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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Iran-Israel Joint Committee.md
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@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ The [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] was established in the fall of 1980 by [[Men
The rationale for helping the [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini|Khomeini]] government was that if the Iranians fought the Iraqis, their soldiers would be killed instead of Israeli soldiers. Additionally, the war diverted [[Arab]] attention away from Israel and drained [[Arab countries]] of money. From the [[Likud Party|Likud's]] perspective, the rise of Khomeini was beneficial as he was radical, anti-[[United States|American]], and anti-Arab, aligning with Israel's national security interest to support him.[^1]
The initial members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee included [[David Kimche]], [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], [[Moshe Hebroni]], and [[Rafi]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] was appointed to the committee on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out the committee's initiatives due to his fluency in Farsi and personal contacts in Iran.[^1]
The initial members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee included [[David Kimche]], [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], [[Moshe Hebroni]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] was appointed to the committee on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out the committee's initiatives due to his fluency in Farsi and personal contacts in Iran.[^1]
By March 1981, the Iran-Israel Joint Committee had established mechanisms for handling secret arms sales to Iran, as promised in the October [[Paris Summit Meeting]]. Israel operated under a general agreement of cooperation secretly reached in principle between Prime Minister Begin and [[William J. Casey]] in August 1980. David Kimche dealt directly with [[Robert Gates]] on the implementation of these sales. In early 1981, Gates approved the sale of unsophisticated weapons to Iran.[^1]

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/LAKAM.md
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@ -17,11 +17,11 @@ In the early 1980s, LAKAM was widely known by its Hebrew acronym. [[Rafael Eitan
### U.S. Spy Network Operations
[[Rafi]]'s operation to build a spy network in the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists was funded from [[LAKAM|LAKAM's]] budget. [[Iris]], a [[LAKAM]] representative in [[Washington, D.C.]], served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]], [[Jonathan Pollard]], and [[Rafi]].[^1]
[[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]'s operation to build a spy network in the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists was funded from [[LAKAM|LAKAM's]] budget. [[Iris]], a [[LAKAM]] representative in [[Washington, D.C.]], served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]], [[Jonathan Pollard]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]].[^1]
### Political Control and Funding
[[LAKAM]] was later controlled by [[Rafi]] after [[Shimon Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, and its huge slush fund, which had once financed [[Labor Party|Labor]] projects, was then controlled by [[Rafi|Eitan]].[^1]
[[LAKAM]] was later controlled by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] after [[Shimon Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, and its huge slush fund, which had once financed [[Labor Party|Labor]] projects, was then controlled by [[Rafael Eitan|Eitan]].[^1]
### PROMIS Software Operation

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Mossad.md
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@ -1,28 +1,166 @@
---
aliases:
- Mossad
- The Mossad
- HaMossad
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks
- Israeli Secret Intelligence Service
- Israeli intelligence
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
title: Mossad
tags:
- organization
- intelligence
- international
description: Mossad is the national intelligence agency of Israel.
- Organization
- Intelligence
- Israel
- CIA
- KKMountain
- Nuclear
- Dimona
- SamsonOption
- Eichmann
- Vanunu
- IranIsraelArms
- PROMIS
- Lebanon
description: Mossad is the foreign intelligence agency of Israel, reporting to the prime minister.
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "Mossad is Israel's national foreign intelligence agency, whose extensive relationship with the CIA - including 28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s and the KK MOUNTAIN financial subsidy program - is a central subject of this vault."
summary: "Israel's foreign intelligence service, whose liaison with the CIA, funded off the books through KK MOUNTAIN, runs through the Dimona, Eichmann, Phalangist, Vanunu and Iran arms episodes in this vault's record."
start: 1949
location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Reuven Shiloah]]"
reverse: true
start: 1949
end: 1952
role: "first head"
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Isser Harel]]"
reverse: true
start: 1952
end: 1963
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Meir Amit]]"
reverse: true
start: 1963
end: 1968
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Zvi Zamir]]"
reverse: true
start: 1968
end: 1974
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Yitzhak Hofi]]"
reverse: true
start: 1974
end: 1982
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Nachum Admoni]]"
reverse: true
start: 1982
end: 1989
role: "deputy head before September 12, 1982"
fn: 1
- type: funded
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
reverse: true
start: 1960
end: 1969
role: "KK MOUNTAIN cash payments from the director's contingency fund"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
start: 1950
role: "28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence by 1979, with James Jesus Angleton responsible for liaison"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Phalangists]]"
start: 1982
end: 1982
role: "the Mossad was made responsible for the link with the Phalangist leadership"
fn: 10
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Kahan Commission]]"
start: 1982-09
end: 1983-02-08
fn: 11
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]"
start: 1980
role: "joint committee with military intelligence for arms supply to Iran, according to Ari Ben-Menashe"
fn: 13
---
The Mossad (the Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments, in the words of the 1983 [[Kahan Commission]]) is the foreign intelligence service of [[Israel]]. Its own website carries a directive of [[David Ben-Gurion]] on its creation and lists twelve directors from [[Reuven Shiloah]] in 1949 to [[Yossi Cohen]], who left in 2021: Shiloah (1949 to 1952), [[Isser Harel]] (1952 to 1963), [[Meir Amit]] (1963 to 1968), [[Zvi Zamir]] (1968 to 1974), [[Yitzhak Hofi]] (1974 to 1982), [[Nachum Admoni]] (1982 to 1989), [[Shabtai Shavit]] (1989 to 1996), [[Danny Yatom]] (1996 to 1998), [[Efraim Halevy]] (1998 to 2002), [[Meir Dagan]] (2002 to 2011), [[Tamir Pardo]] (2011 to 2016) and Cohen (2016 to 2021).[^1] The record below follows the service where it touches the American intelligence services, the nuclear program at [[Dimona]], and the Lebanon, Iran and computer-software episodes that run through this vault.[^2]
[[Mossad]] is the national intelligence agency of [[Israel]]. Its relationship with the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] was extensive, involving 28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s. Many of these arrangements were financed off-the-books through a special contingency fund maintained by the Director of Central Intelligence. One such operation, code-named KK MOUNTAIN, provided millions in annual cash payments to Mossad, in return for which Mossad agents acted as American surrogates in North Africa and other regions. Other agreements financed Israeli operations in [[Syria]] and the [[Soviet Union]], where the CIA found it difficult to operate.[^2]
### Liaison with the CIA and KK MOUNTAIN
In 1977, [[Stansfield Turner]], then Director of Central Intelligence, abruptly cut back intelligence liaison with [[Israel]], leading to a sharp reduction in the flow of intelligence from [[Israel]] to [[Washington, D.C.]]. However, the CIA's "embarrassingly inept reporting on [[Iran]]", particularly their failure to anticipate the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, forced the American leadership to turn back to Israeli help in anticipating world events. This contributed to the March 1979 [[KH-11]] agreement, which granted [[Israel]] access to high-tech satellite imagery.[^2]
[[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that the March 1979 agreement giving Israel access to [[KH-11]] satellite imagery was "no less than the twenty-eighth in a series of formal Israeli-American cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s"; that nothing about them has been officially disclosed; and that many were financed "off-the-books," from "a special contingency fund personally maintained by the director of central intelligence." Through the 1960s, he wrote, one of the most sensitive operations in the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] was code-named [[KK MOUNTAIN]] ("kk" being the CIA digraph for documents dealing with Israel), which "provided for untold millions in annual cash payments to Mossad"; in return, Mossad agents acted "in essence, as American surrogates" in North Africa and in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and the Congo. Other agreements financed Israeli operations in [[Syria]] and inside the [[Soviet Union]], and part of the Soviet work was financed by disbursements cleared through the congressional oversight committees.[^3]
[[Yitzhak Hofi]], the director of Mossad, opposed the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]] in June 1981, primarily because there was no evidence that [[Iraq]] was yet capable of building a bomb.[^2]
Hersh wrote that in 1977 the Director of Central Intelligence [[Stansfield Turner]] abruptly cut back intelligence liaison with Israel and other friendly services, that the Israelis answered by sharply reducing what they sent to Washington, and that the CIA rejected a 1978 analysis by the former ambassador to Iran Uri Lubrani that the Shah would not survive; in the Israeli view, he wrote, the 1979 KH-11 agreement was made inevitable by the CIA's failure to anticipate Soviet pressure on Afghanistan and the upheavals in [[Iran]], where "Mossad's information was far superior," Hersh noting that there were large Jewish communities in both countries. Lubrani was attached to the Israeli delegation that negotiated the KH-11 agreement.[^3] Hersh also wrote that some American intelligence officials suspected that President [[Jimmy Carter]]'s decision was a reward for [[Menachem Begin]]'s success at the [[Camp David summit]].[^3]
In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, [[Uri Geller]] claimed to have worked with Mossad officials, along with Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet. He stated that he was tested by these agencies and began to work for them, performing tasks such as clairvoyantly viewing intelligence targets and predicting troop deployments.[^1]
On the American side, Hersh wrote, [[James Jesus Angleton]], the CIA's director of counterintelligence, "also was responsible for liaison with Israel"; former Agency officials who criticized his counterintelligence methods acknowledged that he had handled Israel "correctly and proficiently"; and one of his closest colleagues was the Israeli intelligence official Meir (Meme) Deshalit, who was posted to Washington in 1948 and was the older brother of the physicist Amos Deshalit. Angleton had worked with the Jewish resistance in Italy while in the [[Office of Strategic Services]].[^4]
However, Geller later chose to pursue a high-profile career as a stage performer rather than a psychic operative for Israel. Mossad officials, along with other Israeli intelligence, also visited [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] to assess Geller's abilities, seeking to determine if his psychic talents were genuine and how valuable he could be as an intelligence asset.[^1]
### Eichmann, 1960
The CIA's Directorate of Operations name file on [[Adolf Eichmann]], released in 2005 under the [[Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act]] and posted by the National Security Archive, records that the CIA was surprised by the capture of Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina on May 2, 1960 and that the Director of Central Intelligence immediately asked operatives with contacts in the Israeli service to gather "all possible details." In one exchange recorded in volume 1, document 49, a CIA officer congratulated his Israeli counterpart "on the final accomplishment of what appeared to be a magnificent job" and noted that captured Nazi war documents might interest him. To strengthen ties with the Israeli services, the editors wrote, Angleton's Counterintelligence Staff searched archives and submitted names of other German officers mentioned in the Eichmann documents; the review found that some of Eichmann's associates, including [[Otto von Bolschwing]], described there as Eichmann's "tutor on Zionism and the politics of Zionism in the mid-1930s," had been assets of the [[Gehlen Organization]] and the CIA; the posting quotes the historian Timothy Naftali that Bolschwing contacted a former CIA handler in panic after the capture.[^5] Hersh wrote that [[Rafael Eitan]] "had participated in the 1960 kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires" and later resigned from Mossad.[^6]
### The spring of 1963 and the German scientists
A National Security Archive posting records that in the spring of 1963 "some top officials in Israel, primarily Mossad chief Isser Harel with the support of Foreign Minister [[Golda Meir]]," began through leaks to the Israeli press a public campaign about German scientists in Egypt developing ballistic missiles and radiological weapons, "possibly even nuclear weapons"; that the State Department intelligence chief Thomas Hughes asked the Director of Central Intelligence [[John McCone]] for a special estimate on advanced weapons programs in the United Arab Republic and Israel; and that the estimate of May 8, 1963 concluded that Israel "will attempt to produce a weapon sometime in the next several years" unless deterred, while the United Arab Republic did not have "the capability of producing a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future."[^7] The same posting dates the correspondence between [[John F. Kennedy]] and Ben-Gurion over Dimona inspections to those months; Mossad's own list ends Harel's term in 1963.[^1][^7]
### Plumbat, 1968
Hersh wrote that Mossad wanted uranium ore of which "hundreds of tons" sat in a warehouse near Antwerp, controlled by Euratom, and that Dimona, "ostensibly a twenty-four-megawatt reactor capable of consuming no more than twenty-four tons of ore in a year," could not openly buy an eight-year supply. In March 1968, he wrote, Mossad approached one of its agents in West Germany to buy the ore for $4 million, allegedly for an Italian chemical company in Milan; Euratom approved the sale in October; the uranium left Antwerp aboard a vessel renamed the Scheersberg A, "purchased, with Mossad funds, by another Israeli agent-in-place in Turkey"; and at sea the ore was transferred to an Israeli freighter guarded by gunboats. The disappearance was known to Euratom within months, American and European agencies reported internally that Israel was involved, and it took nine years for the press to report it; Hersh cited published accounts "confirmed by Israeli officials" and a 1978 book, *The Plumbat Affair*.[^8]
### Osirak and the Lebanon war
Hersh wrote that Hofi, "the director of Mossad," and the chief of military intelligence [[Yehoshua Saguy]] opposed the 1981 attack on [[Osirak bombing|Osirak]] "primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb," and that two weeks after the raid Hofi gave an interview, identified only by title under censorship, complaining about politicians who compromised secret intelligence, which in Hersh's account left "no doubt in the Israeli intelligence community" that Begin was the politician meant; Hersh added that Hofi was also a critic of [[Ariel Sharon]].[^9]
The Kahan Commission, reporting on the Sabra and Shatila massacres, wrote that Israel had extended aid to the Christian armed forces, that "the Mossad was made responsible for the link with the Phalangists," and that its representatives "maintained a rather close connection with the Phalangist leadership"; that the Mossad "to a not inconsiderable extent under the influence of constant and close contact with the Phalangist elite" favored strengthening the relationship while military intelligence emphasized the Phalangists' unreliability; and that the Mossad's head, in testimony of December 27, 1982, accepted that "subjective, and not only objective, relations also emerged." In the view prevailing among the Mossad agents before the war, the commission wrote, the Phalangists' atrocities were a thing of the past, although in meetings with the heads of the Mossad [[Bashir Gemayel]] had said things that "left no room for doubt" of his intention to eliminate the Palestinian problem in Lebanon even by "aberrant methods."[^10] In cables of September 15 the Mossad representative in Beirut reported the meetings of the chief of staff and the defense minister with the Phalangist leadership and that the Phalangists would enter West Beirut after the Israeli Defense Forces; a cable of September 16 at noon reported a coordination meeting to prepare the Phalangists "for operations to clear the city of terrorists," and another that they would start work at the Burj el-Barajneh camp. The head of the Mossad, who had assumed the post on September 12, 1982 after serving as deputy, learned of the decision to send the Phalangists into the camps only at the cabinet meeting of Thursday evening, did not give an assessment of their entry or express reservations, and was found by the commission to have shown an inaction that "should not be considered serious," and the commission considered it sufficient to determine responsibility without further recommendation.[^11]
### Iran, 1980 and 1981
[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] wrote that in the fall of 1980 Begin ordered the military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Sagi]] and the Mossad's "acting director" Nachum Admoni to create an Iran-Israel Joint Committee of military intelligence and Mossad to supply arms to Iran; that [[David Kimche]], whom he called head of Tevel, was its senior member; and that after [[Yitzhak Shamir]] became prime minister members including Kimche were forced out and Eitan ran the committee.[^12][^13] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for these passages. The Mossad's own list gives Hofi as head from 1974 to 1982 and Admoni from 1982, and the Kahan Commission describes Admoni as deputy head until September 12, 1982.[^1][^10] The House October Surprise Task Force wrote that Eitan and Saguy had told the Israeli government they never met Ben-Menashe and that his Israeli military file showed work as a translator; Ben-Menashe was acquitted in New York in November 1990.[^14] See [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].
### PROMIS, according to Ben-Menashe
Ben-Menashe wrote that Eitan, as counterterrorism adviser to Begin and then to Shamir, took an interest in the software program [[PROMIS]]; that in 1982 [[Earl Brian]] approached Eitan about selling it to foreign intelligence agencies; that Eitan decided to have a "trap door" installed to give Israeli agents access to the computers of any service that bought it; that Ben-Menashe recruited his childhood friend [[Yehuda Ben-Hanan]], of Software and Engineering Consultants in California, to build the external access; that Eitan selected Jordan to test it and that Brian sold it through his company [[Hadron]]; and that [[Robert Maxwell]] "made a fortune out of it" through his companies.[^15] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for these passages. See [[PROMIS Software Scandal]].
### Vanunu and the Mirror Group, 1986
Hersh wrote that copies of the photographs [[Mordecai Vanunu]] took inside Dimona were made available in London, before the Sunday Times published, to an Israeli intelligence agent masquerading as an American reporter; that they were sent by courier to the office of Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]], who ordered Mossad to get Vanunu out of London and into Israeli custody; that "no kidnapping could take place in England for diplomatic reasons"; and that Vanunu was enticed by a Mossad agent named Cindy Hanin Bentov (a pseudonym; see [[Cindy Hanin Bentov]]) to leave for Rome a few days before publication, where, according to Vanunu's account to relatives, he was drugged and returned to Israel by ship.[^16]
Ben-Menashe told Hersh that after Vanunu's photographs reached the Israeli leadership he and others were told that "Peres said, 'Let's make him an example'" rather than assassinating him; that the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror, [[Nicholas Davies]], "provided the framework" for the Sunday Mirror's hostile story of September 28, which went to Maxwell, publisher of the Mirror Group; and that Maxwell told him "I know what has to happen. I have already spoken to your bosses."[^17] The Sunday Mirror's reporters Tony Frost and Mark Souster were ordered by their editor to take the photographs to the Israeli embassy; the senior deputy editor John C. Parker understood that Maxwell had given the order; the news editor Peter J. Miller said that "the line we were instructed to take cost the Sunday Mirror a world-beating exclusive"; and the editor Michael Malloy acknowledged discussing the story with Maxwell, said there was "nothing sinister or strange" in it, and recalled that Maxwell ordered the photographs shown to the Israelis.[^17] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for his own account of the meeting with Maxwell and of the instructions; the Mirror staff statements are those of the persons named.
### Uri Geller
[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that, according to Geller, [[Moshe Dayan]] asked [[Uri Geller]] "Now, what can you do for Israel?"; that "so the story goes" Geller then met the military intelligence chief [[Aharon Yariv]] and officials of Mossad and [[Shin Bet]], was tested by them and began to work for them, viewing targets in Syria and elsewhere; and that Yariv, in an interview with the science writer John Wilhelm in the mid-1970s, denied ever meeting or consulting with Geller. Schnabel wrote that Geller says he later met secretly in hotel rooms in the United States with Israeli officials to brief them on his experiences at [[Stanford Research Institute]] and was warned "not to do certain things" there; that in one of Geller's stories a tape recorder started to play by itself at a meeting with Mossad officers; and that among the "wild surmises" in the air when CIA officials asked Puthoff about Geller was that he was "part of some Mossad disinformation project, designed to spook the Arabs into believing that Israel possessed a paranormal superman," or that Israeli intelligence wanted to infiltrate SRI. Several Israeli officials came to SRI in the summer of 1973; [[Hal Puthoff|Harold Puthoff]] "had the impression that they were from Israeli military intelligence," and they said that Geller had done "surprisingly good work for them against Middle Eastern military targets" and asked whether it was luck or verifiable psychic ability.[^18]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991.
[^1]: Mossad, "History," mossad.gov.il (directive of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion on the establishment of the Mossad; list of the heads of the Mossad, 1949 to 2021). https://mossad.gov.il/en/history
[^2]: Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, Report, February 8, 1983, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Historical Documents, vol. 8: 1982-1984, document 104. https://syriaaccountability.org/content/images/wordpress/ISRAELMFA_Commission-Inquiry-Beirut_1983_EN.pdf
[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement," pp. 3-6. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option
[^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 11, "Playing the Game," pp. 143-145.
[^5]: Feinstein, Tamara, ed., "The CIA Names File on Adolf Eichmann," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 150, March 24, 2005, citing the CIA Directorate of Operations file, vol. 1, document 49, and vol. 2, document 7. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB150/index.htm
[^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 21, "Israel's Nuclear Spy," pp. 288-289.
[^7]: Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, eds., "The Battle of the Letters, 1963," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 671, May 2, 2019, documents 17 and 22. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-05-02/battle-letters-1963-john-f-kennedy-david-ben-gurion-levi-eshkol-us-inspections-dimona
[^8]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 13, "An Israeli Decision," pp. 180-181.
[^9]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 1, pp. 9-11; chapter 21, p. 294 footnote (Hofi and Sharon).
[^10]: Kahan Commission Report, sections on the Phalangists and the Mossad, on the Phalangists' entry into the camps, and on the head of the Mossad (note 2).
[^11]: Kahan Commission Report (note 2), recommendations on the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the head of the Mossad.
[^12]: Ben-Menashe, Ari, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*, TrineDay, 2015 reprint of the 1992 edition, passages on the Joint Committee for Iran-Israel Relations, Tevel and the Mossad directorship. https://archive.org/details/profits-of-war-1992-ari-ben-menashe
[^13]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, passage on Begin's order to Sagi and Admoni in the fall of 1980.
[^14]: U.S. House of Representatives, *Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980*, H. Rept. 102-1102, January 3, 1993, section on Ben-Menashe (p. 97). https://archive.org/details/14148-h.rp.-1102 ; Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19, p. 260 footnote (acquittal in November 1990).
[^15]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, chapter on PROMIS.
[^16]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 15, "The Tunnel," pp. 197-198.
[^17]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 22, "An Israeli Asset," pp. 311-315.
[^18]: Schnabel, Jim, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies*, Dell, 1997, chapter 9, "The Trickster." Full text read at https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Rafi.md
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@ -1,22 +1,85 @@
---
aliases:
- Rafi
- Rafi Party
- Rafi (political party)
- Rafi (Israel Workers' List)
- Israel Workers' List
- Israeli Workers List
- Reshimat Poalei Yisrael
- Israel Labor List
- Rafi-State List
- State List
- Reshima Mamlachtit
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
tags:
- Organization
- Political Party
- PoliticalParty
- Israel
- Nuclear
- Dimona
- Mapai
- BenGurion
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "Rafi (Israel Workers' List) was an Israeli political party founded in June 1965 by David Ben-Gurion after his resignation from Mapai, with Shimon Peres as its power broker and Moshe Dayan as a prominent member."
summary: "Israeli opposition party formed by David Ben-Gurion in 1965 after leaving Mapai, whose campaign against Prime Minister Eshkol turned partly on Dimona; it won ten Knesset seats and merged into Labor in 1968."
start: 1965
end: 1968
location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
relations:
- type: founded
with: "[[David Ben-Gurion]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
role: "led the list in the 1965 elections"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Shimon Peres]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
end: 1968
role: "power broker under Ben-Gurion"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Moshe Dayan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
end: 1968
role: "joined after resigning as agriculture minister; defense minister from June 1967"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Ernst David Bergmann]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
role: "founding member"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Gahal]]"
start: 1965
end: 1967
role: "opposition cooperation until the national unity government of June 1967"
fn: 1
---
Rafi (an acronym for the Israel Workers' List) was a new political party created by [[David Ben-Gurion]] in June 1965, after he dramatically resigned from the [[Mapai Party]]. He was joined by [[Shimon Peres]], who became Rafi's power broker, and [[Moshe Dayan]]. Ben-Gurion's hope was that Rafi could capture a significant number of seats in the Knesset and emerge as a major power broker in Israeli politics.[^1]
Rafi (an acronym of Reshimat Poalei Yisrael, the Israel Workers' List) was a political party formed in 1965 by [[David Ben-Gurion]] and a group of his associates after they left the [[Mapai Party]].[^1][^2]
Rafi became an opposition party, playing a role traditionally belonging to right-wing groups. While Ben-Gurion's immediate reason for splitting with Mapai leadership was his continued anger over the [[Lavon Affair]], the Rafi Party, under Peres's leadership, advocated for a more aggressive position across defense issues, particularly on nuclear weapons. [[Ernst David Bergmann]] was another founding member of Rafi and continued to influence Ben-Gurion regarding the dangers of not initiating the production of a nuclear arsenal.[^1]
### Founding
The issue of nuclear weapons emerged as a dominant one in the 1965 elections, often discussed in coded language in Israeli newspapers. Rafi leaders criticized [[Levi Eshkol]]'s "big mistake," which was understood by many inside [[Israel]] as referring to Eshkol's hesitations about opening a nuclear weapons assembly line at [[Dimona]].[^1]
The Israel Democracy Institute records that the split came from Ben-Gurion's fight to reopen the investigation of the [[Lavon Affair]], his opposition to a joint Mapai list with Ahdut HaAvoda, and his concerns about the leadership of [[Levi Eshkol]]; that most of Rafi's members were the young generation of Mapai, including [[Moshe Dayan]], [[Shimon Peres]] and [[Yitzhak Navon]]; that its platform did not mention socialism and stressed a change in the election system; and that on foreign policy and security it was "more hawkish than Mapai."[^1] The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry states that seven Mapai Knesset members, later joined by Dayan, formed the new list in July 1965.[^2] [[Seymour Hersh]] dated Ben-Gurion's resignation from Mapai to June 1965, "talking darkly of Eshkol's 'endangering the nation's security'"; he wrote that Peres joined "reluctant but loyal" and became Rafi's "power broker," that Dayan, who had recently resigned as agriculture minister, joined as well, and that Ben-Gurion hoped for as many as twenty-five of the 120 Knesset seats.[^3]
However, Rafi and Ben-Gurion were disappointed by the election results, winning only ten seats in the Knesset, which was insufficient to provide Ben-Gurion with a power base. The election was interpreted as a brutal referendum on his dream of returning to power and marked the end of his role in the public policy of [[Israel]].[^1]
### The nuclear issue in the 1965 campaign
Hersh wrote that Eshkol's decision to hold the nuclear question at the research stage, taken at the Midrasha conference, "enraged" Ben-Gurion, who compared him to Neville Chamberlain; that Rafi under Peres took "a more aggressive position across the spectrum of defense issues, and especially on nuclear weapons"; and that [[Ernst David Bergmann]] was a founding member who "once again had Ben-Gurion's ear": "Ben-Gurion was quoting Bergmann all the time," an Israeli recalled, about the dangers of not producing a nuclear arsenal.[^3] According to Hersh the issue was "played out in code language" in the 1965 election. The Israeli newspapers carried criticism by Peres and Ben-Gurion of what was called in Hebrew "the sensitive topic" or "a lament for generations," and Rafi leaders constantly attacked what they called Eshkol's "big mistake," language that many in Israel understood as referring to his hesitations about opening a nuclear weapons assembly line at [[Dimona]]. Hersh wrote that American and other newspapers did not report it and that "neither did the American intelligence community" understand it.[^3] He added that a prominent lawyer close to [[Golda Meir]] publicly called Ben-Gurion a "coward" and Rafi a "neo-Fascist group," and that for Ben-Gurion's critics the election was a contest between a state that relied on "science, objective knowledge" and one that relied on dedicated volunteers.[^3]
The party played, in Hersh's phrase, "the role that had traditionally belonged to right-wing groups"; the Israel Democracy Institute records that because Rafi did not join the coalition it "acted in cooperation with" [[Gahal]].[^1][^3]
### Results, the Six-Day War and the merger
Rafi received 95,328 votes, 7.9 percent, and ten of the 120 seats in the November 1965 Knesset election, after winning 12 percent of the vote in the Histadrut elections of September.[^1][^2] Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion and Rafi "were sorely disappointed by the election," that it amounted to "a brutal referendum on his dream of returning to power, and the end of his role in the public policy of Israel," and that Eshkol took it as a referendum on his handling of the nuclear issue, after which Dimona "would remain a standby operation."[^3] The party's founding convention in May 1966 represented about 23,000 members and adopted a program of electoral reform, defense self-sufficiency, national health insurance, free secondary education and economic modernization with an emphasis on science.[^2]
On the eve of the Six-Day War of June 1967 Rafi and Gahal pressed for Dayan's appointment as defense minister; both joined the national unity government of Eshkol, and Dayan became minister of defense.[^1] On January 21, 1968 Rafi, Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda formed the Israel Labor Party, Rafi receiving 21.5 percent of the places on its governing bodies; Ben-Gurion's separate State List, "composed largely of Rafi supporters," won four seats in the 1969 elections, was renamed the Rafi-State List in February 1971 and in 1973 ran as part of the [[Likud Party]] bloc.[^2] See [[Labor Party]].
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 9.
[^1]: Israel Democracy Institute, "Rafi (The Israeli Workers List)," Elections and Parties (founding, leaders, 1965 result, Six-Day War cabinet). https://en.idi.org.il/israeli-elections-and-parties/parties/rafi
[^2]: Louvish, Misha, "Rafi," *Encyclopaedia Judaica*, on Encyclopedia.com (July 1965 list, Histadrut and Knesset results, May 1966 convention, State List, merger of January 21, 1968). https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rafi
[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 10, "The Samson Option," pp. 138-141. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option