We all know about agencies for actors, athletes or models. However, a wholly different and first-of-its-kind agency was recently established – this time for members of the Mossad, the Shin Bet security agency, and other clandestine organizations in Israel and across the globe, with the aim of advising Hollywood film producers, actors and directors making spy movies.
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"A short while after the COVID crisis erupted, I got the idea to establish an agency," Avner Avraham, who served as a Mossad agent for 28 years, told Israel Hayom.
Discussing how he began recruiting people to launch his agency, Avraham said, "I have many connections in Israel and abroad. I reached out to interesting individuals from the world of security and espionage and they joined me."
The agency, named SPYLEGENDS, has signed many former Mossad, Shin Bet, IDF and Israel Police officials, such as former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Perry, former Mossad deputy director Ilan Mizrahi, former Mossad agents Yola Reitman and Mishka Ben-David, former IDF deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. (ret.) Matan Vilnai and others, including from foreign intelligence services, such as former CIA agent Robert Baer.
Avraham, 54, who at the tail end of his Mossad career established the agency's museum and served as its director, was the chief consultant for the film "Operation Finale" about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, starring Ben Kingsley.
"I was approached several times with offers from film and television productions that came across the agency's website," recounts Avraham, "asking me to connect them with the right people to advise and help them with the details and look professional and credible on-screen."
According to Avraham, he cannot reveal what movies his company is advising. "Some movies are finished and others are in production. We are signed on non-disclosure agreements, so I can't elaborate on that," he says with a smile befitting someone who has spent a career keeping secrets.
With that, it's important for Avraham to note that beyond providing consulting services for Hollywood productions, his company also provides other services. "We give lectures in Israel and abroad, hold exhibitions, advise spy museums and commercial companies, promote the commemoration of the Holocaust and [legacy of] Zionism, sell lecture series to Jewish communities in the Diaspora, and we've even begun working with gadget stores in the United States."
Alongside former members of intelligence and security agencies, SPYLEGENDS also employs journalists, authors, screenwriters and actors and even family members of former spies and security officials.
"Avraham Cohen, who is the brother of Mossad hero Eli Cohen, also lectures within our framework. As does Michelle Bineth, the daughter of Max Bineth, who committed suicide in Egyptian prison; or Yossi (Yossele) Schuchmacher, who was kidnapped as a child by his grandfather and taken to New York and later returned by Mossad agents at the behest of [Israel's first prime minister David] Ben-Gurion."
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