out assassinations of approximately 3,000 people since World War II, surpassing the total number of such operations carried out by all intelligence agencies in Europe combined. Let's take a look at some of the world-famous operations carried out by Mossad.
Mossad's first mission was to hold accountable the Nazis who had committed atrocities against Jews in concentration camps during World War II. They hunted down Nazi officers who had fled to other countries after causing the deaths of millions of Jews. At the top of their list were Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele. Eichmann was a high-ranking SS officer and one of the masterminds behind the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.
After the war, as the Nuremberg trials began to prosecute war criminals, Eichmann changed his identity and fled to another country. Lothar Hermann, a German Jew who had survived the concentration camps and emigrated to Argentina, recognized Eichmann and informed Mossad in 1957. Mossad immediately dispatched an eight-person team of agents to Argentina. Israeli authorities knew that if they shared this information with the Argentine or German government, Eichmann would not be handed over to them. Consequently, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion decided that Eichmann should be captured and brought to Israel to stand trial.
Mossad agents sprang into action and successfully captured Eichmann on May 11, 1960, outside his home in San Fernando, 20 kilometers north of Buenos Aires, while he was out buying bread. Eichmann was brought to one of Mossad's safe houses and held there for nine days. During this time, Mossad agents pursued the infamous Nazi Doctor Joseph Mengele, who had tortured millions of people at Auschwitz. However, the agents abandoned their plan to capture Mengele, both because he could not be found at his last known residence and to avoid jeopardizing the Eichmann operation.
On the night of May 20, Eichmann was sedated with a needle and smuggled out of Argentina on a special plane waiting at Buenos Aires Airport. The plane stopped in Dakar, Senegal, to refuel before flying to Israel, where it arrived on May 22nd. The next day, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion announced to the world that Eichmann had been captured and smuggled out of Argentina. Eichmann went on trial in April 1961 and was charged with hundreds of documents and the testimony of 112 witnesses, most of whom were Holocaust survivors. After a 56-day trial, he was sentenced to death and hung on the night of June 1st, 1962. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Mediterranean Sea by an Israeli ship. Because the Eichmann operation was criticized by the United Nations and Argentina as a violation of the sovereignty of an independent country, Mossad's planned operation to capture Mengele was never carried out.
Another notable Mossad operation was Operation Diamond, in which a MiG-21 fighter jet belonging to the Iraqi Air Force was stolen in 1966. Since its inception, Israel had been at war with its neighboring Arab countries, and Mossad was tasked with stealing a MiG-21 fighter jet used by the Arab countries' Air Force to study its features. The MiG-21 was among the most advanced Soviet-made aircraft of its time and had impressed both America and Israel in terms of technology.
In 1963, two Mossad agents began their work by contacting Egyptian Air Force pilots, but after the pilot complained he was cold and executed. Continuing their efforts, Mossad agents found the person they were looking for in the Iraqi Air Force pilot Munir Radfawi, who was excluded from the Iraqi Air Force due to his Christian faith and was even flown with a quarter tank of fuel to prevent him from hijacking a plane. He had called the attention of Mossad agents. In exchange for moving his family, he lived in Baghdad to Israel, granting them Israeli citizenship and paying him a million dollars. Radfawi agreed to steal the MiG-21 fighter jet and land it in Israel. Before the day of the operation, Radfawi secretly went to Israel and met with Israeli Air Force Commander Major General Mordechai Hod to discuss the plan. Numerous Mossad agents were sent to Iraq to help Radfawi's wife, two children, and other family members leave the country.
On August 16, 1966, Ram Radfawi was on his mission. His plane disappeared from the radar while flying over Jordan. Despite Jordan's lack of contact in Syria and Iraq, Radfawi's plane landed at Hazor Airport after an hour-long flight. In a press conference, Radfawi later announced that he had landed the plane with only a drop of fuel left.
[Music] While Operation Diamond was a source of shame for Iraq, it became a source of pride for Mossad in history. When the year 1964 arrived, the Mossad agent's path led him to Latvia. Their new target was Herberts Cukurs, a Nazi officer who had helped in the Holocaust massacres and was known as the "Butcher of Latvia" during World War II. In mid-1941, when Latvia was occupied by Germany, Cukurs, who worked in the newly established Latvian police unit, was responsible for the torture and death of tens of thousands of Jews. Although he fled to Brazil to avoid being tried at the Nuremberg trials after the war, most of the agents found him in Brazil. He had set up a tourist airline company in Sao Paulo without feeling the need to hide his identity. He learned that Mossad agents were after him in February 1964. He belonged to making plans to escape to Uruguay from a safe house. However, the person who had this plan for his escape was actually a Mossad agent who was a Nazi hunter. On the morning of February 23rd, as he was leaving the house to escape to Uruguay, Cukurs was assassinated by three Mossad agents.
Now let's move on to 1972. During the Munich Summer Olympics in 1972, on the morning of September 5th, a group of Palestinian terrorists entered the room where 11 Israeli athletes were staying and took them all hostage. The terrorists killed two athletes initially and managed to take the remaining nine hostages to the airport. In the failed rescue attempt organized by German police, the terrorists blew up the helicopter carrying the hostages, killing all nine Israelis. After this event, known as the Munich Massacre, the Israeli government ordered Mossad to kill everyone involved in the attack.
In the operation named Wrath of God, Mossad carried out its first assassination on October 16, 1972, by killing Abdel Wael Zwaiter, the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Italy in Rome. Their second target was Muhammad Hamshari, the representative of Palestine in France. On December 8, 1972, Mossad agents disguised as journalists detonated a bomb via phone signal in Hamshari's home, killing him. In their second assassination on the night of January 24, 1973, Luttif al-Khaff, the PLO representative in France, was killed in his bed by a bomb. On April 6, 1973, Bassel al-Khatib, a law professor accused of supplying weapons for the Munich attack, was shot and killed in Paris. On the night of April 9, 1973, Mossad agents arrived on the Lebanese coast on zodiac boats and infiltrated a heavily guarded apartment in Beirut, where they killed Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser, who had planned the Munich Massacre.
Two days later, Zaid Muchasi, who had taken over from Hussein al-Bashir in Cyprus, was killed when a bomb exploded in his hotel room in Athens. On June 28, 1973, Algerian-born Muhammad Boudia, one of the planners of the Munich Massacre, was killed in Paris when a bomb placed under the seat of his car exploded. On December 15, 1979, Ali Salim Ahmed and Ibrahim Abdulaziz, both Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders, were shot at close range and killed in Cyprus, while two more top leaders of the organization, Nazir Mayar and Kamal Hussein, were also shot and killed in Italy. On June 1st, 1981, Naim Khader, the PLO representative in Belgium, was killed in Brussels. On March 1, 1982, Nabil Aranki, the PLO representative in Madrid, was killed. On July 23, 1982, Fadel Dweik, the PLO representative in Paris, was killed when bombs placed in his car exploded. On October 10, 1986, Khalid Ahmed Nazo, the organization's secretary general, was shot in Athens, while Mossad Abu Ghazala was killed when a bomb placed in his car exploded. On February 14, 1988, a car bomb exploded in Limassol, Cyprus, killing two top leaders of the organization. In addition to these assassinations, Mossad sent hundreds of letter bombs to Palestinian representatives in many European cities. Some were killed, and others were seriously injured as a result.
In 1988, due to the reactions of European countries and the killing of many Palestinians who had participated in the Munich Massacre, Mossad decided to end the Wrath of God operation. During this operation, on June 27, 1976, an Air France plane carrying 246 passengers, mostly Jews and Israelis, and a crew of 12 took off from Tel Aviv and landed in Athens to pick up an additional 58 passengers before heading to Paris. Four Palestinian Liberation Organization hijackers seized the plane during takeoff and diverted it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Mossad prepared a report on the whereabouts of the hostages, the number of hijackers, and the involvement of Ugandan soldiers. They also created a model of the terminal at Entebbe Airport since it was built by an Israeli construction company. A rescue team of 100 Mossad agents was sent to Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 3, 1976. However, neighboring countries did not allow its aircraft to enter their airspace, so the team had to negotiate with Kenya to gain entry. The team was successful in rescuing 102 hostages, but four hostages, 45 Ugandan soldiers, and four hijackers were killed in the process.
[Music] The plane carrying the hostages flew back to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. The operation, which astounded the world, went down in history as Mossad's most successful operation.
[Music] Mossad not only carried out assassinations against those who posed a threat to Israeli security but also targeted scientists who contributed to the development of Arab countries with which Israel was at war. Examples include Yasser al-Mashad, who developed Egypt's nuclear program and assisted in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Iraq, and Gerald Bull, a Canadian scientist who helped Saddam Hussein's Iraq develop space weapons. Bull was assassinated by Mossad agents in Belgium, while al-Mashad was killed in Paris, and many Iranian scientists working on uranium enrichment projects were killed in Iran by Mossad agents.
In 1984, the lives of 12,000 Ethiopian Jews were in danger due to the civil war in Ethiopia. Mossad secretly went to Sudan to scout out a way to evacuate them. Mossad agents saw refugees fleeing the civil war and made a plan to smuggle 12,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. During this operation, which began on November 21, 1984, thousands of the 12,000 Jews who left Ethiopia died on the way, but 8,000 Jews managed to reach refugee camps in Sudan. The second phase of the plan involved dividing the Jews into groups of 200 and secretly airlifting them out of Sudan. The operation ended on January 5, 1985, with 8,000 Ethiopian Jews successfully smuggled into Israel. In 1991, another operation was carried out in which 14,000 Jews were safely transported to Israel.
The head of the Palestinian intelligence service was assassinated by Mossad on June 8, 1992, and Fathi Shikaki, the leader of the Islamic Jihad organization, was killed in a Mossad assassination on October 26, 1991. These are the Mossad operations that have come to light and been proven. It is estimated that there are still thousands of operations and assassinations that have been proven, come to light, or have been kept secret to this day. If you want the intelligence videos to continue, don't forget to like and comment to show your support. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.