The Magical Mossad Mystery Tour
Just East of Zar’it, Northern IsraelShosh Amit: most proud of getting Jews out of Arab countries
“You want to know a secret? Hezbollah is watching! They are usually up there with binoculars,” an Israeli soldier confided to me. She pointed north amid the green hills in the direction of Ramya, the Lebanese village which was the approximate starting point of the terrorist group’s flagship tunnel, named Wilderness Flower by the IDF but more commonly known as the Ramya Tunnel. We were standing amid a group of tourists at the tunnel’s mouth, now framed in concrete and with a metal door, nearly four years to the day that the Israel Defense Forces had exposed the assault passageway, one of six dug from inside southern Lebanon under Israeli territory. The IDF has blown up the other five.
If Hezbollah was indeed watching, it must have been a shaming experience for the surveillants. This marvel of military engineering, which would have enabled a flash mob of Shia fighters to emerge in the Upper Galilee to slaughter at will, was now entertaining a group of about 50 mostly elderly and Jewish tourists, some using walkers, many commenting on what schmucks the Hezbollahis must have been to invest so heavily in not one but six failed tunnels, as we moved on to Misgav Am for ice cream.
“It took the IDF four years to figure out all the tunnels,” said Major Nehemiah, another soldier who invited visitors to photograph anything except himself. “Hezbollah envisioned an elite force to surprise us through the tunnels. They would have surfaced here on the Old Northern Road. It would have a been a tactical, propaganda victory for them, against civilians.”
The Ramya Tunnel, he said, had taken Hezbollah about 10 years to build, and apart from Iranian funding, no foreign expertise or other role was evident in its creation. It ran for about a mile under Ramya into this area near the town of Zar’it, and the concluding section consisted of a circular cement staircase rising nearly 80 yards upward to this point. The steps were too steep for many tour members to explore, but some of our orange-helmeted number tried them out, noting that the damp dolomite walls sported power cables (labeled “Original Hezbollah Infrastructure” in Hebrew and English) but no handrails; presumably Hezbollah fighters would have been of a spryer demographic than us.
Hezbollah’s surveillance duties at this site must be light, because visits are rare—the tunnel is not open to the public. But we were not sightseers but fortunate members of the Ultimate Mossad Mission, a biannual tour sponsored by the Israel Law Center and Shurat HaDin (“Letter of the Law”).
The busload skewed mature, affluent, American, European, and Canadian, with a scattering of family ties to Israel—several would hang on after the tour to visit grandchildren or in-laws—and we could have passed for an extended family on the road with our uniform casual clothes, sturdy shoes, mobile phones, water bottles, and laminated IDs hanging from matching lanyards. Most men wore ball caps, with or without kippahs. Some women’s hair blew in the breeze, some sported snoods or bucket hats resembling the kova tembel or fool’s hat beloved of old-timey kibbutzniks.
We shared the élan of the security-conscious elect conversant with the Spy Museum in D.C., the NSA Museum, which is open to the public, or the CIA Museum, which is not. Our travel highlights would not be luxurious hotels or opulent buffets but coveted access to sites like this, and the high-level intelligence briefings we would judge and follow up with penetrating questions.
The connections between our weeklong jaunt and the Mossad were in fact rather modest. Retired and active Israeli security officers with various affiliations provided backgrounders on security matters, but they were often from the military or law enforcement sectors, which should not have been a surprise. The Mossad is a foreign intelligence organization unlikely to provide foreign visitors with information on bread-and-butter security issues. Someone apparently figured that an “Ultimate Border Police Mission Tour” would lack snap.
It was only when Shosh Amit turned 90 that she agreed to be interviewed by Moshe Vistoch of Israel Hayom. As a girl in Baghdad, Shosh lived through the 1941 Farhud in Baghdad. She was active in the Zionist Underground in Iraq, and immigrated without her parents to Israel. She worked for the Mossad and helped, among other things, Jews escape Syria in the 1980s and 90s.University of Melbourne adopts IHRA definition
What eventually convinced her to come forward was the desire to help raise awareness of the contribution of Iraqi Jews to the construction of the State of Israel’s intelligence system, especially in its early years. Her apartment in the Polg estate, where we met on a warm winter’s day, indeed radiates peace and quiet, but does not betray the storms that were the tenant’s lot. Often there were also internal storms that accompanied her until the wee hours of the night and sometimes entered her dreams.
“My last position at the Mossad,” she shares, “involved the escape of Jews mainly from Syria between the years ’82 and ’90. The work accompanied me until I went to sleep. All the time thoughts ran through my head, how are they doing, how will they get out, will everything be alright, Will the smuggler arrive on time, is all the data I gave good enough. My head was working 24 hours a day, but I’m happy that I got to work in this position.”
She was born in 1933 in Baghdad, as the third daughter of a family of seven children. “Our home was a little different from the traditional Iraqi home,” she says, “Fathers in Iraq had a high status and they hardly spoke to their children, some of them did not remember the girls’ names. The status of women was very low, but in my home it was the opposite. My father , who was engaged in the purchase of land in the city of Kirkur, really shared his purchase considerations with us, and my mother was a graduate of the Alliance School, which was not acceptable in those days.
“The house where I grew up was Zionist. My grandmother on my mother’s side immigrated to the Land of Israel as early as 1926. We had a close connection with Israel. My sister, who is two years older than me, and I ,were also given Hebrew names – Uriah and Shoshana. I often hear Iraqi Jews talk longingly about Iraq. I never felt a sense of belonging in my life, maybe because of all the times my father talked about Israel and our intention to come to Israel.” In 1936, her family came to visit the Land of Israel, which only increased her attachment to the Holy Land. “When we returned to Iraq, the members of the Jewish community treated us as saints because we were in Israel, and the curiosity about Israel was great.”
The University of Melbourne has become the first university in Australia to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.
The adoption, along with all of the definition’s examples, forms part of a broader anti-racism commitment made by the university on Tuesday.
The announcement came just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is marked on January 27.
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) said in a statement it was “thrilled to hear” of the adoption.
“This sends a message to all Jewish students around the country that our voices are being heard. The University’s anti-racism commitment will go a long way to fostering an inclusive and thriving campus experience for all minority groups,” AUJS said.
“We are really looking forward to working with the University of Melbourne throughout the implementation process. Thank you to the University of Melbourne for taking the lead.”
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said, “This move is a strong step forward in the fight against antisemitism on campus and in society as a whole.
“By adopting the Working Definition, Melbourne University is taking a meaningful step to demonstrate to Jewish students that antisemitism on campus will not be tolerated.”
The University of Melbourne made headlines for the wrong reasons last year when its Student Union adopted an anti-resolution many deemed antisemitic.