There’s an old Hebrew proverb, he who comes to kill you, get up early and kill them first.
In Judaism, there’s an expression which I think still holds true.
He who comes to kill you, get up early and kill them first.
It’s the moral right to kill.
We kill those who want to kill us.
In Israel, every time there’s an attack, people weep, but then they shoot back.
For 40 years, the Jewish state has been secretly eliminating some of its enemies abroad.
terrorist.
Every terrorist with blood on his hands is a target.
Mossad, the Israeli secret service is responsible for these special missions.
Ceilings are not a part of it.
You do it because the prime minister decided to do it.
We also spoke with the people deemed enemies of the state of Israel who had had the good fortune to survive the hitmen from Msad.
The screams woke me up and then I saw four armed men arrive.
They wanted to kill me in my sleep.
But the will of the Almighty decided otherwise in Israel.
The proverb, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, has become a perfectly acceptable state policy.
Israel is the country that has used the weapon of targeted killing more than any other country after the Second World War.
Louis say again.
Tunis, Aman, Dubai.
These cities are where Mossad has operated its assassination operations in recent years.
March 1978, a Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO commando hijacks a bus in the Israeli town of Gileot.
It’s one of the most serious attacks in Israel.
38 people are killed, including 13 children.
While the attack unfolds, Yitsak Morai is an officer in the Israeli army.
He’ll never forget that day.
The commando killed a tourist on the street before attacking the bus and forcing it to drive to Tel Aviv.
Inside the bus, they killed women and children.
They spared no one.
They blew up the bus.
It was the first time in Israel’s history that such an attack had taken place inside the country.
I’ll always remember that night.
According to Mossad, the man responsible for the outrage is Khalil Alwazir, also known as Abu Jihad.
Abu Jihad is not just another suspect.
He’s the right-hand man of Yasa Arafat, the leader of the PLO.
Here he is in the mid1 1980s filmed by another of his aids.
As the head of the PLO’s military operations, he’s training his men for an assault against Israel.
We have to blot out the sky over Tel Aviv so that this black Saturday will live on in history.
This is the day Tel Aviv will be hit by blood and destruction.
The Israeli secret services now consider the PLO’s second in command to be a legitimate target.
For months, this former member of Shinbet gathered as much information about Abu Jihad as possible.
His mission was to determine the psychological profile of Arafat’s number two.
What did you learn? that he’s smart, that he’s very addicted to the mission, that he learn a lot, that he check every single point, that he is going to deal with it, that he do it by himself.
Abu Jihad is someone who liked to be in control and sometimes enjoyed provocation.
In 1987, as stonethrowing Palestinian youths staged the inifad against Israel, Abu Jihad takes credit for the uprising.
To Israel, it’s a red flag.
At the time, Mosha Nisim is the finance minister.
His opinion was that Abu Jihad had to be killed and as soon as possible.
People were demoralized by the inifada.
I believed Abu Jihad’s death would boost their morale.
Abu Jihad had masterminded a large number of attacks against Israel, causing many victims.
It couldn’t go on.
We had to terminate him.
To end the life of an enemy of Israel is a decision that rests with one man, the prime minister.
Back then it was Yetsak Shamir.
He alone in consultation with his cabinet can add or remove names from the enemies to kill list.
Usually the prime minister does not decide alone but uh calls in one minister or a group of ministers to take the decision together.
The decision to eliminate Abu Jihad has to be voted on in the security cabinet made up of a small group of senior military figures and ministers.
But the vote ends in stalemate 54 and five against.
Convinced that the PLO’s number two has to be killed, Mosha Nissim tries to persuade fellow cabinet member and defense secretary Yitsak Rabin to vote in favor.
During the security cabinet meeting, I asked Minister Rabin to come with me to an adjacent room.
I told you, Zacharin, you’re the Minister of Defense, and I think you should be the first to support the proposal.
We need to show the world that we can still carry out this sort of operation.
And Rabine said, “You know what? You’re right.
Let’s go back in.
” And so it became 64 and four against in the vote.
It’s approved.
and the government gives the green light.
Abu Jihad will be eliminated.
Slight problem.
The PLO’s deputy leader lives in Tunisia, a country then hostile to Israel.
So, the operation is a risky one.
In Tunis, the target lives in the Sidi Buahida neighborhood with his wife and children.
Doubtlessly protected by Tunisian security and his personal bodyguards.
All of Israel’s intelligence services are asked to contribute to the planning.
Od Raz, profiler of Abu Jihad, will spend more than a year investigating the target.
It takes months to plan an attacking like this.
A lot of people deal with it.
The army intelligence and the Shabbach and the Musad and the National Security Advisor and the government.
It’s not you don’t kill people like this.
Od Raz, the man who studied Abu Jihad’s profile, is asked to analyze every move the PLO’s number two makes.
But Arafat’s right-hand man is wary.
He is like a frightened people, like an animal.
He’s changing all the time his plan or all the time his plan or flats, offices, how he goes from one point to another point.
Living like a hounded animal alongside the PLO’s deputy leader is the love of his life, a woman he’d met 30 years earlier in Gaza.
It was a love story.
I liked his ideas.
I was crazy about him.
I was just 14 at the beginning.
It was a hidden lot.
Nobody knew about it.
He told me you want to marry me I love you but you are maybe lost me I I am martyrs maybe I am prisoners maybe I am wounded person maybe to yes that’s for you and that’s the same for me so we want to try together Abu Jihad wasn’t wrong 25 years Later he’s in the sights of the Israeli secret services.
In 1987 after checks, cross checks and surveillance, Mossad obtained some crucial intelligence details of his personal life.
These allow Elas and his men to prepare his execution with precision.
I had his address, and since he had a wife, there was a reason for him to go home.
We knew the operation would be carried out in his home.
We had the layout of his house and we knew every step on every staircase.
We had a lot of information.
We even knew he slept with a gun under his pillow.
At the time, Abu Jihad suspected the Israelis might booby trap his car and he warned his wife.
He afraid many times to take me with him in his car.
Yeah.
Yes.
He did not allowed me to join him anywhere.
It’s true.
We knew the route that he would take.
We could have bombed his car.
But in the end, you choose the method that has 99% chance of success.
The objective was to kill Abu Jihad, not wound him.
You can’t be sure an explosion will kill a target, but if you shoot him at close range, then you’ll know he’ll die.
By the beginning of 1988, the procedure had been chosen.
Warships would sail for Tunis, where a commander unit would secretly disembark and make its way to the house of Abu Jihad.
The operation is completely unlawful and needs to be executed as quickly as possible.
The 18th of April, 1988 is D-Day.
On route to Tunis, the commando unit receives a last coded signal from Israel’s military headquarters.
The nights are now short.
The mission and the operation have to be very precise, very quick, and we wish you every success.
In Tunis, Mossad informants carry out one last check before the attack.
They make sure the target is indeed at home.
They ring his phone and it’s Jihad that answers.
[Applause] The caller asked to speak with Abu Jihad.
She wanted to inform him that quote, “One of his nephews had been captured.
” By passing the phone to her husband, um Jihad had unwittingly signed his death warrant.
The Israelis tapping the phone now had the confirmation they needed.
The PLO’s number two was indeed at home.
Abu Jihad is unaware that just a few kilometers off the coast of Siddi Boo Sed, several Israeli warships have taken up station.
The operation is directed from a frigot.
On board a young colonel, a certain Ehood Barak.
20 years later, he will become the prime minister of Israel.
At 2,300 hours, a speedboat heads towards the coast of Tunis.
On board is the unit whose task is to assassinate Abu Jihad.
At 23:15, about 20 men board two mini buses and make their way to the home of the PLO’s deputy leader.
If the Mossad agents are discovered, it would be a catastrophe.
Military HQ in Tel Aviv is anxious and sends another radio signal.
again.
In a few minutes, the MSAD agents are at Abu Jihad’s front door.
Everything seems calm with just one sentry keeping watch.
They killed a guard with a silencer.
From the death of the guard to reaching his bedroom took barely 10 seconds.
[Applause] I woke up with a start because of the cries and the noise of the table breaking.
Then I saw four men.
One of them opened fire and wounded him in in his arm.
My husband tried to turn, but he fell.
I ran after him to hold him back.
The man who’ shot him threatened to kill me.
He told me to stand facing the wall.
The woman screamed, so they took her away.
They covered her mouth and took care of her.
Another man came and shot him a second time.
And then a third man shot him and a fourth.
A fifth man came to shoot Abu Jihad again.
And I cried out, “Stop.
That’s enough.
Stop.
” The PLO inquiry said Abu Jihad had been struck by 75 bullets fired by five different guns.
The whole operation took less than 10 minutes.
The senior commando, still out of breath, radios back to the frigot off Tunis that the operation had been a success.
This is guard.
I finished everything and uh I’m heading station.
The Bogart, the head of the commander unit that had just killed Abu Jihad would carve out a career in politics.
Bogart is no other than the current minister of defense in Israel, Moshe Boi Yalon.
Serving in the Hebrew state security services often seems to lead to a future in politics.
Returning to Israel, as these recently declassified photos illustrate, the commando and senior officers celebrate the elimination of their enemy with champagne.
On the way home, the men were happy, but there was no sense of triumph.
No one was singing.
We got home, the prime minister congratulated us and said, “Thank you very much.
” Early on the morning of the 19th of April, 1988, a few hours after his death, news of Abu Jihad’s killing explodes onto the world’s media.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Our top story this Saturday morning is the assassination of Abu Jihad.
Good evening.
The Middle East is again in flames tonight.
In Tunis, a team of assassins gunned down the PLO’s military leader and Yaser Arafett’s top deputy, a guerilla leader known as Abu Jihad.
In the middle of the night, at his residence in Tunis, the PLO’s number two was assassinated in front of his wife and daughter.
A hit squad gunned down the victim known as Abu Jihad at his home in Tunis.
The media almost immediately suspects Israel was responsible.
In Tel Aviv, as they do after every Mossad operation, the authorities neither confirm nor deny the reports.
The day after the assassination, Yasa Arafat visits his deputies home.
In Gaza, the Palestinians call for revenge against Israel.
In Tel Aviv, Moshe Nissim, the minister who’ persuaded Rabin to support the operation, savors its success.
At the next security cabinet meeting, Rabbin asked me to follow him, saying he had something to tell me, and he said, “You’ll never know just how right you were.
” The Israelis morale is very high now since Sunday.
Whenever I go out in the car, the people are applauding me.
They want to shake my hand and they make the victory sign.
It’s really made the people very happy.
Morale is so high now.
In 1993, the Oslo Accords finally bring the PLO and Israel together to negotiate a peace process.
But the reprieve will be brief for the Jewish state.
By the mid 1990s, Palestinians opposed to the Oslo process join a new resistance movement taking on Israel.
Hamas.
Islamist and radical Hamas unleashes a new series of violent attacks against Israel.
On the 31st of July 1997, a market in Jerusalem is targeted with full force.
A suicide bomber kills 14 and injures 156 others.
The then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands a list of Hamas activists to be killed.
His closest military adviser at the time remembers the absolute determination of the Israeli premier.
Well, after the attack, the prime minister ordered all of the security services to come up with a plan.
So, all the security services, including Shimet, including military intelligence and Mossad started doing what they could to get information and find the targets.
Benjamin Netanyahu called in all the heads of the intelligence and said, “I want a reaction.
Give me a list of targets.
” Now, Shinbet and military intelligence didn’t have anything.
Mossad gave at first Mossad gave the the names of few middle rank operatives of kamas in Europe.
Netanyahu said, “No, no, I don’t want these small fish.
I want the big sharks.
The job of netting the big sharks fell to Mishka Ben Davidid, a former philosophy teacher and then the head of intelligence for Msad’s Clanderstein operations.
He agrees to be interviewed at home on the hills above Jerusalem.
So, you want to see the view first? Yes.
If you go all the way down there, which is now very hazy, you can see Gaza.
Uh, you can see the entire widths of Israel, less than 60 kilometers to the sea, Gaza, the West Bank.
That’s all there is.
People don’t realize how small Israel is.
In 1997, Mishka Ben Davided comes up with his own hit list of Hamas officials for the prime minister.
For the first time, he talks openly on camera.
We made a list of them and uh then we went to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to present uh the list and Netanyahu after reviewing the list decided that we must go for the heads of Hamas.
We studied every attack that had taken place that year.
After discussing the issue, we decided that Khaled Michelle was behind the new wave of bombings and that we had to eliminate him.
The target now has a name and a face.
Khaled Michelle, then a senior figure inside Hamas.
Originally from the occupied territories, he lived in exile in Kuwait before moving to Jordan.
According to the Israelis, he had directed operations from Jordan throughout the 1990s, ordering dozens of suicide bombings in Israel.
She was the head of Hamas’s political office, but the term political office is misleading because it also dealt with the Mukawama, the terrorist actions against Israel.
He was the head of the office, highly placed, we believe.
to be able to order such attacks.
Two months after the attack on the market in Jerusalem, the decision is official.
Michelle must be eliminated.
But there’s a problem.
Michelle is in Jordan, a country Israel had signed a historic peace treaty with 3 years earlier in 1994.
The treaty ended 30 years of confrontation between the two neighbors.
On the day of the treaty, President Bill Clinton had flown in to see Israeli Prime Minister Yitsak Rabbin and King Hussein of Jordan to witness the signing in person.
This is peace with dignity.
This is peace with commitment.
This is our gift to our peoples and the generations to [Applause] come.
Given the treaty, it was difficult for Israel to secretly kill an enemy inside Jordan.
But for Netanyahu, eliminating Michelle was a national priority.
Netanyahu doesn’t want it to be an obvious clear uh operation.
We we call it he didn’t want a big operation with explosives and lots of shooting.
Netanyahu said it has to be a quiet mission.
Even if it’s something that maybe you’re not familiar with, the operation has to be conducted without anyone knowing.
I don’t want to risk our relationship with Jordan.
Mishka Ben Davidid’s men decide the most discreet way to kill Michal is to poison him.
The purpose of the poison was to create a fast but not too fast death of Khalid Mashal that could not be traced that could not be attribute to Msad and it would happen hours after all the uh operatives that were involved in the operation are all long gone and u out of Jordan.
But even to poison Michal means getting close physically.
Members of Mossad’s assassination squad therefore decide to take a look at the offices from where Michelle directs Hamas operations.
The original plan was based on using two operatives.
They would wait behind one of the walls in Asham’s center until Khaled Mashall came comes to work.
He exit the car.
He starts walking up the stairs towards his office.
They follow him and then one of them is holding the canister with the poison.
The other one is holding a wellshaken Coca-Cola can.
One agent is spraying Khaled Marshall backhead with the poison and at the same time the other agent opens the Coca-Cola can and spraying Coca-Cola all over Khaled Marshall.
Marshall feels something wet in his uh on on his head.
He turns around and all he sees is is one or two embarrassed tourists, Canadian tourists apologizing.
I’m sorry for spraying you.
I’m sorry for ruing your shirt.
Do you want any money for the dry cleaning, etc.
The purpose of the Coca-Cola was just to use as disguise for the moisture of the poison.
August 1997, 30 days before D-Day, the Mossad Hit Squad are rehearsing in the open in the streets of Tel Aviv.
A can of Coke in one hand and a pretend poison spray in the other.
They practice on random passes by.
When it was implemented dozens and dozens of times in the streets of uh Israel, it worked.
It worked.
Yes.
They improved it all the time until they were quite sure that it’s going to work in Aman as well.
With the killing technique now perfected, the Mossad team under Mishka Ben Davidid is due to head to the Jordanian capital with fake Canadian passports.
Here he is pretending to be a tourist enjoying himself as he visits the archaeological sites in Aman.
Were you really visiting that or it was just for your cover? It’s a combination.
I wanted to be there and of course I needed it for my cover.
You cannot be for a week a tourist in Jordan and not go anywhere.
Just to be in the in the hotel and was maybe just the day before.
You think it could be the day before or two days before? Yeah, it could be.
It’s definitely not the day after.
The operation gets underway.
It’s the 25th of September, 1997.
The agents take up positions near the offices of Haleb Michelle.
Mishka Ben Davidid sets up operational HQ at the Intercontinental Hotel.
With him is a Mossad doctor.
In his bag, an antidote to the poison in case an agent is infected.
Not far away, the two killers wait for the target in front of his offices.
And it’s the target himself who now takes up the story.
Our car pulled up in front of the building and I noticed two men on the pavement opposite.
I watched them.
They seemed strange and acted suspiciously.
When I got off the car, instead of heading for my office, I went round to the other side of the car to let my kids out.
I was meant to take them to the hairdressers.
And then when I was on the pavement, even before getting to the entrance of the building, the two men attacked me to my right.
It was precisely what I was expecting.
They started to spray him with the poison and the Coca-Cola and instead of hitting his the back of his head, they hit his ear.
I heard this very loud noise in my left ear and I felt like an electric shock all through my body.
The two agent started to run to the other direction and at the same time another kamas operative came and saw the whole happening and he started to follow the two agents, the two operatives that were going towards the getaway car.
The car screaming away attracts the attention of a passing driver, a pro- Hammer sympathizer.
Intrigued, he sets off in hot pursuit after the Mossad agents.
The car chase winds through the streets of Aman.
After 800 m, the two Israelis, knowing they’re being chased, leap from the car.
They find themselves on some wasteland, still chased by the Jordanian.
A crowd soon forms.
Trapped by the mob who forces them to a local police station, the two agents are soon unmasked as Mossad operatives by Jordanian intelligence services.
Poolside at his hotel, Mishka Ben Davidid is unaware he has a serious problem, but that soon changes.
I was reading the book by DH Celinger at the swimming pool and then came uh a figure that belongs to the operational team and said certain words that that had to be said to show that we are connected and um and said uh we have problems.
So I got up, got dressed, and uh and I was told that the two operatives that conducted operations were caught by by the mob.
Uh that they did conduct the operation, but then there was a gathering and they were caught.
Two hours after the attack, Michelle’s condition is worsening.
I started feeling very ill.
nausea at first and then I lost my balance.
I felt very weak.
I told my colleagues what had happened.
I said I was the victim of a bizarre murder attempt using a very effective method.
Later on we discovered that it was a chemical weapon.
again.
So I called not from my room HQ in Israel and uh I was told to take the different operatives and bring them to the embassy.
I knew where each one of them would be and uh I took them one by one and brought them to the embassy.
To keep it lowkey, Mishka Ben Davidid uses local taxes to get the agents to safety.
He doesn’t know yet that Jordanian authorities have exposed the other two.
When informed, King Hussein of Jordan is furious.
94.
The king soon receives an important call from Israel.
Peace treaty is still active.
His former chief of staff was present.
Could have been cancelled.
Prime Minister Natanya who called his master king Hussein and he confirmed that what happened to Khaled Mash was uh due to an operation by the MSAD to assassinate him.
Feeling betrayed and outraged King Hussein threatens to tear up the peace treaty he’d signed with Israel 3 years earlier.
and Mossad Fiasco jeopardizes the stability of the entire region.
The day after the operation, the king summons his government before the national and international media.
In front of the cameras, the message is clear.
If Michelle dies of poisoning, then the peace treaty dies with him.
One of our brothers has been the victim of a cruel attack.
It is totally unacceptable.
I’ve told our international partners that the existence of the peace treaty depends on the life of this man.
[Applause] King Hussein threatens the Mossad agents who have sought refuge inside the Israeli embassy in Aman died.
The Israeli embassy was going to be stoned.
Our troops came in and positioned themselves around the embassy.
And I informed this to the ambassador and he told me uh this is Israeli territory and according to Geneva conventions you cannot do that.
I said well if it has become a shelter for people who try to assassinate a Jordanian then how is the Geneva Convention going to apply? Meanwhile, in Aman’s military hospital, Khaled Mishal is affected by a continuing loss of balance and drowsiness.
His health is visibly deteriorating.
The doctor’s prognosis is that he just has a few hours to live.
King Hussein instructs his personal doctor to save Halid Michelle’s life.
There were no sign of any injury, no needle breaks, no no bruises in in on in the skin, nothing.
And and examining him, he he wants to sleep.
He said, “I’m weak.
I I just want to sleep.
” And we we we we were talking to him and come on Mr.
Khaled, take a breath.
Open your eyes for me.
And the thing which strike me I when I examined his eyes the the pupils were constricted we call it pinpoint pupils.
That gives you more idea that this a very heavy dose of anarotic was in his body.
The doctor is certain that Mashal was poisoned with an unknown chemical substance.
The Hamas leader is put on an artificial respirator.
The Jordanians contact the Israelis again to ask about the chemical and the antidote.
Israeli ambassador called me and he said he’s been on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu who refused to release the uh the chemical that was injected to Mash.
With Netanyahu being stubborn, King Hussein plays one last card and calls President Bill Clinton in Washington.
With peace at stake, the conversation is crucial.
President Clinton was very upset.
He uh listened very carefully to what King Hussein had to say and he said referring to Netanyahu, “This man is impossible.
” Now he activated all his government offices and the American ambassador to put pressure on Israeli government to have them come up with the antidote and with the chemical that that was injected to Michelle.
With its back to the wall, the Israeli government panics.
The lives of the two MSAD agents are threatened.
To save them, they have to provide the antidote that will save Michelle.
When the head of Mossad told us that the mission had failed, the prime minister asked, “What’s happened to our people?” The answer was, “There’s a problem.
” Prime Minister then said, “I don’t care about the rest of it.
just get our two men home at all costs.
If we have to save Mash, so be it.
The mission becomes saving the two operatives.
The means is reviving Masha, saving their worst enemy’s life.
In all his 12 years at Mossad, this was a first for Mishka Ben Davidid.
from his hotel room and with a Mossad doctor.
He will play the vital role in deciding the outcome of the affair.
Both men have a file containing the antidote.
Then I got a call from the head of operations saying go down to the lobby uh with the doctor.
There is a person from the Jordanian security.
His name is Captain Firas.
give him the antidote and the doctor should go with him and inject it to Masha.
He was in uniforms and I went I said, “Captain Ferras,” he said, “Yes.
” So I said, “Here is the antidote and here is the doctor.
” And he he was he he had a very very severe look on his face.
I wouldn’t call it a hateful look but very very severe and uh we didn’t have any conversation except of this.
It is a very strange situation in the middle of an operation uh to actually hand yourself over uh to to them and to have the doctor even go with them to inject it to Masha.
The discussion between the Israeli and the Jordanian is curt.
The MSAD doctor is taken by the security services to give the antidote to the hospital director.
She gave me two vials with adrenaline written on them.
But uh Ali told me we’re going to use this.
So I immediately I thought we’re not going to use anything unless we know what it is because it could be the poison and we could finish him off with it.
The Jordanians are wary and don’t want to take any risks.
They send the MSAD vials to a laboratory for analysis.
Two hours later, the analysis shows it is indeed antidote for the poison.
After being injected, Michelle slowly recovers from his coma.
The hummus leader comes back to life.
Only later did the Jordanians discover the poison was specially prepared for this one mission.
It’s not used in medicine.
It is a a synthetic narcotic like uh like the drug which we we use the fentinel and if fentinel which we use is 100 times more powerful than morphine.
Imagine this drug is more powerful than the fentinel.
So we don’t know how much maybe it’s used for elephants or something like this to put an elephant to sleep.
On the afternoon of 26th of September 1997, Khalid Mashal’s life is saved for Mishka Ben Davidid.
His enemy’s resurrection is ironically good news.
Even if the mission was apparently a failure, we failed in it.
Uh actually the operatives succeeded in the operation but were caught.
Marshall was on his way to the other world, but we had to reverse um the trend and to bring him back to life.
I’m alive, but no thanks to the Israelis whose original objective had been to kill me.
But they failed.
And I’m still here because God wanted it that way.
And also because of my bodyguards and the courage of King Hussein.
Shaken by the whole incident and still furious, King Hussein still has the two Mossad agents in custody.
In exchange for their freedom, he demands the release of 50 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli jails.
Israel accepts the deal.
2 days later, two helicopters fly over Aman.
One is flying in the released Palestinians to Jordan.
The other is heading in the opposite direction with the two Mossad agents.
Israel has one more humiliation to undergo when it’s forced to free the founder of Hamas, the aged shake Ahmed Yasin, who had been imprisoned for 8 years.
A few days after the Mashal affair, the handicapped shake is given a hero’s welcome by the king of Jordan.
And later, he returns triumphantly to Gaza.
It’s a double blow for Mossad.
Mashal is alive and Shik Yasin a free man.
Nobody should underestimate what it took for Israel first to admit doing that.
Give the antidote to Khalid Mash and release Sheikh Ahmed Yin from prison.
This is a major humiliation from Israel.
It was a failure.
That’s true.
And the biggest disappointment is the fact that Khaled Mishal is still alive.
That’s the biggest failure of the mission.
And then we had to liberate Shik Yasin, but we liquidated him a few years later.
So that score was finally settled.
A score indeed settled seven years later when three Israeli missiles strike the Hamas founder as he leaves his home.
In Gaza, 200,000 Palestinians attend the funeral of the shake.
In the crowd, as fate would have it, is Khaled Mashal, the man whose narrow escape from Msad now means he’s lived to become the new leader of Hamas.
But a leader who’s returned to a life in exile, this time in Qatar.
In December 2012, he returned as a hero to the Palestinian lands he’d left 37 years earlier.
It’s the first time in 37 years that I’m in Palestine and the very first time I’ve ever been to Gaza.
Do you think he’s still on the list? I don’t know if he is on the list uh or not.
I don’t know what is the list is now.
What is the list now? I have no idea.
I think that whenever Israel decide if Israel will decide to eliminate him, Israel can do so.
Um remember that it was done before.
The fact that we had to bring him back back to life is is another issue.
But but uh but he was killed before and so this this is a fact.
On the 19th of February 2010, MSAD will stage one of its most spectacular operations and under the very gaze of dozens of security cameras.
It’s a world’s first.
In this Dubai hotel, the MSAD hit team are tracking Mahmud El Mabu, a Hamas leader.
Al-Mabu is suspected of smuggling weapons from Iran into Gaza for use by Hamas’s armed brigades.
On the day of the attack, the Mossad unit is led by this bald man carrying a French passport.
At the start of the operation, one of the team members stops inside a bathroom to put on a wig and change appearances.
A few moments later, the assassins enter the hotel.
Offscreen, they’ll break into the Hamas leader room and wait for their prey.
At 6:40 p.
m.
, Al-Mabu gets back to his room.
These are the last images showing him alive.
Inside the MSAD team is waiting.
After tying him up, they inject a neuromuscular relaxant.
His death will appear to be of natural causes.
One by one, his muscles are paralyzed.
It’s painful and takes some time.
Could the agents not have known the hotel was littered with surveillance cameras? In this video, one of the agents looks directly at one of the hotel cameras.
But throughout the entire operation, and on their passport photos, all the agents are heavily disguised so as not to be identified.
False names, false noses, false eyebrows, false beards.
One person we spoke to confirmed this was the case.
Yarin Sheriff is a makeup artist working in fashion.
As a sideline, he also helped disguise Israel’s secret agents for 18 years.
For the first time, he speaks publicly about his regular work with MSAD.
He says the interview was done with the knowledge and approval of the authorities.
Even if I’m accredited to the defense ministry, I try not to ask too many questions.
All I want to know is what concerns the country or where the Mossad agents will be operating.
I don’t want to make these people feel uncomfortable by forcing them to talk.
The less you know, the better.
If you put makeup on someone who’s going to a Muslim country, uh, this beard, for, for example, will help disguise them as a as a cleric.
But I don’t like that.
Actually, what I’m interested in doing uh is what’s needed, what’s specially adapted, the specific makeup for the country they’ll be going to.
Yarin Sheriff knows that the agent’s lives could depend on the quality of his work.
You have to appreciate this isn’t a joke.
I stick a little beard on, of course, but for them, their lives are at risk.
The makeup artist says he wasn’t involved in the Dubai operation, but it’s impossible to check.
But Yarin Sharav is very familiar with the methods employed by the commandos, such as going into the bathroom to put on a wig.
It’s a technique he’s been teaching the Mossad agents since the mid 1990s.
I sometimes teach them about adopting six or seven different looks.
The person has to learn how to change looks very quickly.
If I give them special glue, I also need to give them a means to take it off in just a few seconds.
It has to be 100% natural.
And the person has also to be 100% competent in changing appearances again and as quickly as possible.
According to Yarin Sharath, Mossad sometimes even gives its agents new teeth, a technique probably used by some of the 20 agents sent to Dubai in January 2010.
Teeth are less frequent.
You can change the whole plaque, which a dentist can work on.
You make a cast of the person’s mouth with a model like like this one.
And then you put the new teeth in.
At the end of the training program, the makeup artist subjects his pupils to one final test.
The last test we do is that after the training with me and my team here at my house, the agent has to disguise himself and then visit his mother or father.
If they don’t recognize him, then it’s worth.
Yarin Sharath is one of a group of Israelis who are happy to make their professional skills available to MSAD and its special teams.
Special ops that are often spectacular, but that now make the finger of suspicion point at Mossad whenever someone mysteriously disappears in the Middle East.
One last thought.
Did Israel murder Yasa Arafat? Mr.
Yasa Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has died at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamar.
In 2004, Palestinian leader dies in a hospital in a suburb of Paris as a result of a mysterious illness.
Msad is suspected immediately.
In July 2012, a laboratory in Loausanne says it has found traces of pelonium, a radioactive element, on Arafat’s clothing.
To allow further analysis, the body of the longtime PLO leader is exumed in November 2012.
Today, the cause of his death is still unknown, but to the Palestinians, Israel remains the number one suspect.
One day analysis or witnesses might shed light on whether Arafat too was a victim of the notorious Hebrew proverb, “He who comes to kill you, get up early and kill them first.
