Earlier this month many news outlets reported that in the aftermath of the fall of Assad and the Ba'athist party Israel was searching for the remains of the Mossad agent Eli Cohen who was executed in Syria nearly 60 years ago.
MOSHE PHILLIPS, AFSI -- The story of Eli Cohen's life should be recalled today even if he had never gone undercover in Syria.
When Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the government of Syria on May 18, 1965, it was clear to Israelis and Syrians that he had succeeded in becoming a friend of the president of Syria, and had penetrated the innermost Syrian government circles. What was not yet known, however, was that he had gathered the intelligence that would later save the State of Israel from being destroyed.
More than any other one man, Eli Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew, earned the Mossad its reputation as one of the best intelligence services in the world, and paved the way for Israel to win on the Golan front in the Six-Day War in June 1967.