All language subtitles for Israelis recruited to spy for enemy countries - Al Jazeera World Documentary

I can say generally that every spy is
making you a damage because the fact

that the spy is in the surroundings of
officers, people

who are close to state secrets, it's
harming.

Shin Bet was penetrated. There was
researching, biological research

was penetrated.

I know that there have been some cases
in which were not

published, and therefore I cannot talk
about it.

It's a question of censorship and gag
orders, and as a law -abiding Israeli

citizen, I don't break the law.

I can tell you for sure that not 100 %
of the spies were revealed

or found by the Israeli agency.

Israel has never made any secrets of
using espionage against its enemies and

friends for many decades, not least in
Lebanon, Iran, and in Gaza.

It often boasts that its intelligence
agencies like Mossad and Shin Bet are

most effective in the world.

It uses agents, high -tech surveillance,
and sophisticated planned operations,

like the Pager attacks on Hezbollah, in
Lebanon in September 2024.

Espionage is a global game played by the
world's most influential powers in war

and peacetime.

One of the strengths of the ISA is the
connections, the cooperation that we

with the American and the British
intelligence.

This is very important.

There is a way of cooperation, you know.
We share with them, they share with us.

The counter -intelligence, the counter
-espionage system is working very

successfully because of, you know, the
long experience that we are doing it for

so many years. There are so many cases.

But sometimes Israel's high -tech
intelligence operations have faltered.

Despite their reputation, mistakes are
made and failures occur.

like the 1973 Arab -Israeli war and the
7th of October, 2023.

This film examines some of these
failures and counter -espionage by

enemies, using spies to inform on their
own country.

Now, I'm hearing very much lately all
the stories that we

have a case of treason.

That's not true.

What happened on the 7th of October was
a colossal failure of

intelligence, of operational and of
technical force.

In this case of 7th of October, we
didn't have intelligence, any concrete

intelligence about what they are going
to do tomorrow.

And even on the night, early morning.

of 7th of October, when there were some
signals that

something maybe is developing inside
Gaza,

among the Hamas, the decision was to see
it as an exercise.

And they were preparing for it for at
least two years. And we didn't know

it. We had him have a clue.

So in the case of October 7th, the
intelligence failure is much worse than

73.

The security breach that allowed the
Hamas -led attack on southern Israel to

take place in October 2023 caused some
analysts to think about other

intelligence failures.

Had Israel previously been compromised
by foreign intelligence agencies that

covered it up?

We hear from a former director of the
internal security agency Shin Bet and a

journalist specializing in intelligence
and strategic affairs.

Society, many of them were recruited
through the immigration waves.

Always immigration and waves and
refugees and movement of people are a

good hunting ground to recruit spies.

Most potential spies are lured into this
murky world for two main reasons,

ideology and money.

In the former Soviet Union and the old
Eastern Bloc countries, intelligence

agencies, particularly the KGB, found
Jewish immigration to Israel in the

fertile ground for recruitment.

They exploited the immigrants'
experience of communism and their need

to recruit hundreds of spies and deploy
them in key Israeli institutions.

success stories of recruiting Israeli
agents.

And the first one, which I would like to
mention, is Professor Kurt Sitte,

who was a professor in the Israeli
Technology Institute in Haifa.

He actually was running by the Czech
intelligence, but the Soviets were very

much involved in it, because Kurt Sitte,
who was a senior scientist, had an

access. kind of engagement with the
Israeli nuclear program that started to

developed at that time.

Professor Kurt Theta was one of the
world's leading experts in cosmic rays,

Czech intelligence managed to recruit
him.

When he arrived in Israel in 1954, Theta
got a job at the Israel Institute of

Technology, Technion.

which enabled him to pass on crucial
military information.

The Israeli authorities closely
monitored Sita's meetings with his

the Czech embassy and arrested him in
1960.

Sita confessed to espionage and was
sentenced to five years in prison.

The trick in the matter is two things.

Number one, the Israeli scientists
intervened and presented several

the President of the Republic and the
Prime Minister to release him, as they

considered him a scientist. But the
other important part is that Mossad and

Bet later discovered that the CIA knew
that he was a spy for the

Cheeky investigation and did not report
it.

Israel never revealed how much damage
Sita caused, but soon after, another

came to light.

Senior Army Lieutenant Colonel Israel
Baer worked with Israeli Prime Minister

and Defense Minister David Ben -Gurion.

He was arrested in early 1961.

Baer had been seen delivering a
briefcase full of files to his handler

Soviet Embassy.

The Israeli investigation said he
provided the embassy with defense

intelligence.

Israel there is a very interesting case
because he immigrated

to Israel in the early 40s, and he wrote
a few books about

military strategy here in Israel, and
somehow he became an advisor.

to the Prime Minister and the Ministry
of Defense of Israel at that time, David

Ben -Gurion. He was talking to every
military gathering

in Israel, and he was speaking with a
lot of confidence, and everybody saw

he is prestigious, and people in the
military would share with him,

would ask for his advice.

Baer confessed that he spied for
ideological reasons.

He strongly believed that the Soviet
Union would become the world's most

influential superpower and that Israel
should be its ally.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison,
but the damage he caused remained

classified.

Israel Baer was one of the most powerful
And I would say missing

most of the harmful spies that Israel
had.

Damage is considered to be something
that Israel is not ready

to say it openly.

That Israel is leaving it in a secret.
If Israel Bear was a part

of a secret consensus at the Prime
Minister's office,

And there they were talking about
tactics. This kind of information is a

big benefit to the other side.

Around the same time as the Baer case,
another spy was recruited purely for

money.

In the summer of 1948, Polish immigrant
Lucjan Lewy arrived in the newly

established state of Israel. He quickly
got a job at Shin Bet.

His Polish handlers showered him with
large sums of money, enabling him to

a lavish lifestyle in Tel Aviv.

He was always photographing his Shin Bet
colleagues and knew about most of their

operations.

He learned and knew all the information
about him

Levi passed on intelligence to his
Polish handlers, who in turn shared it

Moscow.

He continued spying for nine years until
1957.

But another immigrant who'd worked with
Polish intelligence arrived in Israel

and implicated Levi under interrogation.

His trial lasted for three years, but
his story remained confidential.

So he also caused a lot of damage
because he knew about all the plans, the

operations of the Shin Bet, the Israeli
security services.

against the Russian and the Bulgarian
and the Romanian and the Polish and the

Czech embassies in Tel Aviv. He warned
them in advance, tomorrow or in two

time there is an operation against you.
So it gave them an opportunity to fool

the Israelis.

The truth is that this caused a great
damage to the Schoenbeet, and it was

forced, and this is the most important
thing, to change all the methods of its

work and all the movements that the
Dutch spy did not know the real plans.

This cost a lot.

This continued to affect the work of the
Schoenbeet, and continued to affect

that they are always skeptical that they
have a spy from the inside.

But counter -espionage against Israel
wasn't limited to the Soviets and the

Poles.

In 1954, Israel recruited a network of
Jewish agents to plant explosives in

American and British facilities in
Egypt.

Operation Susanna, also known as the
Laon Affair, aimed to sabotage Western

relationships with the Egyptian
authorities.

Egyptian intelligence discovered the
network and prosecuted all except its

leader, Avri Elad.

Israel accused Elad of treason after
suspecting he'd been recruited by the

Egyptians as a double agent.

The case shook Israel and ultimately
forced Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas

Lavon to resign.

The case of Avri Elad, or as we called
in Israel the third man, that's a

serious case.

He was a traitor.

who betrayed an entire network of

Egyptian Jews who worked for the Israeli
intelligence. Two of them were

hanged, others were sentenced to many,
many years in jail.

Egypt also looked for opportunities to
recruit Israeli spies.

In 1963, an Israeli, Sami Baruch, walked
into the Egyptian embassy in

Switzerland. He'd lost a lot of money in
a failed textile business in Israel,

and he offered his services to Egyptian
intelligence.

They gave Baruch a passport and sent him
to Cairo for training, and then on to

spy in Israel.

They gave him money to hire Eastern
European workers for his factory, and

became his spy network.

But Baruch was spotted in Switzerland
getting off an Egyptian airline's plane,

and the Israelis became suspicious.

He sent some reports to Egypt, but he
was arrested and sentenced to 18 years

prison.

or debts from his fame or from other
shops, he was not able to achieve that,

he had a kind of financial support.

And maybe he was angry that no one
helped him, so he went to the Egyptian

intelligence.

And the Egyptian intelligence, in any
case, I think it did its duty.

It trained him well and told him what to
do.

But it seems that he is not an
intelligence man. He is a businessman,

And even if you trained him, it is not
necessary for him to complete his new

job. So he was discovered.

As part of the Israeli -Palestinian
conflict, there were counter -espionage

attempts by Palestinian groups.

Some based in Syria tried to build
connections with the Israeli socialist

movement as a ploy to infiltrate the
political heart of Israel.

They made contact with members of an
Arab -Jewish network in Israel called

Red Front.

This was a left -wing Marxist anti
-Zionist organization.

that included Jews and Palestinians,
best known were the Israeli Ehud Adib

the Palestinian Dawud Turki.

In 1972, Adib went to Syria and met
Palestinian armed groups.

But Shin Bet had the Red Front under
close surveillance. They planted

devices in their meeting places and
arrested all of them.

It was one of the first cases of
betrayal.

of young people who were considered to
be the best of the best of this society.

Udi was not the only one. Udi and Dani
went to Syria and talked to the

PLO representative there.

They were thinking of having some common
struggle, like in South Africa.

... ... ...

...

... ... ... ... ... ...

So first they were charged with having
contact with the enemy. Then came also

the charge of spying against Udi Adib.
The spionage

that was related to him was based on the
fact that while he met the activists in

Syria, he wanted to show that he's
really loyal to the idea,

and he spoke about his...

experience as a paratrooper. And
therefore he's

being mentioned nowadays as the spy, the
Israeli spy.

Therefore, the punishment was so hard in
order to deter other people from

joining this idea.

Ehud Adib saw himself as a
revolutionary, fighting to achieve

But he was tried for espionage in an
Israeli court and sentenced to 17 years

prison.

Another activist, Sylvia Klingberg,
married him in prison in 1975, hoping to

Israeli public opinion to bring about
his release.

Sylvia's father was Marcus Klingberg, a
founder of the Israeli Institute for

Biological Research.

However,

Marcus Klingberg was arrested in 1983.

Shin Bet had long been suspicious about
him, and they had a trap saying they

wanted him to travel to Asia.

But when he left the house on the day of
his trip, he was taken for

interrogation.

Under Shin Bet questioning, Klingberg
confessed to spying for the Soviet Union

decades earlier.

His case remained secret until 1985,
when a British journalist went to Tel

planning to interview Klingberg for an
investigative report on chemical

So I arrived in Israel, and I checked in
with the Israeli Defense

Forces because he worked in this
Chemical and Biological Weapons

And they said, Marcus Klingberg? You
want to see Marcus Klingberg?

No, he disappeared.

At the time, I was 3 years old. He was
told that he had a trip to Singapore.

A car was waiting for him at Tel Aviv.
Instead of taking him to the airport,

the car took him to an interrogation
room.

After one or two days, quite quickly, he
finally confessed

that he had spied on the benefit of the
Soviet Union.

He confessed...

at the moment when those who proceed to
the interrogation tell him that they

know the address of his daughter and his
little son.

Everything is closed to him.

And so my grandfather receives the
maximum punishment at the time.

Marcus Klingberg's daughter Sylvia, when
she had seen this piece that I had

written in the Observer, was determined
to try and get her father out of jail.

Israel's intelligence services have the
reputation of being among the most

sophisticated in the world.

But espionage is a double -edged sword,
and Israel itself has sometimes fallen

victim to covert enemy activity.

Yet it always seems to manage to play
these failures down or keep them out of

the public domain.

In this film, we're looking at cases in
which the Soviet Union, Iran, and other

intelligence services recruited Israelis
to spy on their own country.

One of these was the Israeli
epidemiologist, Marcus Klingberg.

He was arrested by Shin Bet in 1983,
interrogated, and confessed to having

for the Soviet Union.

Israel imposed a gagging order on the
Klingberg family.

But Klingberg's daughter, Sylvia, was
determined to get her father released.

She and her French lawyer reached a
secret agreement with the Soviet Union

spy swap deal with Israel.

It was arranged by East German lawyer
Wolfgang Vogel on the Soviet side and

Amnon Zekroni for Israel.

We have a meeting in my office, it was
not this one, I was at Rue de Rivoli at

the time, with Sylvia, with Vogel, who
only spoke German, with Zichroni.

And there, Sylvia and I attend a kind of
ping -pong game, whose ping -pong balls

are the names of spies.

Zichroni, I want Polar.

Pollard was an Israeli spy who was
arrested in the United States because he

obviously done the same thing that was
reproached to Klingberg for having done,

and he had also been sentenced
elsewhere.

And then I want Ron Arad. Ron Arad is a
pilot of the Israeli army who had

been shot down from memory above the
Liban.

And Vogel said, well, I want Klingberg.

And then, unfortunately,

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991
torpedoed the spike change deal.

So the Klingbergs appealed to mark his
release on humanitarian grounds.

His health had declined badly after 15
years of a life sentence.

Our strategy obviously changed and we
pleaded for a liberation on

a humanitarian basis. It was long, but
in the end we did it, especially because

we had the support of a certain number
of personalities and also the former

leader of the Shin Bet.

I went to the prime minister, to Yitzhak
Rabin, and I told Yitzhak Rabin that I

think

that we have reached to the stage that
we can parole

him. The system didn't want.

They all went against me because he was
the worst spy, etc., and

the damage.

And I told the court that my
understanding that from humanitarian

reasons, and the court received my...

But Israel kept Klingberg under close
surveillance.

He still had details of their biological
weapons, which he'd leaked to the

Soviet Union.

Israeli intelligence considered
Klingberg the worst kind of traitor

informed on one of the country's most
secretive institutions.

His wife also worked for the KGB and

others, I think, in the Institute also,
but we don't know about that. One of his

ideas was, I'm giving information which,
OK, is top secret to the Soviet

Union and they are building these
weapons and the Americans have these

and now we have a balance.

And so hopefully that balance will equal
out.

and they won't go to war.

Klingberg got his wish in that the US
and the Soviet Union never did go to

But three years after his arrest, there
was another Israeli security breach.

Mordechai Vanunu was an Israeli
technician at the nuclear research

as the Dimona reactor.

In the summer of 1986, he secretly
gathered information and photographed...

and gave them to the British newspaper,
the Sunday Times.

We were asked when?

You change your mind about Israel.

And he said it was in 1982 at the first
Lebanon war.

And he said that at that time he decided
that Israel, the behavior of the state

of Israel is risking the world because
according to his knowledge, that's what

he said, Israel has nuclear facilities,
nuclear capabilities.

He thinks that Israel is risking the
security of the whole world.

The Israeli external intelligence agency
Mossad only found out about Venunu

after the Sunday Times checked the
photos and information.

They then lured him to Italy, drugged
him, and took him back secretly to

Venunu spent 18 years in jail.

When he was released in 2004, he was
barred from speaking to journalists and

remained under close surveillance.

But the Veneno affair was not the end of
it.

Shortly before the collapse of the
Soviet Union, reports emerged in 1990

the recruitment of Reserve Colonel
Shimon Levinson.

He was a senior Israeli military
intelligence officer who worked for

then as head of security at the office
of the prime minister.

After being lured to Tel Aviv, Levinson
admitted that he went to the Soviet

embassy in Bangkok in 1983 and later
visited Moscow for instructions from his

handlers. He said he demanded large sums
of money in return.

This is an unbelievable case because
Shimon Levinson was considered Israel to

be, many people knew him, considered to
be somebody who was beyond suspicious.

He was a lieutenant colonel in the army
for many years. He was living in

Jerusalem. People know him. He got this
position of the head of the security of

the prime minister's office, which gave
him fantastic access.

to the most sensitive information that
can be, meaning that, you know, every

government meeting, every meeting of the
Cabinet of Defense.

The information that Levinson leaked to
the Soviet Union remained classified.

His arrest and trial stayed secret until
1993, when he was sentenced to 12 years

in prison.

Simon Levinson was a part of the prime
minister's ministry.

And, of course, there are concentrations
and all kinds of papers that are

produced by the intimate staff of the
prime minister. And it

is the high secret of the country that
nobody wants to

talk about them openly.

And if a spy knows it, the other
countries know it, and damage is done.

With Shimon Levinson, it's much more
easier. It's just money. And I

met him as well. When I heard that
Shimon Levinson was compromised as a

Soviet agent, I thought it's a
nightmare.

I couldn't believe that something like
this happened because Shimon Levinson

one of us.

Levinson turned out to be one of them, a
major Soviet asset.

But there was a shift in international
espionage.

when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Vasily Mitrakin was a KGB archivist who
spent years copying top -secret

documents. But in 1992, he defected to
Britain and gave some of the KGB

to British intelligence.

They then shared names of some of the
Israeli agents who'd spied for the

Union with Israeli intelligence.

Israel banned publication of these
documents.

But that didn't stop the British
historian Christopher Andrew publishing

spies' names in a book he co -wrote with
Massili Mitrokhin called The KGB in the

World.

This Mitrokhin was a KGB officer, and
when he was interviewed, he spoke

also, he knew, obviously, about Israel
as well. Luckily, most of what he has

shared there was already known to the
ISA.

It's interesting, in a few cases he
didn't know the real name.

He knew only the code name. Immediately
after he was defected and was

interviewed, already the information
that has to be of interest to Israel was

transferred to Israel through the
intelligence channels of cooperation.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also
made it easier to conduct business in

Eastern European countries.

Israeli businessman Nahum Manbar was
based in Poland.

At the time, Iran urgently needed
weapons after its eight -year war with

Manbar seized the opportunity, and
between 1992 and 1993, he effectively

Iran develop chemical and biological
weapons.

But his trips to Iran attracted Mossad's
attention.

Talking about...

The big damages that caused to Israeli
national security, one can

remember Nahum Manba. Nahum Manba was a

businessman who sold

chemicals to Iran.

The Israeli law doesn't differentiate
between...

Israeli investigators probed Manbar for
detailed information, but he continued

to insist that Shin Bet and Mossad knew
all along about his business dealings

with Iran.

However, in 1998, an Israeli court
convicted him of treason and what it

called... aiding the enemy and sentenced
him to 16 years in jail.

The Israeli service knew about his ties
to Iran.

He was followed also by the Mossad guys
when he was in Europe.

And while he was followed, there was a
car accident and two Mossad agents were

killed. Yes, he was a pain in the neck.

And it was very, very damaging. It was
serious, and it was astonishing

that, you know, an Israeli would
cooperate with the enemy.

Following the Manbar case, both Israel
and Iran aimed to recruit agents on the

ground.

Israel didn't seem to be able to prevent
the Iranian recruitment, and this led

to more security breaches.

There were reports that Mossad accused
one of their own agents, Ben Zigir, of

exposing details of a secret mission to
Iran.

Mossad arrested Zigir and kept his case
secret, but it all came out when Zigir

took his own life in 2010 in a maximum
security cell monitored 24 -7.

There is a case which was reported
abroad of Ben Zigir.

An Australian Jew emigrated to Israel
out of Zionist

ideology, was recruited by the Mossad,
was in operations

in the Mossad, in operations which were
directed against

Iran, against Iran's nuclear
capabilities.

And then he talked to some people. He
wanted to boost how important he is,

what a secret mission he has been
involved in.

And he caused a great deal of damage,
and he was arrested, and he was

in Israeli jail, and he was not properly
guarded in jail and committed suicide.

Israeli intelligence tends to play down
Iranian attempts to recruit spies from

within, including the case of the former
Minister of Energy and Infrastructure,

Gonan Segev, in 2018.

Segev admitted spying for Iran since
2012, providing them with sensitive

information about security, energy
resources, and names of officials.

Israel banned the publication of details
of the Segev case.

after he was sentenced to 11 years in
prison in 2019.

But I think the Israeli intelligence,
the security services, almost very

got hold of him. They tricked him,
basically,

to bring him back to Israel. He was kind
of kidnapped from another African

country.

Despite trying to keep cases like
Segev's under wraps, reports about

spies continued to come out.

Like Omri Goren Gorachovsky.

arrested in 2021 for dealing with a
group of hackers linked to Iran called

Shadow. He worked as housekeeper for
then -Defense Minister Benny Gantz,

information about Gantz and to install
malware on his computer, all for a mere

,000 US dollars.

It was another blow to Shin Bet,
especially when it emerged that Gorin

long criminal record, including
robberies.

and had never been properly vetted
before going to work for Benny Gantz.

All the cases that you have mentioned,
Omri Goren, Goren Segev, and

others, are really not worth, they

didn't make any harm.

No, Omri is not serious.

I don't think this is the case that he
was recruited by the Iranians.

But even if Omri Goran and Gonan Segev
were, as it were, not serious, October

7th definitely was.

Spying had been a crucial activity on
both sides of the Israeli -Palestinian

conflict for decades.

But by any standard, the Hamas -led
attack on southern Israel on the 7th of

October 2023 was the biggest security
breach in Israel's history.

What happened that day was unprecedented
and led to an even more violent Israeli

response. It also raised serious
questions about Israeli intelligence.

Six months later, military intelligence
director Aharon Haliva resigned.

His resignation letter included a
request to set up an investigation to

accurate answers as to what happened on
October 7th.

It's not just an attack, it's invasion.

We didn't think that the Hamas could
invade to Israel.

It's unbelievable that 50 years and one
day after Yom Kippur War, something

quite similar happened to us as well.

The failure of the intelligence here is
worse than in 1973, and it's not just

the intelligence, also the forces, the
IDF forces who were on the border.

We're not prepared.

In my opinion, there was a collection of
information about the goal of the

Hamas movement. And this is not an
imagination. They didn't put the plan

they don't know what's in front of them.
They put the plan and they don't know

what's in front of them. And this is the
result of multiple means to collect

information about the desired goal.

The October 7th attack by Hamas was a
great humiliation.

Israel was surprised.

Israel was complacent. Israel was
arrogant. And when I say Israel, it's

to the bottom. It's from the prime
minister, the government, the military,

chief of staff, the head of the Shin Bet
and the Shin Bet.

All of them are rightly accused of this
intelligence failure.

So that's what happened on October the
7th. In that sense, it can be compared

the Israeli failure before the 73 war.

It's a failure that we will have to
interrogate. I don't think that it's

of treason. And those who were the
chiefs

of the army, of the intelligence, will
have to go home.

That's it.

After October 7th, there were reports
about Israelis being recruited by

agents.

In September 2024,

the security services arrested Israeli
businessman Moti Maman.

They accused him of involvement in
assassination attempts plotted by Iran

prominent Israeli figures.

Maman had asked the Iranians for a
million dollars.

Then, in October 2024, the authorities
arrested a network of Israeli citizens

they suspected of spying for Iran.

They were accused of taking photographs
and collecting information on highly

sensitive bases and facilities.

are trying to penetrate into Israeli
army, Israeli

security agencies. We have spotted
several times

trials of the Iranians to recruit
Israeli

citizens, but there wasn't a big
success.

are not isolated events.

They've taken place in a system that
believes it can know and control

everything, that its power, technology,
and alliances will always be enough.

In the war between the U .S. and Israel
and Iran, intelligence agencies use the

language of threat and risk, which has
brought the whole of the Middle East to

the brink of catastrophe.

History suggests that no side can bomb
or spy its way out of a conflict, that

security cannot be built on fear alone,
and that ignoring the rights and lives

of ordinary people, Israeli,
Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese, and many

will continue to create the very threat
that intelligence services aim to

prevent.