The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Yitzhak Hofi.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location
Intelligence & Government	Person Nuclear Israel	Yitzhak Hofi was the director of Mossad, Israel's primary foreign intelligence service.	1927-01-25	2014-09-15	Tel Aviv, Israel

Yitzhak Hofi was the director of Mossad, Israel's primary foreign intelligence service. He 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. He was joined in this futile dissent by Yehoshua Saguy, chief of military intelligence, and Yigael Yadin, the deputy prime minister.¹

Two weeks after the Osirak bombing, Hofi gave an unprecedented newspaper interview, criticizing politicians who were compromising secret intelligence. This was widely understood within the Israeli intelligence community as a criticism of Prime Minister Menachem Begin's public remarks about a secret underground facility.¹

Rafael Eitan had a need to settle old scores with Yitzhak Hofi, the head of Mossad, and Avraham Shalom, Shin Beth's director. This personal ambition and need for revenge drove Eitan's actions, including the recruitment of Jonathan Pollard.²

Footnotes

---

1. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 1. ↩︎

2. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 21. ↩︎