Eli Cohen – The (Impossible) Spy – two films

 

Mossad is the Israeli Civilian Intelligence Agency , collecting information on Israel’s foreign enemies.  (Aman, is a purely military intelligence agency responsible to the Defence Ministry). Over the years, Mossad has executed daring operations worldwide and not necessarily in the immediate neighbouring countries that have sworn to destroy Israel and continue to threaten Israel’s existence. Mossad’s reputation for omniscience and omnipresence was mainly due to some of its daring operations in the 1960s. One such operation was an old-fashioned “HUMINT” – Human Intelligence – operation, with a classic “spy” operating deep inside a target country and sending back priceless information.

 

This is the dream of every spy chief worldwide. Your own man. Your citizen. Able to pass off as the citizen of an enemy country. The perfect and above-suspicion spy. 

 

Mossad of the 1950s and the 1960s could do this primarily because many “first generation” Jews who returned to Israel – under Israel’s “Law of Return” – had been born in Arab countries, who were now Israel’s sworn enemies. 

 

Eli Cohen was one such person who was born in Alexandria, Egypt and emigrated to Israel in the late 1950s. Mossad soon spotted him due to his fluent Arabic.  Before his emigration, he was, in fact, peripherally engaged in Operation Susannah – a “false flag” operation by Egyptian intelligence to unearth Jewish troublemakers among the tiny Jewish population. False Flag means masquerading as the enemy – in this case, Egyptian intelligence officers acted as Jews, due to which many genuine Jews with sympathies for Israel joined the “resistance network”, were captured and then hanged. The whole mess became known as the Lavon affair after the Israeli politician Pinhas Lavon, who had encouraged the operation and resigned in its wake. Living anonymously in Israel, Cohen again answered the call of duty but this time with a much more ambitious target. Cohen was supposed to infiltrate Syria. 

 

Trained in the dark arts of spying, he was infiltrated into Argentina with a background of a wealthy Syrian merchant. Spotted by Syrians, he “went back home to Syria”. In the Syrian capital Damascus, his lavish parties soon attracted the higher military ranks and the bureaucracy. Soon the information started flowing back to Israel, thanks to “Our Man in Damascus”. 

    

The biggest Achilles heel of any spy who has wormed his way into an enemy setup is not how he can acquire the information but how he can send that information back to his own country without being caught by the enemy intelligence services. Like many before (and after) him, Cohen’s long hours at the transmitter proved his undoing. With the help of Russian direction finders, his location was soon pinpointed. He was caught, tortured and then hanged in public. Israel has a standing request to the Syrian Government to return his body from its secret grave. Naturally, the Syrian Government hasn’t replied to the request.  (A similar agent operated in Egypt too. Wolfgang Lotz was supposedly a Nazi who had fought in the Desert War in North Africa during World War 2 but was actually an Israeli Spy infiltrated into Egypt in the mid-1950s. He too was caught before the 1967 war but was later sent back to Germany as the Egyptians thought he was a German – since he had a German wife.)

 

The Impossible Spy (1985) is the first movie on the topic. It is very much to my liking for a “small” movie. It doesn’t have any big stars except Eli Wallach. It has a tight budget befitting a TV movie and focuses more on the story than on great production values. The film (1985) stays true to the overall Cohen story. It starts with Cohen (John Shea) present at the executions of the spies caught in the Lavon affair. He emigrates to Israel and is soon spotted and trained by a mysterious man known only as Yaacov (Eli Wallach), who then reveals his job – infiltrating Syria. Trained to pass off as a Muslim, including the daily prayers, “Kamal Tabet” is soon the toast of Syrian society.

The rest of the film shows how Cohen took more and more risks. On secret visits to Israel, he is questioned by his suspicious wife Nadia (Michal Bay Adam) but stays true to his cover story of an international traveller. 

 

As mentioned earlier, the film is a “small” film focusing more on Cohen’s story than any peripheral characters. This makes the film absorbing, and for those who know the whole story, we wonder why didn’t Cohen give up when the going got dangerous. 

 

A tight script that doesn’t deviate from the true story adds to the absorbing film on YouTube.

 

https://youtu.be/OdLuPVJjCGw

 

 

Real History – 5 out of 5

Equipment and Kit – 4 out of 5

Locations or substitutes – 4 out of 5

Script – 4 out of 5

 

Overall Rating – 4.3 out of 5

 

 

As befitting a Netflix presentation and with a big budget, The Spy (2019) is a six-part lavishly mounted TV series that has the scope to expand a 2-hour movie into a 6 hour TV series.

One would think that Sasha Baron Cohen, the master of gross comedy, would be an unusual choice to play such a serious role, but he does an excellent job both as Cohen and Kamal Tabet. Given that there is more screen time to play around with, the episodes spend more time on his “placement” in Argentina, his “return” to Syria and his “business”.

However, it goes astray by depicting orgies for the mighty and rich. Maybe they did take place – we can’t rule out the possibility – but the script seems to probably cater to an audience who want not just spying but some “spicy” spying. Tabat is, of course, a provider and not a participant in these activities. As the news of “Tabat’s” arrest spreads, many a Syrian military officer is shown quaking in his boots – that must have happened in real life. The emphasis seems to be more on gloss and production values – which are excellent – with the result that some episodes drag a bit. Despite that, The Spy is well-made and enjoyable. 

 

The Spy is on NETFLIX 

 

Real History – 4 out of 5

Equipment and Kit – 4 out of 5

Locations or substitutes – 4 out of 5

Script – 4 out of 5

 

Overall Rating – 4 out of 5