The Children of the Agents

The story of undercover Israelis sent to Arab villages, who married Muslim women and raised families with them, was revealed in the first issue of IsraelDefense. They lived a lie until the secret was revealed. The story is brought in full now, firsthand, for the first time

The Children of the Agents

Paris, 1964. The Arab woman from Israel, who arrived to the French capital just a few days earlier, sat down behind a small wooden table in a small room at the embassy. From across the other side of the desk, sat the tense head of the French branch of the Mossad at the time, Shmuel (Sami) Moriya. His words conveyed stunning news: "Your husband is not who you think he is", he said to the woman in front of him. "He is not an Arab. Your husband is a Jew, who was sent by the Israeli defense establishment to your village. True, you were married and had children, but he is a different person than anything you know about him”, he revealed.

The shocked woman could not even respond before Moria promised her that Israel would work to properly convert her and her children. "We will take care of you until you reach the age of 120”, he promised, but the woman fainted. After she was evacuated for medical treatment outside the room, Moria knew that his mission was not over. He had to repeat similar lines to other Israeli-Arab women, who did not know that their husbands - the fathers of their children - were not Arab men, but Jewish men on a mission; secret agents of the Shabak, who were planted in Arab villages.

The drama, created by the actions of the agents, who posed as Arabs and brought children into the world with Arab women, was at its peak at that time. The incredible affair has left its mark to this day. Even after more than fifty years, the children of undercover agents still deal with the crises stemming from their split identity, and their families are trying to gather the pieces. The Shabak would have liked to erase this affair from its history books if it could, but it is impossible. Now, it must take care of the deceived women and the children who were born, and pay them a stipend.

The Establishment of the Undercover Unit and Agent Recruitment
The case of the undercover Mista'arvim has been previously mentioned in a few media publications (by Yossi Melman, of Ha'aretz). This is the first time it is revealed in full. It’s origins are in 1952, just four years following the War of Independence and the establishment of the state of Israel. Israeli-Arabs were then under military rule, and each village had a governor on behalf of the military. The popular perception in the Israeli defense establishment was that sooner or later, the Arab armies would invade Israel again, and Israeli Arabs will be a "fifth column", joining the enemy in combat.

It was against this background that the establishment of the Shabak's Mista'arvim unit was decided upon in 1952, at the initiative of Issar Harel, who was in charge of both the Mossad and the “Shin-Beit”, as the Shabak was called in those days. In the early 1950s, there was still none of the total separation that exists today between the IDF Intelligence branch (which deals with "military intelligence"), between the Shabak (which deals with foiling threats within Israel’s borders), and the Mossad (which operates beyond the borders of Israel). As of 1953, and throughout the duration of the affair,  Amos Manor was the head of the Shabak.

The task of establishing an undercover unit was assigned to Shmuel Moriya, who served in the Shabak's Arabic department, whose main role was to thwart acts of espionage on the part of Arab states. Today, Sami Moriya is a lawyer who continues to arrive to his office in Ramat-Gan every day, even though he is 87 years old. His accent indicates that he was born in the city of Basra in southern Iraq.

Moriya's life story is full of deeds that could fill thick books, as he was already one of the founders of the Zionist underground in Iraq as a boy. In 1947, he moved to Baghdad and began organizing the “Mossad LeAliyah Bet”, the entity set up by the Haganah underground in Israel to organize illegal immigration under the nose of the British Mandate, which prohibited it.

Daring escapes, use of fake passports and bribes to government officials were among the measures Moriya took to "smuggle" Iraqi Jews to Israel, through the Trans-Jordanian desert. During one of the operations he organized, a group of children arrived to the country, including the 14 year old boy, Israel Meir (pseudonym), born in Baghdad. Moriya was personally involved in every detail of Meir’s journey to Israel. As per his instructions, the boy portrayed himself as deaf and mute, and was assigned to an Arab merchant who led him past the border between Iraq and Trans-Jordan, and from there to the kibbutz of Sdot Ya’akov, in the Jordan Valley, under cover of darkness.

When Moriya finished his assignment and immigrated to Israel himself during the early 1950s, he was offered to join the Arab department of the Shabak, an offer that he accepted. After four months in an intelligence course, Isser Harel asked him to set up an undercover unit. At the start, there was no talk of "undercover" individuals that "dress up" as Arabs for no more than for a few hours, as is accepted today in the special units of the IDF or the border police. Rather, the talk was of a unit that would be based on young people who would be integrated into the Arab population, and would live there for a period of time. There was no actual need for intelligence passed on by the undercover soldiers. The intent was that they would operate during a “Winter Day", when another war would erupt between Israel and Arab countries.

Moriya wasted no time and began recruiting a few dozen youths to the unit, most of them new immigrants coming from Arab countries in the various immigration waves which swept the state of Israel after its establishment. One of the recruits was none other than Israel Meir, who had passed the age of 18 in the meanwhile.

“The first condition for selecting the candidates was their loyalty to Israel," said Moriya. “All the candidates were newcomers, graduates of the underground pioneering youth movements. Their appearance had to be plausible, so that they could assimilate into an Arab community without arousing suspicion. Some of the candidates I chose myself: young people who were willing to sacrifice everything for the country, even to be cut off from their families for a long time."
Some of the recruits withdrew from the unit due to a variety of reasons and over time, only about ten recruits who had left Iraq stayed in it. The precise number has been kept secret until now (the Shabak was not willing to volunteer information for this article on its own initiative).

The training of the agents continued over the course of many months. They trained and lived in an Israeli intelligence training base near Ramla, where the school for British army officers in Israel - and later the headquarters of Hassan Salameh, head of the Arab forces in central Israel during War of Independence - once resided.

The mission to take young Jews who had immigrated from Iraq, and 'turn them into Palestinian Arabs, so they could integrate into the local populace without arousing suspicion, was very complex. The training was rigorous.

“The main problem was the Arabic chatter used by the Iraqi immigrants, which was completely different from the Palestinian chatter,” Moriya said. “A Palestinian does not really recognize the Iraqi speech. We had to change their chatter, and to do that, we brought them the best teachers in the country - Professor Moshe Piamenta who spoke Hebronic Arabic fluently, and Avraham Lavi from Tiberias, who was an Arabic radio announcer.”

Along with additional experts, Moriya began lecturing the recruits on Islam and memorized the Qur'an along with them. Their training also included elements of intelligence theory basics, as well as tracking exercises, avoiding surveillance, operating various wireless devices, using secret writing methods and decoding encrypted transmissions. They also entered the field in the framework of the training. They were sent to work in factories around the country to "”brush up” on the Palestinian jargon and brush against the general Arab populace.

Drama in the Prison
During the same years, the phenomenon of Arab infiltrators was very common. Some of the refugees who ran away from Israel during the War of Independence to neighboring countries infiltrated through the borders and tried to connect with their families that had stayed in the country under the military government. The security forces stopped every infiltrator and brought them to imprisonment.

The Mista'arvim unit decided to take advantage of the hard hand of the security forces to provide the Shabak's Mista'arvim with additional 'experience', and add credibility to their planned cover story. The youths, who had adopted the Palestinian jargon more and more, were sent in tattered clothing to streets of Jewish cities in order to draw attention. The Israeli police was not aware of this, and the number of people who were a party to the secret of the special unit’s establishment even within the Shabak itself was miniscule.

"The boys were dirty and behaved suspiciously, so someone would call the police about suspected infiltrators. The squads arrived immediately and we watched this scene from afar with satisfaction," says Moriya. "The police ran to them with guns drawn. They hit our guys and then threw them into the squad cars like sacks of potatoes. After that, they sent them to prison."

In another case, police carried out an aggressive arrest of Mista'arvim working illegally at a restaurant in Tel Aviv.

While the youths were in prison, another unexpected error occurred. "We watched our boys all the time and saw that they were received well," recalls Moriya. "I visited them often, as if I was the interrogator sent by the Shabak who came to investigate them. It was an accepted procedure, and no one suspected anything. During one of the sessions, they told me that other detainees were moving away from them, beginning to suspect something was amiss."

An examination revealed that one of the guards, who had immigrated from Iraq as well, recognized one of the detainees as a Jew, and revealed it to other detainees in jail who were not among the Shabak personnel. Great concern arose that the cover story that was built with great effort would be exposed, and even worse – that the Arab detainees might conspire against the Shabak personnel and harm them if their true colors might be exposed.

"Before we started this operation, we carried out a security check for all the prison employees, to make sure that none of them knew that our boys were Jewish, but apparently we missed someone," says Moriya. "One of the men changed his last name and age before he became a guard, and we could not find him."

“I instructed our boys to continue behaving normally. I told them: ‘Each of you has a Qur'an in your pocket - sit at the side and read it. Don't even look at them, sit in their corner and keep reading. We’ll see who breaks first'."

The doubts in the hearts of the "real" detainees grew, and they decided to put the suspects, who were considered as infiltrators, to the test. They waited for Friday, the Muslim prayer day, and then asked them to lead the congregation and deliver a sermon, as the mosque’s Imam does. The ultimatum was, “If you can bear the sermon, we will believe you are Muslim, and if not  - you will meet a bad end."

There was great tension in prisoners’ area during the Friday sermon. To great relief, the Mista'arvim demonstrated an impressive knowledge of Islamic religion and succeeded in the task. The Shabak’s religious studies training courses were successful. When the “sermon” was over, they were met with hugs by the other detainees, and when released, they even kept friendly contact with some of them.

Stolen Identity
A year of arduous training had passed. At this point, they had all held on to a new identity in addition to a detailed cover story. For the most part, the identities were of Palestinian refugees from 1948. Then came the moment of truth – the phase of insertion into the villages and cities, and even the Bedouin centers in the Negev.

The Mista'arvim quickly found themselves in a foreign environment. Meir, for example, assimilated into the heart of Jaffa's Arab population, which included a few thousand residents who fled the Arab defeat of 1948, the 'Nakba'. The first steps were hesitant. Some introduced themselves as undercover infiltrators crossing the border and returning to the homeland. Others arrived at their destination as teachers in the education system. The Shabak arranged work for them as Qur'an instructors, which gave them a respectable status in the new, foreign environment.

However, even at this point, the Mista'arvim still faced 'reliability tests'.

"One day, in one of the villages, a relative of the village mukhtar died, and his clan sat at the mass mourning tent. Our guy was there, of course," says Moriya. "Then an elder from Jaffa came to the hut. He saw our guy and asked the mukhtar: 'Who is your guest?" The mukhtar replied, “A person from Jaffa”. The elder was suspicious and began to question him: “Where did your family live? What street? What house?” The guy answered all the questions according to the cover story which he had rehearsed many times, and the old man suddenly said to him: “What you say is true. That family lived on that street, but they escaped to Gaza”. Then he suddenly looked at the guy and said to everyone: “Thank God - I remember this boy, and his father - he would bring him to the café, and I would seat him on my knees”.

"In this case, we were lucky," says Moriya, "but mistakes can always happen. You can't expect everything in advance. One mistake is enough - a single word may be out of place, and everything falls apart."

Another unexpected incident occurred when "one of our guys was almost exposed by an Israeli policeman, of all people," Moriya recalls. "It happened during the visit of a police district commander to one of the villages. The villagers, including one of the Mista'arvim, had lined up to pay tribute to the district commander, when the commander's driver suddenly recognized our man as someone he knew well from his childhood in Iraq."

The district commander's driver went up to the man, who knew who he was but maintained his poker face, and asked the policeman, "Shu? (what?)."

Moriah continues: "The driver excitedly told his commander, 'This guy is a Jew, I know him from Iraq!" The district commander did not believe him, and told him 'you lunatic, it's one thing that an Arab would want to impersonate a Jew, but why would a Jew would want to become a Muslim? No, it cannot be!'. Luckily for us, that was how it ended. The driver nearly collapsed because everyone thought he was hallucinating."

Getting Married
The Mista'arvim assimilated into their new environment even faster than expected. Their families in Israel did not know exactly what it was that they were doing and where they were, and they were forbidden from trying to find out any details about it. The Mista'arvim themselves would find an excuse which would allow them to escape from all their acquaintances in the village on rare occasions. They would come to a meeting place with their commander, Moriya, or make a short, rare visit to the family - without revealing anything about their other world, full of Palestinian Arabs.

Some of the Mista'arvim told Moriya that "the village girls are really chasing after us." One of them, who had just rented a room at the house of the mukhtar of the village to which he was sent, told his handlers that on one of the nights, he woke up from faint but persistent knocking on his door. One of the mukhtar’s daughters whispered to him to open the door, and let her come inside. The terrified man replied, "Are you crazy? We can’t be together!" and refused to open the door. At the same time as these events, a pressure of sorts was set in motion by notable people in the village so that the young men would find a match, as was customary.

In an attempt to ease the pressure, one of them told his neighbors in a village in the Galilee that he was engaged to his cousin before the war, but she escaped with her family to Gaza. The village notables the believed the story and when the IDF held the Gaza Strip for several months in the aftermath of Operation Kadesh between Israel, the UK and France and between Egypt (October - November 1956), the notables approached the Shabak coordinator they knew and asked that for him to arrange a special permit for the young man, allowing him to leave for Gaza in search of his fiancée. The man left, walked around throughout the Gaza Strip for a few days, bought some books to prove he was there, but returned with a story that he did not find her, despite all his efforts, as it turned out that she and her family had moved to Jordan.

The pressure to marry kept increasing. The select few individuals at the Shabak who were party to the secret knew that for the success of the operation, the youths should get married and not be exceptions in their villages as bachelors. It was decided to leave the decision whether or not to marry to the undercover Mista'arvim themselves. Most of them eventually married Arab women, without the women being aware as to their true identity. Happy weddings were held, in accordance with all the rules of Islam.

"Our guys simply had no choice," said Moriya. "It was suspicious that vibrant young guys are walking around alone without partners. Their dilemma was difficult. True, when we sent them to the task, we did not order them to get married, but it was clear to both sides that there is such an expectation, and that it will make the job better."

 One of the Mista'arvim who married an Arab woman and built a family with her was Meir Israel, who passed away many years ago.

His story was told to us by his brother Shimon (also a pseudonym), who lives in a modest apartment in a city in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. For many years, Shimon, as well as families of other members of the Mista'arvim unit, would meet a representative from the service, who would arrive at his parents’ house each month to deliver Meir's salary in person, without revealing information concerning his whereabouts and his role.

“At first, we did not know anything about Meir's occupation except that he was a 'classified' person,” recalls Shimon. "We knew he had a secret mission, and that he worked for the Shabak, and nothing more. When everything was suddenly revealed, Meir came to me and told me everything - about his cover story, the double life. We were shocked, but we had to get used to the new reality very quickly."

“In retrospect, we learned that Meir came to the city of Jaffa as a teacher. He rented a small apartment there and worked at a nearby school. That’s where he met Leila - an Arab-Christian who studied at a school in Jaffa. Meir introduced himself to her as an Arab-Muslim; they met and fell in love. It was a great love. Leila was a very beautiful woman, with black hair and amazing black eyes. We met her after that story was exposed. The affair rapidly evolved and Meir and Leila moved in together in his apartment in Jaffa. They also traveled a lot overseas, mainly to neighboring Arab states, as well as to European countries.

“Meir told Leila that he has businesses and that’s how he explained the frequent trips. Leila went everywhere with him, and they married in a church in Argentina. They spent most of the time in Syria and in Jordan. I do not know what he just did there - apparently he would get in contact with people and receive information from them. He was close to senior leadership officials in Lebanon and in Jordan. Shortly after Meir and Leila got married, their son Benny (a pseudonym) was born in Beirut. I know they lived as happily as could be possible in such a situation. Meir loved his family very much."

The Unit is Disbanded
"Meir" conducted several missions for the Israeli intelligence services while wandering between Jaffa and Arab capitals, on trips that were possible only via intermediate objectives. His undercover colleagues continued to manage their double lives as Shabak agents and devout Muslims, exemplary family men. As time passed, their commanders and the Shabak leadership faced increasing pressure to extract them from a terrible lie and return them to the bosom of their Jewish families.

In the early 1960's, severe disagreements emerged among the higher echelons of the Shabak concerning the question of continuing the unit’s operation, or rather, concerning the proper way to terminate the sad affair. It was decided that the unit would be dismantled, but Moriya faced a dilemma: whether to leave the women and children in Arab villages and only return the men to the bosom of the original families, or to ask the women to convert and continue raising their children as Jews. The Mista'arvim themselves objected to leaving their families, and therefore the decision was made to reveal the secret and re-settle the families in the Jewish environment in Israel.

“We knew nothing in real-time about the decision to dismantle the unit," Shimon Israel recalls. "It was only years later that I realized the difficulty of my brother's dilemma. First of all, he had to tell the truth to his wife himself, because they were staying in an Arab capital. Leila understood that she had been deceived, and underwent psychiatric treatment for several months. Only after she had recovered, Meir placed Leila before the most difficult dilemma that can be; He told her she must choose either to accept him as he is - a Jewish agent of the Shabak - and raise their son as a Jew, or leave to any Arab country that she chooses and to settle there, with the Shabak covering all the necessary expenses."

The Conversion of the Families
After the recovery period, Meir, Leila and their child “Benny” came to France and joined the rest of the families of the Mista'arvim, most of which had arrived directly from Israel. The year was already 1964, as the Shabak debate on how to bring the tragedy to end was a long one.

The wives of most of the units’ people still did not know what hid behind the urgent trip to Paris. It was now up to the Shabak personnel to reveal to the Muslim women the true identities of their life partners.

“It was a tragedy of families”, recalls Moriya, who filled the role of the Mossad's representative in France in those days. "I would not have wanted to be in the place of those women, but we had to do it. I remember telling one of the women, ‘Madam, your husband is not a Muslim. He is a Jew. He loves you, but will not give up on his family. Come to Israel, live as a Jew, raise your children as Jews and we will care for you until the age of 120’. The woman didn't answer - she just fainted."

Three rabbis were brought to the Israeli embassy in Paris, including Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, in order to properly convert to women. The rabbis debated over whether the children should be considered as Jews or Muslims. They eventually ruled that even though the religion of a newborn is determined by the mother religion according to Jewish law, in light of the special circumstances of the case, then they should be seen as Jews, without the need for a formal conversion process.

After the women were converted, Jewish wedding ceremonies were conducted under heavy distress. To save the proselytized women from being murdered for disgracing their families, it was decided to leave them in Paris for a while, where they were attached to Jewish families and their children were sent to Jewish schools. Leila was not among the Muslim women who agreed to convert after learning of their husband's secret.

The Return to Israel
Most of the families stayed in France until 1967. Meir, Leila and Benny returned to Israel shortly after Benny was circumcised. For several years, they lived in the city of Bat-Yam. Benny enrolled in Hebrew school and grew up as a Jewish child from every respect. Meir returned to having constant contact with his Jewish family, introduced them to Leila and Benny, and his family welcomed them with open arms.

"During the years they lived in Israel, Leila and Benny became very connected to our family," recalls Gabriella (pseudonym), Meir Israel’s sister. "Leila even had thoughts about converting, but did not proceed beyond the thoughts.”

Meir Israel’s fake family idyll did not last long. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Leila decided she could no longer live in Israel, raise her son as an Israeli and be married to someone from the Shabak.

"I think that Leila’s national feelings flooded her after the Six-Day War," recalls Shimon Israel. "After all, she was an Arab nationalist and simply felt that it was too much for her. She told Meir that she would not stay in Israel, and she wanted to take Benny and leave to France for good. Meir was not ready to give up on Benny, and Benny did not want to leave. His father tried to calm him and told him everything was temporary, but Benny did not believe it. He felt that it was final, and that he would never return to Israel. At this point, he was a Jewish child for all intents and purposes.”

I remember how he told me one day, “Uncle Shimon, when I get to France, I will sneak into a ship heading to Israel and return home”. After several arguments and quarrels, Meir and Leila came to an agreement: Leila and Benny would live in France and Meir would visit them from time to time. Apparently, the Israeli Ministry of Defense pressured him as well, as they did not want any problems. In 1967, Leila and Benny left for France and we’ve never seen them since.”

"I know that the Ministry of Defense cared for Leila’s rehabilitation, of course, provided that she will not reveal certain things. A person from the Shabak came to her home in France each month, and gave her money." In retrospect, the family learned that the woman, who was entitled to a fixed annuity from the Shabak, eventually married a senior PLO official in Paris.

Fragments and Shrapnel
Compared to the disintegration of the Israel family, most of the Mista'arvim families began the slow rehabilitation of their lives when they returned from France to Israel, after the Six-Day War. "We could solve the financial problems of the families, but it was difficult to deal with the personal rehabilitation process," Moriya recalls painfully. “The personal cost, the personal sacrifice that they were forced to pay, was very difficult. After returning to Israel, problems began to emerge. We tried to rehabilitate the people, but we didn’t really succeed. The men of the Mista'arvim unit and their families came with demands to the state every time, and rightly so. They lived with the feeling that the state had neglected them after having done their work.

“The children experienced a very strong childhood trauma", Moriya continues. ‘They were about 5-6 year old when the truth was revealed, and they were forced to relinquish their Arab identity. They also had to sever ties with their mothers’ Muslim families. Imagine to yourself: one day, you are named Ahmed, the next day, Ronny. It was a tragedy. These children tried to recover, to forget their past, where they came from, but they couldn’t. There are some from among those children who are exceptions, who managed to succeed in life, but most of them were left behind. They suffer from problems to this day”.

“It Was All Unnecessary”
“Benny” and his mother still live today in France, far from the Jewish family of “Meir” and without any contact with it. The story is just a parable for the ordeals experienced by other children of the Mista'arvim and their families.

“The men were tied to their Muslim families. From their point of view, the exposure of the secret was not a technical matter, but a heart-rending measure”, say members of the Shabak.

Most of the children were never recruited to the IDF. One of them asked his family prior to his recruitment, "at who do I point my gun – my Arab family or my Jewish family?" He remained without an answer.

Some of the children underwent quite a few difficulties in their personal lives, and even became entangled in criminal activities. Their families turned to the Shabak's Department of Retirees, which takes care of them, to help with getting them out of prison and rehabilitating them.

The Muslim women who agreed to convert in order to continue living with their husbands, usually managed to reestablish relationships with their 'original' Muslim families.

Beyond the human aspect of the case of the Mista'arvim unit, former Shabak officials are burdened by the fact that the establishment of the unit turned out to be unnecessary, in retrospect.

“It was actually made clear quite soon that we didn’t really need them," Moriya admits. "We had a military government. The Arab populace was closed and was easy to manage, and there were also many collaborators. They were defeated and were willing to rat out each other for a work permit or approval to leave to the Territories. We could have obtained all the information we wanted without sacrificing anyone, without changing fates and paying such a heavy price."

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