In one of the most challenging years for the State of Israel, a surprising counter-trend has emerged: a significant increase in lawyers immigrating to Israel and redirecting their legal careers to the country. While sectors like high-tech and medicine experience concerning "brain drain," the legal profession shows remarkable growth in professionals choosing to make Israel their home and career center.

The numbers tell a compelling story: approximately 49 lawyers immigrated to Israel in 2024, nearly double the 27 who arrived in 2023. This represents part of a broader pattern – in the past five years, 257 lawyers under age 67 have made aliyah, with the peak occurring in 2021 when 64 legal professionals immigrated due to escalating Russia-Ukraine tensions.

Jeremy Lustman, partner and head of DLA Piper Israel group, considers this nothing short of a phenomenon. Recently, Lustman organized a specialized conference in New York that attracted 75 participants from Israel's business leadership, bringing together prominent Israeli law firms and technology companies. He views this migration as injecting valuable human capital into Israel's legal system, with these lawyers bringing international experience, business networks, and deep understanding of the American market.

"This is indeed a phenomenon," Lustman affirmed. "When you combine the number of new immigrants over the past five years, it represents a significant total. If we examine how many Israelis leave for the US each summer to work in high-tech, we see substantial cumulative numbers. So I wouldn't focus solely on 'how many relocated this summer?' or 'how many moved last year?' For many families, immigration is a years-long process involving considerations about location, career opportunities, income sources, and children's needs. Looking at all professionals continuing to immigrate yearly, the immigrant community here represents a tremendous phenomenon. Much of this relates to advancing the conversation and helping immigrants recognize the opportunities available in Israel."

Integration into Israel's legal landscape

When asked whether these lawyers primarily operate in the local market or represent Israeli companies internationally, Lustman explained the varied paths they take: "It's a combination. Some immigrate to Israel and join companies as employees, assisting Israeli businesses both domestically and internationally. Others represent foreign law firms in Israel, helping Israeli clients with overseas matters. Israeli law firms increasingly recognize the advantage of employing foreign-trained attorneys."

He offers a practical example: "If you're an American lawyer specializing in real estate, you can join one of the Israeli firms with numerous clients wanting to conduct business in the US. You have the opportunity to participate in these processes, providing the firm with a significant competitive advantage."

Language barriers diminishing

Regarding potential language barriers, Lustman observed a significant shift: "Today, it's much less of an issue than previously. In legal practice, most communication, projects, and documents are in English. More Israeli law firms recognize the value of employing English-speaking lawyers, particularly as they seek involvement in international projects and transactions. They definitely appreciate attorneys with high-level English proficiency."

He adds a nuanced perspective on language requirements: "While learning Hebrew remains important when immigrating to Israel, for lawyers working in international fields, English proficiency is a tremendous advantage – not just a skill to get by, but a significant professional asset."

Appeal despite regional challenges

When questioned about Israel's attractiveness amid ongoing conflict, Lustman offered a thoughtful assessment: "I think in some ways the situation is challenging because of the war. But conflict doesn't necessarily make Israel less safe. Seeing more immigrants arriving reinforces the sense that this is the Jewish people's homeland."

He connected this immigration trend to rising global concerns: "Combined with increasing antisemitism abroad, I believe many Anglo-Saxon Jews in America are experiencing a moment of sobering reality. They're questioning where they truly belong when confronted with campus antisemitism and hate crimes across the US and Europe. Jews in these regions don't feel particularly secure right now – these aren't especially safe places for Jewish communities."

Lustman acknowledged recent difficulties while maintaining perspective: "Obviously, certain periods present greater challenges, and this past year has been exceptionally difficult. But if you ask immigrants whether they're happy here or would prefer returning to America, most would likely say 'we're happy to be here; we feel this is our home, our homeland.' I believe this wholeheartedly."

He also considered practical considerations: "People don't view immigrating as a career risk. American life creates tremendous pressure with its high cost of living. Even without the war context, many have long sought the change that Israel makes possible, as the relative cost of living here is substantially lower than in the US."

Lasting impact on Israel's legal sector

Regarding how this specialized workforce influences Israel's legal landscape, Lustman saw a transformation already underway: "Fifteen years ago when I immigrated, far fewer companies employed new immigrant lawyers. This has changed significantly because the approach proved successful and became more logical. Every major firm in Israel now employs immigrant lawyers, which perpetuates the trend."

He highlighted institutional changes facilitating this growth: "More foreign law firms now operate in Israel, establishing dedicated departments for the Israeli market. This development has created numerous opportunities for foreign lawyers wanting to live and work here."

The impact extends beyond law firms: "Large technology companies increasingly conduct business internationally, and for them, integrating foreign-trained lawyers into their teams represents a valuable strategic asset."

DLA Piper stands among the world's largest law firms, employing nearly 5,000 lawyers across 50 countries including Israel. Its client roster features prominent global companies, innovative startups, and more than half of Fortune 250 businesses. Active in Israel since 2012 under Jeremy Lustman's leadership, the firm advises approximately 200 Israeli clients – both institutional entities and private companies – on international transactions totaling billions of dollars.

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As we recall, the first two days of the war—October 7 and 8—were marked by immense tension over the question of what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah would do. Would he join the war alongside Hamas, or abandon his allies in Gaza? Nasrallah opted for a middle path, half-tea, half-coffee. Hezbollah forces did not breach the front line or launch a ground offensive against Israel, but they did not abandon Hamas either.

Hezbollah immediately began a war of attrition on Israel's northern front, escalating its attacks. Initially, the group primarily launched anti-tank missiles along the front, but over time, the range of attacks expanded deeper into Israeli territory. Efforts to end the fighting in the north repeatedly failed against the principle Nasrallah set: no agreement in the north without a parallel agreement in Gaza.

Although Hamas may have initially been disappointed that Hezbollah did not fully join the war, it quickly recognized the unparalleled value of its northern ally. Nasrallah's backing allowed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to take a hard line in negotiations, knowing that Israel was under pressure to reach an agreement—arguably even more so than Hamas itself. The stability of the Hezbollah-Hamas axis during the first year of fighting was one of the main reasons for the failure to secure a second hostage deal. Israel's struggle on two active fronts made it easier for Hamas to avoid concessions, even when its forces suffered severe blows.

A major achievement for Israel—but at what cost?

Ironically, the agreement in the north provides Israel with a significant achievement against Hamas. While it is too early to make predictions, there is reason to be optimistic about the prospects for a hostage deal. Hamas is now weaker and more isolated than ever, making it more vulnerable and pliable. Breaking the axis is a remarkable achievement, especially given the pessimism voiced by experts across media outlets, who had doubted the feasibility of continued fighting in the north without a comprehensive agreement that also addressed the Gaza conflict.

The agreement offers additional benefits, chief among them easing the burden on the IDF's reserve forces and creating a reprieve to replenish depleted ammunition and equipment. However, these advantages come with the risk of a strategic trap that could place Israel in grave danger within just a few years—similar to the peril it faced on October 6, 2023.

A fragile agreement

Anyone writing about security and policy issues faces the risk of limited information, as civilians are not privy to all the considerations of the political echelon. Still, based on publicly available data, this agreement appears to be little more than an upgraded version of UN Resolution 1701. It does not mandate Hezbollah's disarmament or the establishment of a security buffer zone near the border. While the agreement grants Israel some freedom of action, it will make it harder to prevent Hezbollah's rearmament along the border in the long term.

Since the end of the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah has invested vast resources in preparing for an attack on Israel, a plan that would dwarf the events of October 7. This was no security secret; some of it was even partially published in Israeli and international media. During Operation Northern Arrows, these attack infrastructures were uncovered in every frontline village. While the IDF has officially revealed some findings, much remains classified. This infrastructure, armed and ready for attack and defense, was prepared for Hezbollah's elite Radwan Unit to use when called upon.

The fact that these resources were not deployed on October 7 due to Nasrallah's and Iran's considerations—and that Israel had time to evacuate border communities and prepare for defense in the north—was nothing short of miraculous.

A missed opportunity?

While Hezbollah was preparing for war, Israel was not idle. The operation involving pager communications and infiltration devices, the intelligence that enabled the elimination of senior Hezbollah figures, and the extensive and precise target acquisition efforts across Lebanon—these measures have been years in the making. Their maturity allowed Israel to shift from defense to offense with greater speed and force than imagined.

Operation Northern Arrows gave Israel a one-time opportunity to leverage these accumulated assets to deal a severe blow to Hezbollah militarily and politically. The window of opportunity opened, but it has now closed. With the conclusion of the operation, Israel must begin anew to build the capabilities necessary to strike Hezbollah decisively in the future.

In the meantime, Hezbollah remains undefeated, and the agreement with Lebanon allows it to almost immediately resume its arms race. It is far from certain that Israel will accumulate sufficient offensive assets to neutralize Hezbollah quickly before it prepares for another offensive. There is no guarantee that a measure equivalent to the beeper operation will be ready in time. Additionally, it is unclear how long it will take Israel to regain the operational and intelligence capabilities it expended in the past two months.

Signing the agreement now, without a robust security zone and without disarming Hezbollah, may leave Israel at a strategic disadvantage within a decade—or possibly sooner—endangering its northern communities. Is this a calculated risk or recklessness that could carry a terrible cost? Only time will tell.

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The emerging agreement for northern stabilization, essentially built on the UN Resolution 1701 model that ended the Second Lebanon War with minor upgrades, puts Israel at an unbearable strategic risk. Signing it at this time would be irresponsible, and those who decide to do so cannot later claim "their hands are clean of bloodshed."

Before detailing the dramatic risk, we must honestly explain the logic behind the emerging agreement, and it's important to note that such logic exists. Since Oct. 8, Hezbollah has kept Israel in a state of constant low-to-medium intensity conflict in the north. This situation forced us to conduct an exhausting and intense defensive battle, with Hezbollah's attack intensity steadily increasing. All attempts by mediators to reach a reasonable northern arrangement failed – not because of the arrangement's details, but due to Hezbollah's consistent position that there would be no northern arrangement without a Gaza arrangement, meaning an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Then came Israel's string of operations: operation beepers, the elimination of senior officials including Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, and primarily, the destruction of all the organization's extensive infrastructure along the contact line. And now, surprisingly, Hezbollah is willing to accept northern arrangements under better terms for Israel than those previously offered by mediators – without IDF withdrawal from Gaza.

This development has critical significance, as Israel's assessment is that Hamas's refusal to accept a reasonable hostage deal stems largely from its sense of having Hezbollah's backing. If Hamas feels isolated, it may be forced to agree to a deal, while simultaneously allowing for significant achievements within the northern agreement framework.

While this explains the agreement's logic, alongside this reasoning lies what could prove to be a terrible trap for Israel. If reports about the emerging arrangement are accurate, and it ultimately amounts to an upgraded Resolution 1701 rather than an agreement that includes at least complete Hezbollah disarmament and demilitarization of southern Lebanon under strict Western supervision – there's no way to define this event other than disgraceful. Israel could quickly (within a few years at most) find itself in a worse position against Hezbollah in Lebanon than it was on Oct. 6, 2023.

Until Oct. 6, Hezbollah had positioned itself along the village line near the Lebanese border fence and throughout southern Lebanon in a way that would have enabled an attack on northern communities that would make Oct. 7 look, respectfully, like child's play. This was known to anyone even somewhat familiar with the northern security situation. The attack infrastructure Hezbollah prepared in the first line of villages, revealed during phase one of Operation Northern Arrows, is staggering. The IDF Spokesperson published some findings, but those with access to the evidence know that what was published is just a fraction. It involves a five-pronged system, well-equipped, ready for both attack and defense. An entire Radwan Force system prepared for zero hour, arranged in unimaginable scope. The fact that all this wasn't activated on Oct. 7-8, due to various considerations by Hassan Nasrallah and Iran, and that Israel was given time to evacuate border-adjacent communities and prepare for northern defense, is truly miraculous.

However, it's important to note that Israel had also prepared in advance for confrontation. Operation beepers,  the intelligence penetration that enabled the elimination of the organization's senior leadership, and extensive, precise intelligence gathering on Hezbollah throughout Lebanon – all these allowed Israel to transition from defense to offense in the north far more effectively and quickly than anyone could have imagined. Accumulating these assets is no small feat. Such operations don't succeed every year, deploying quality intelligence networks takes years, as does collecting target intelligence on such a large scale. When Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows, it inherently received a one-time opportunity to utilize all assets accumulated in the current round and maximize both military and political damage to Hezbollah, preventing it from harming Israel again. This window of opportunity opened and remains open as long as the current operation continues. However, once the operation ends, the situation changes.

From that point forward, the IDF's ability to conduct an offensive of this magnitude resets for an extended period. If this opportunity isn't used for a decisive victory, we're left with an undefeated Hezbollah that will resume its arms race, and there's no guarantee that by the time it accumulates sufficient assets for an attack, Israel will have gathered enough offensive assets to counter it effectively. Not every day does a sophisticated covert operation like operations pagers succeed, and a country gains such dramatic strike capability against a terrorist organization it faces. This means that an agreement of the type being discussed could bring us within a decade, perhaps less, to a military disadvantage that would genuinely endanger northern communities, with Israel lacking an adequate response in time. And that's already an unbearable strategic risk.

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In the midst of a week marked by the communication devices attack, attributed to Israel, a dear friend asked me the question on everyone's mind: How is this possible? How can such brilliant intelligence services, capable of executing operations beyond imagination, have failed so miserably just a year ago in providing warning about the Simchat Torah attack? Is Israeli intelligence among the best in the world or among the worst?

This is not the first time such a question has arisen. It emerged with full force during the Yom Kippur War 51 years ago. Even then, Israeli intelligence was known for its impressive capabilities, but did not serve it well on the day of reckoning, or at least came too late when it was no longer possible to thwart the Egyptian-Syrian plot.

So what does Israeli intelligence deserve – a commendation or a reprimand? The answer to this issue lies in a slightly deeper understanding of what is called "intelligence." It is commonly said that the role of intelligence is to collect information about the enemy, along with analysis and assessment of this information for the operational and political echelons, but this definition includes very different types of intelligence.

One type of intelligence, which occupies a central part of the work of various bodies, is target intelligence. This involves focused information gathering on high-value targets so that significant and painful damage can be inflicted on the enemy when the day comes. A high-value target can be a senior commander, a military facility, critical civilian infrastructure, and so on. Even a hypothetical operation such as the explosion of beepers and communication devices attributed to Israel is ultimately part of the world of target intelligence, as its purpose is to enable simultaneous strikes on as many quality targets as possible.

Another very different type is warning intelligence. This intelligence aims to provide relevant factors with information about the main threats facing the country, assess the chances of war breaking out in the short and medium term, and provide real-time warning of an enemy attack. This intelligence is very necessary, and sometimes significant achievements can be reached in it, but at the moment of truth, it is mainly prone to failure. Why? Unlike target intelligence, warning intelligence requires a high level of information analysis and the ability to constantly separate significant relevant information from meaningless or even misleading "junk" information.

Any quality intelligence system is flooded with a huge amount of information, large parts of which are meaningless. Absurdly, the higher the quality of the intelligence system, the more it is flooded with a larger amount of information, which makes it difficult to separate. Retroactive analysis of past intelligence failures, both in Israel and around the world, shows that almost always, the collection agencies had information about the enemy's plans, but those in charge of research and assessment found it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. The person responsible for providing the intelligence assessment did not understand what part of the information at their disposal was that "golden piece of intelligence" that everyone was looking for, and therefore did not issue the required warning in time.

The cry-wolf syndrome often joins this inevitable failure. Let's say intelligence does its job and manages to bring the golden piece of information about an attack that the enemy wants to carry out. The warning is issued on time, and our forces prepare and raise readiness. However, the other side, which is also not composed of incompetents, noticed the preparation and postponed its plans to another date. What will policymakers conclude in such a case? They may conclude that intelligence has done its job and thwarted the enemy's plans, but the more likely possibility is that they will suspect that the warning given to them was exaggerated or erroneous. After the third time that raising readiness ends with nothing, no one will take intelligence warnings seriously. Indeed, it is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf; only here, all the warnings were correct and accurate. The chilling effect may also apply to the intelligence personnel, who will be afraid to warn of an attack next time, fearing that they will be proven wrong again.

Any warning intelligence system inevitably suffers from these failures and additional structural problems. Therefore, decision-makers must not assume that intelligence will be able to provide warning of any significant attack. Even a top-quality intelligence array, in which huge resources are invested and which achieves extraordinary achievements in the world of target intelligence, will fail one day in the face of the warning challenge. Since the price of this failure is very high, the defense policy must be based on the assumption that we will not know in advance about an impending attack.

The intelligence failure that led to last year's disaster must be thoroughly investigated. The security leadership should have received a warning before the Hamas attack, and it did not arrive. However, those who look at this event as just an intelligence failure miss a significant part of the picture. Decision-makers at the political and military levels also failed when they did not understand the limitations of intelligence and did not order significant readiness for an attack even without a warning. True, there is a price to constant readiness with significant forces on the borders. There is an economic price, a morale price (it's hard to resist the temptation to release as many soldiers as possible to celebrate the holiday with their families), and sometimes an operational price (given the difficulty of maintaining high alertness over time). But the price of the alternative, full reliance on intelligence warning that will arrive in time and allow thwarting the enemy's plans, is many times higher.

Therefore, one of the central conceptions that must be uprooted as part of learning the lessons of the current war is the excessive trust in the power of intelligence. The fact that this lesson was not learned after the Yom Kippur War brought us to the terrible disaster of Simchat Torah.

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A judicial reform is on the horizon. Not here, in Israel, but in America. The Washington Post reported this week that President Joe Biden intends to implement a reform in the U.S. Supreme Court, and he declared this in a conversation with legislators from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The steps Biden is currently considering include imposing a term limit on judges, who are currently appointed for life, mandatory conduct rules for Supreme Court justices, and possibly even increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Such a move would allow him to immediately and artificially change the balance between conservatives and progressives in the court.

To Israeli ears, Biden's reform may not sound particularly dramatic. In the United States, where the Supreme Court operates according to a tradition over 200 years old, these steps are revolutionary. Biden himself opposed such initiatives out of concern that they would allow any future president to do as they wish with the Supreme Court. However, two rulings by the American Supreme Court, one recently and the other about two years ago, completely changed the Democratic Party's attitude toward this judicial body, consequently bringing a shift in Biden's personal stance.

The the Roe v. Wade overturn given in June 2022, determined that the Constitution does not protect women's right to abortion, allowing each state in the U.S. to decide whether and how to permit abortions within its territory. The ruling caused a political earthquake, as the left saw it as a result of reactionary forces taking over the Supreme Court and abusing the judicial system to drag the U.S. back decades.

The second, more recent ruling, was issued about two weeks ago and dealt with the extent of immunity that should be granted to the President of the United States. According to the ruling, substantive immunity applies to all actions of the president in their official capacity but does not protect their private actions. The decision was published as part of a legal proceeding against former President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. The cumulative punishment for the four charges against him is 55 years in prison. In response to the charges, Trump claimed that the actions were carried out while he was president, and therefore he is entitled to immunity from prosecution. The federal appeals court rejected the immunity claim, but the Supreme Court partially accepted Trump's appeal. Now the case will return to the trial court, which will have to decide whether each charge falls under presidential immunity.

Although the full implications of the ruling are not yet clear, among Trump's opponents, it is considered an attack on the democratic principles of the United States. "This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America," President Biden declared immediately after the ruling was issued. "Each of us is equal before the law. No one - no one - is above the law, not even the president of the United States." Politicians and legal experts joined the attack, vehemently criticizing the ruling and marking it as a sign that a reform in the Supreme Court is necessary.

It turns out that the progressive public's traditional support in the U.S. for the judicial system in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, was conditional. These two rulings, along with other rulings in recent years that did not receive much attention, were made by the majority of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, some of whom were appointed by Trump himself, versus the three liberal justices. For more than a generation, the liberal wing almost entirely dominated the Supreme Court, and therefore the immense power given to the court seemed completely logical and even desirable to progressives. Any initiative to change the rules of the game was considered heresy. Once the balance shifted and the conservative majority in the court became solidified, the institution lost favor in the eyes of progressives. Today, calls for judicial reform have become mainstream among them.

Biden's chances of succeeding in initiating such a reform before the elections are slim to none, given that the Republicans hold a majority, even if small, in the House of Representatives. But merely bringing the issue to the forefront and likely positioning it as a key point in Biden's election campaign is very important. Any comparison to what is happening in Israel is at your own risk.

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Fifty-four families with American citizenship, some of whom also hold Israeli citizenship and were affected by the massacre on October 7th, have filed a half-billion-dollar lawsuit against Iran in the Federal District Court in Washington, stating that Iran funded, armed, aided, and supported Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for the October 7th massacre, with tens of millions of dollars. The lawsuit was filed for the physical and psychological damages suffered by the plaintiffs and/or their family members at the Nova Festival, Sderot, Zikim, Kissufim, and other locations.

The plaintiffs and their families are represented by the law firm of Dr. Gideon Fisher & Co., which has been collecting testimonies from over 1,250 affected families in recent months. This lawsuit is the first in a series of claims totaling billions of shekels being filed by Dr. Fisher and a team of international legal experts in the US and Israel. Among these is a significant lawsuit expected against Syria. The lawsuit against Iran was filed in the Federal Court in Washington, in collaboration with Attorney Dan Kalisher from the American law firm Foster Graham Milstein & Kalisher and Attorney Asher Perlin, who specialize in US lawsuits related to terrorism and combating its supporters.

The lawsuit seeks to hold Iran accountable as the state sponsor of the terrorist attack, in accordance with American law, which stipulates that a state designated by the US government as a sponsor of terrorism is not immune from legal proceedings within the US.

In recent months, many testimonies and proofs have been collected. These are being presented to the court alongside expert opinions from the fields of security, medicine, intelligence, and law, pointing to Iran's direct and indirect involvement in planning, funding, training, and supporting the terrorist actions carried out by Hamas and others.

Dr. Gideon Fisher stated, "After months of intensive work during which we collected testimonies from victims and assembled a team of international experts, our firm is leading an important legal and moral effort to file damage claims against Iran and other Hamas partners responsible for the heinous attack on Israeli and American citizens on October 7th. Beyond the military effort, we must also fight Hamas and its supporters legally and in terms of damages. With the help of top experts in various fields, we are committed to ensuring that Hamas and those who support it pay for their crimes against humanity."

Gal Levi, 23, from Ramat Gan, whose father Adi, an American citizen, was shot by terrorists at the Nova Festival and underwent surgeries and long rehabilitation at Sheba Hospital, shared, "My life is divided into before and after October 7th. I feel the injury daily because I still have shrapnel in my body, and mentally, I relive the moments of terror when I lay wounded in a building at the entrance to Nova, and a terrorist came in and took our phones. I saw the evil and cruelty in his eyes. I feel it is my duty to tell our story in court. I hope this lawsuit will deliver justice and send an important message to the axis of evil countries supporting terrorism," Levi concluded.

Eli Hazan, 57, a ZAKA volunteer who responded on October 7th and operated for about four months in 14 communities in the south, added, "We have dealt with severe terror attack scenes and road accidents for years and thought we had seen it all. This massacre and war showed us everything in a new light. The cruelty and evil we encountered while handling the deceased with dignity leave lasting impacts and thoughts that haunt me. I had three sons drafted under emergency orders, and when I returned home sometimes, I shared stories, later realizing my family was also affected. Treating dozens of bodies in various conditions is something that flashes back to me in daily life, and I know we must fight this monstrous terrorism in every way."

Lt. Col. (Res.) Attorney Maurice Hirsch, an expert in legal counter-terrorism and former head of the military prosecution in Judea and Samaria, explained the rationale behind the lawsuit, "The main factor enabling and assisting radical Islamic terrorism to run rampant worldwide is money. Iran, as the head of the evil axis, along with other countries like Qatar, funds and promotes terrorism in almost every continent. A significant part of combating this phenomenon is exacting a price by filing civil lawsuits in as many countries as possible against those directly and indirectly responsible for terrorism. This way, we not only achieve compensation for terror victims but also punish the perpetrators of terrorism."

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Shalom Boguslavsky's new book boasts probably the longest book title you have ever read: "The Unlikely and Oft-Overlooked Story of the Rise and Fall of Jewish Eastern Europe." The first sentence in this highly popular history book, written by the tour guide, lecturer and blogger, who has a strong passion for Eastern Europe, proudly tells us that, "It is a ridiculous feat to recount five hundred years of history in one book."  But Boguslavsky was forced to tell this story in one book as it is precisely this 500-year period from the 15th century to the Holocaust that creates a clear narrative arc: at the start of the 16th century (the period of the Expulsion of the Jews of Spain, the growing strength of the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of America by the Europeans) there were only a few tens of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe; by the mid-18th century (prior to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution) this number had already grown to 750 thousand; and by the end of the 19th century (the birth of Zionism, the eve of the First World War, against the backdrop of a tremendous wave of emigration to America), there were some 6.5 million Jews there.

But Boguslavsky's book does not necessarily deal with these relatively well-known global events, which accompanied the rise of Judaism in Eastern Europe, but actually focuses on the no less interesting but much less remembered (or "oft-overlooked" in his words) developments of that particular area. Who are the people and the cultures who shared the Eastern-European domain with the Jews? What is the connection between the Jewish mythology of that period – the shtetl, the incessant battles between the Hasidim and the Litvaks (the Misnagedim or "opponents" who later took on the term Litvaks as they came from Lithuania) and so on – and the reality of the other surrounding nations and states? Our inability to perceive the conditions leading to the development of such a major force in world Jewry, does to a large extent underscore the importance of one of the maps presented at the beginning of the book: that large land of two kingdoms Poland-Lithuania, which at the time encompassed Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Kaliningrad. This is an immense swathe of land that has changed over the years, it expanded and was later downsized, it was partitioned and then reunited, and for the duration of those hundreds of years it was plagued by revolutions no less than those occurring in Western Europe. This certainly had an impact on the Jewish population.

Boguslavsky's interest in the Jews of Eastern Europe began as a necessary part of his profession. "I began to travel to Eastern Europe, mainly to Ukraine, due to personal circumstances, and also as I was extremely interested by it," recounts Boguslavsky. "The more I traveled the more I became captivated with it, and I thought: I travel in any event and deal with guiding and tourism, so why shouldn't they pay me for those trips? So, I began to take groups of tourists with me. I obviously needed to engage in an orderly effort to learn the relevant material so as not to talk garbage when providing commentary on the sites in question. When I learned the general history of those places, it cast Jewish history in a completely different light, and gave me the broader context that I had been missing until then, and that people usually are not aware of. The second thing that happened is that I was overly critical of certain images that had been traditionally associated with the Jews of Eastern Europe. They still remained firmly implanted in my head, but then, gradually I began to see things that did not really fit in with those images."

The first thing that Boguslavsky noticed, which contradicted those preconceptions that had "been implanted in his head," he claims was the number of Jews spread across the lands of Eastern Europe. "There were simply masses of Jews there," he says. "At some point, more than three-quarters of world Jewry were concentrated in that region. This was information that was already available, but it became much more present and tangible when I was there and saw the little that remained of it with my own eyes. It is still possible to feel the prominent presence of the Jews in that region to this day. The first example that caused me to understand this was one of the remains of the synagogues that I saw. Even the little that remained of it was extremely grand and majestic. I thought to myself that it is from the literature written about that period, rather than the academic research, that we always tend to gain the impression of the small, shabby and pitiful shtetl with the non-Jews on one side of the river and the Jews on the other side, and everything is so small and abjectly impoverished. And then, all of a sudden, you see a synagogue hewn from stone in the center of the town, a magnificent edifice built by the King of Poland's own personal architect. Thus, a number of factors began to accumulate that did not correspond with the image that I had entertained, and so I began to delve into this subject a little more.

"In the beginning, I thought to myself, 'Wow, how smart I am, I have unearthed completely new ground here,' but as soon as I began to read I immediately grasped that I had not uncovered anything at all. Everything that I thought I understood – the world of academic research already knew. Prof. Majer Bałaban, Prof. Israel Heilperin and all the leading lights in this field have already written everything there is to write much more eloquently than I could write. But it transpires that there is a gap between what is known to the world of academic study and the popular perception of things. And I, in my profession, am supposed to give this out to people who do not hail from an academic background or who have been dealing with such issues for their entire lives. And so, this is how I decided to take the leap and try and bridge that gap."

Where did the Cossacks come from?

The book weaves the general history of the region with the local Jewish history and the Jewish memory, or the Jewish mythology of Eastern Europe. Familiarity with the broader view of the story, says Boguslavsky, sheds a different light on our story, that of the Jews. "If you ask historians dealing with Jewish history what was the greatest event that occurred in the last third of the 18th century, the rise of the Hasidic movement will always stand out together with the bitter split between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim, Boguslavsky points out. "Ostensibly, this is an internal Jewish theological-ideological dispute, a fight for the spiritual leadership of the Jews, and similar issues. However, when you study the wider picture, you come to understand that all this took place in parallel to the Civil War, revolutions, invasions, and severe internal political strife in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. The Jews were involved in all these affairs. At that time, the historic Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) discussions were well underway, which were intended to determine the fate of the kingdom, and the Jews sent their emissaries to it, took part in the rebellions, and played an important role in the wars – both as victims but also as fighters, here and there. So, to what extent did the Jews who lived at that time really regard the halakhic disputes, such as the question of whether it is permitted to stand on your head during prayers, as a central issue? I don't know and there is no way of checking this. But we really should not be telling our story without the broader context."

How does that context have a specific impact?

"The issue of the denunciatory letters sent by opponents of Hasidism to the Russian government is a central pillar in the conflict between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim. I have heard this story more times than I care to remember, and I have never come across anybody who mentions that there is a wider context to the use of such a tool: the Russian government in those areas, which were given over to Russia following the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, was completely new, it had just materialized there. So, everybody was trying hard to prove to the new administration that they were loyal to it and that the other side was full of treachery and plans to undermine it. This is also a government, and once again it is important to mention here the wider context, which until that point had not come across any Jews at all. Until that time, there had been no Jews in Russia so that its government had absolutely no idea who these people were and what was happening among the Jews. So now, each side was convinced that it had been presented with a golden opportunity to go to the new administration and present to it the reality of the situation as it saw it, and in a manner that would support its own cause.

"This is not the only context. This dispute is also connected to the processes of modernization that were just beginning to take shape at that time. The leadership crisis in the Jewish world that led to the rise of Hasidism is a direct outcome of the crisis of modernity. The Enlightenment is not the only thing that was born out of that crisis. Hasidism too, as well as the Misnagedim movement, along with the Enlightenment, are modern phenomena. These are three distinct movements that appear at the same time, against the same background, and under the same circumstances. I believe that this puts the whole story in a much more interesting context than the purely internal Jewish theological and sociological aspect that it has been customary to talk about."

Another example is that of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in the mid-17th century, clearly one of the more severe traumas that is indelibly etched in Jewish historical memory – but without any context. "The story usually goes something like this: people called Cossacks, known by and familiar to only a handful of people, suddenly appeared from nowhere, and they slaughtered us because they are antisemites with a deep-rooted hatred of anything Jewish," says Boguslavsky. "The truth is that this is correct, as who did not hate Jews during that period? Having said that, when you zoom out from what was clearly a horrific series of pogroms, you see a historical event in dimensions that are reminiscent of the Thirty Years' War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in Western European history, which was just coming to an end when the Khmelnytsky Uprising began. We are talking about several decades of wars resulting in millions of dead and wounded, with a whole spectrum of factors involved. An epic drama of which we remember an episode that lasted for a year and a half and which was not necessarily the most fatal event for the Jews at that time, but regarding which the most eloquent text was written, which also survived, the book "Yeven Mezulah" or the "Abyss of Despair", written by Rabbi Nathan Nata ben Moses Hannover. What would have happened had this book not been written or had it not survived? We might have completely forgotten about this event or not even known about it."

A highly selective memory

The book is replete with figures we have heard of, but also brings to life from the 'abyss of despair' colorful characters, who might not have left a personal stamp on history but their stories are no less riveting. One of these figures, whose story to a large extent is the story of the entire period, is Fabus Abramovich of Kraków. "A rogue and a con artist who took over the community in Kraków at the end of the 18th century. This is an amazing story. He was the leader of the opposition in the community. In the Jewish communities of that period, an oligarchy comprising just a few families was able to rule all the community institutions for more than a hundred years on occasion, even though elections were actually held annually. In terms of the situation in those days, this was one of the most democratic forms of government that existed on Earth, but such an oligarchy also gives rise to opposition, which is usually composed of those people who were not given the jobs that they believed they ought to have been given. In the 18th century, when the initial buds of mass politics were just beginning to sprout, the opposition began to portray itself as ostensibly being the force that represents the 'simple people' against the 'arrogant elite'. Of course, had they succeeded and risen to power they would have acted precisely as those preceding them did. These struggles were always a sordid affair, but the events in the community of Kraków were especially sordid and violent.

"Our man, Abramovich, took advantage of the fact that Kraków was conquered time and again by various forces during the period of the partition of Poland-Lithuania. Against the background of this tumult, he succeeded in creating a devious bureaucratic manipulation that would appoint him as a dictator to rule over the community. Jewish communities in Europe were run for hundreds of years by a joint leadership of four 'parnasim' (heads of the community), each one running the community for one month at a time on a rotation. Underneath the parnasim were the 'tovei ha'ir', the good (elder) citizens, who themselves were above the rest of the community. This form of government, which has roots in the Hellenistic-Roman world, ensured decentralization of power, creating checks and balances. The community rabbi too had his own form of power. Abramovich left this entire structure in place in Kraków but then placed himself above it all as a sort of dictator. He managed to convince the community that the governor had appointed him to this position; while he persuaded the governor that the community had asked him to assume that position. He relied on the fact that both sides would fail to uncover the deception.

"In the end, it failed, and the deception was indeed exposed. This story, apart from the fact that it is extremely entertaining, reflects the fact that the leadership structure of the Jewish communities, which worked so well for hundreds of years, had ceased to function by the end of the 18th century. Due to its inherent weakness, all sorts of issues began to crop up, such as the Hasidic takeover and manipulations such as that of Abramovich.'"

One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them.

One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them. They are not historians, they do not have an overall perception of the periods from the 15th century onwards, in some of which life was better and in some it was much worse. They are familiar with what they remember, and the tendency is to assume that the reality with which we are familiar is the fixed, permanent situation. This picture is not completely baseless, although it is somewhat exaggerated, and this is the death knell. But we are interested in the entire period, not only the demise but also the ascendancy and the golden period of prosperity.

"To all of this, we need to add the existing image that we have regarding Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and the rest of the places that make up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We regard these as being extremely antisemitic areas, where the local inhabitants are breastfed on antisemitism. This has always been a matter of concern for me. Could the Jews be such complete idiots who specifically went to those places where they were so hated? That is simply not logical. If so many Jews chose to live there of all places, this must mean one of two things. Either the fact that there were so many Jews there led to the hatred of our people, and this is not very flattering for us as Jews, or that the situation there was not as bad as in other places.

"And lo and behold, just as it was clear to anybody living throughout those eras, it was indeed not as bad there. In other places, where we do not regard the local inhabitants to be antisemites from birth, they simply did not allow the Jews to settle among them. The best method of not being attributed the current image of an antisemite was prevalent already back in the Middle Ages, by expelling all the Jews, and in this manner, nobody would accuse you of antisemitism. This is the reason why nobody accuses the English of being antisemitic. They threw out all the Jews back in the 12th century and since then, everything there has been just 'peachy keen'. The Jews lived in Eastern European countries and thus they were subject there to the best things and the worst things too. And it is from here too that we have the most historical sources and memories."

The fact that masses of Jews lived in this region distorts the perception as to the actual scope of persecution of the Jews. "If a war is being waged – and wars at the time were without intervention from the High Court of Justice or human rights groups such as B'Tselem, with armies massacring civilian populations without any remorse, just for the fun of it – then in a place that was home to tens of thousands of Jews, then it is a predictable consequence that hundreds and thousands of Jews would be killed. If the same type of war occurs elsewhere, where only a few thousand Jews were living, then a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred Jews would be killed. Clearly, thousands of Jews being killed leaves a much more lasting impression, but this does not necessarily mean that the warlords and the soldiers in those places with a much denser Jewish population were more antisemitic. We remember one event, and the other, smaller event, we have never heard of – and this is what shapes the story."

Their rise and fall

The book paints the rise of Jewish Eastern Europe in bold colors along with the years of its glory and grandeur, but it also focuses equally on the long and hard years of its demise. Boguslavsky succeeds in persuading the reader of the existence of a strong bond between the overall geopolitical processes and the severe crisis experienced by the Jewish population. "In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jews developed into a status of their own within the feudal order, just like the classic classes of the nobility, the peasants and the bourgeois," he explains. "In Poland-Lithuania there were two parallel urban classes: A Christian urban class and a Jewish urban class, more or less equal in size. One of the issues that set the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth apart from Western Europe was that it was engaged in the conquest and settlement of non-developed lands, mainly in Ukraine and Belarus. In the process of the settlement and regulatory organization of these territories, the government and the nobility encouraged different types of people to settle there: urban dwellers, peasants, and Cossacks. The Jews had good reason to take an interest in settling down there, as they had been pushed aside and removed from other locations, and this led to a situation whereby they developed into an extremely important factor in these areas.

"Therefore, the entire system in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became dependent on the Jews in relation to a number of matters – for example, in the mediation efforts between the nobility and the peasants, or in the field of public administration. Somebody had to manage the estates, postal services, fishponds, and forests. The concept of a 'leaseholder', which is very familiar to us from Jewish literature, comes from here. Leaseholding is the accepted method of management in the feudal regime – a type of privatization: the government or the noblemen who own the estate do not manage the day-to-day running of the lands on their own. They issue a 'tender' and then check to see who is ready to run everything and pass on the profits to them. This is privatization in its pre-modern form. The Jews were also responsible for the transportation of goods. The peasants would grow agricultural produce and the Jews would then export this. The local Jewish merchant purchased the goods from the peasants and then sold them wholesale at a regional fair, and from here the produce was then transferred to the next fair, and it would proceed from one fair to another until it was eventually shipped abroad. The imported goods would also be passed on via the Jews. The result is that large parts of the largest country in Europe were simply unable to function without the Jews.

"In other places, the Jews were not involved in leaseholding. In Medieval times, the Jews were traditionally involved in commerce, but here the commerce actually moved aside somewhat in favor of the leaseholding. This is based on the fact that the Polish nobility took control of the Jews in the 16th century: the Parliament of Nobles was much more powerful than the king, and the nobles simply succeeded in taking control of the asset that was called the Jews. They took it from the king for themselves, just as they took other assets, and in essence, they used the Jews for whatever they deemed to be important to them."

All this was turned on its head once modernity appeared at the doorway and the social order was undermined. "The nobility began to decline and the state became more centralized. During this modern era, the king was not made any weaker and actually gained power: suddenly there was no such thing as every nobleman doing whatever took his fancy. And so, the status of the Jews was undermined. Their unique role was eroded. And as soon as the Jews become like everybody else, then those selfsame 'everybody elses' no longer wished for the Jews to be part of them. And this is what leads to their demise. Prior to the rise of nationalism, society was divided up into groups – there were nobles and peasants, there were Catholics and Protestants, and there were also Jews. But, then when all of a sudden there is a collective identity, the question inevitably arises: Are the Jews really part of it? These questions arise and this is also the trigger for the revival of Jewish nationalism, which did not occur in a vacuum, disconnected from what was happening in the greater environment surrounding the Jews at that time."

Jewish Eastern Europe has become a genuine magnet for young Israelis these days. Do you understand why this is happening at this specific juncture?

"The truth is that I have no clear answer to this. I can however hazard a guess: This is a reaction to the dismissal of the Diaspora, which was an extremely acceptable approach in Israel until not so long ago. People who made aliyah from Eastern Europe preferred to leave behind what was there, but after a few generations there is no longer any sense of urgency to escape from this, and now, all of a sudden, they are beginning to show interest and they really wish to learn. This is part of a natural process of searching for your roots, even among today's youngsters. The discourse surrounding identities picked apart the liberal 'Israeli' identity, and so young people whose families came from Eastern Europe are now asking themselves why everybody has an identity apart from me. Suddenly everybody is looking for their own personal identity."

Boguslavsky (47), a resident of Jerusalem ever since he made aliyah at the age of five, is married with two children. Until a number of years ago, he was known to the followers of the blog entitled "Drop the Scissors and Let's Talk about it". Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he became a social media influencer and even almost a media star. The strongly opinionated and well-reasoned analyses he published on social media regarding the war attracted considerable attention, turning him into one of the leading commentators in that field for some time, even though he is neither a journalist nor an academic researcher of the conflict.

"It became a part of my routine," he says. "I used to travel to Ukraine several times a year, I have friends there, colleagues, acquaintances, and relatives, and so when the war broke out, it naturally preoccupied me and is still doing so. Writing on that topic provided me with a form of escapism. This is a war that I felt was 'close to home' so that by writing about it on a more intellectual level, I was able to stand back and distance myself from it to some extent. Apart from that, I also saw that many people were writing nonsense about what was going on there and that really annoyed me.

"Truth be told, this is often the trigger that gives me the impetus to start writing: I see that someone else is writing absolute baloney and I feel a need to correct them. That's the reason that people write on the internet, no? And indeed, the knowledge that people in the West and in Israel have about Ukraine is sorely lacking, to put it delicately. I don't claim to be an expert on that country, but in view of the overall paucity in that field I am a genuine 'lily in a field of thorns'. The professional experts, almost all of them, are experts on Russia – and based on their expertise on Russia they tend to extrapolate and project their knowledge onto other post-Soviet states, usually looking at issues via a Russian prism. This is why what they said was hot air, and somebody had to portray a different picture of things and write less nonsense. I'm sure that there are those who will beg to differ but this is how I saw things."

You have recently ceased to write about this topic.

"I don't like repeating myself. If I have written something a number of times, then I get fed up. In addition, during the initial months of the war I spent long hours, often close to 12 hours a day, just going over all sorts of Telegram channels and other sources of information in a variety of languages in order to get my hands on the rawest of information available. It is not possible to go on living in that fashion for a long time. So today, I still try and keep up to date but not with the same intensity.

"And also – I wore myself out. There is a limit to the number of atrocities to which you can become exposed. When October 7 came round, I had already developed the ability, even before you actually see what is in the photo, to scroll down the feed as you know that this will be a trigger. Your finger knows to skip over it before your eye identifies what is in the image, because you really need to maintain your sanity."

The post Beyond 'Fiddler on the Roof': The untold story of Jewish life in Eastern Europe appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

At 22:31, the electronics squad managed to override the alarm system and immediately afterward the breaching squad took care of the heavy iron doors leading to the warehouse. But then, all of a sudden, a problem cropped up: it emerged that just on the day beforehand, the arrangement of the warehouse's contents was changed and a number of items had been moved. Many months of intelligence collection and meticulous planning might have gone to waste.

Jeremy Bob: "Yossi Cohen's view is that Israel is capable of assuming the task of preventing Iran from reaching the bomb at any point in time. There are only nine countries in the entire world with a nuclear capability. Preventing another state from joining that elite club is not impossible, and according to Cohen, Israel must take risks in doing so if necessary,"

Ilan Evyatar: "I don't think that Iran wants the bomb for the express purpose of dropping it on Israel. I believe that it seeks to gradually choke Israel, to undermine the economy, to reach a situation that we are seeing today, where Israeli citizens are unable to return to their homes. The missile attack on April 14 was the most dramatic moment to date in the war between Israel and Iran, but there is absolutely no guarantee that this is its pinnacle."

Jeremy Bob: "Although Iran was not directly involved in the events of October 7, it was definitely the one that issued Hezbollah with a directive from October 8 onwards to engage in an incessant wave of attacks against Israel. It was clear that we need to address this issue in the book, yet on the other hand, you simply cannot constantly sit down, to wait and see what will happen. As we have no idea what developments will occur next month or the month after that."

The woman wandering around the industrial area of ​​Shirobad, a southern suburb of Tehran, aroused no suspicion. She wore the typical attire of the local women, and the language she spoke was fluent Farsi. She never ventured out alone onto the street: she was always accompanied by a man as is customary in conservative Islamic states. The security guards who guarded one of the buildings in the industrial area during the daytime – a simple warehouse bearing no unique outward signs – paid no special attention to her. They might not even have noticed that the very same woman was passing by them time and again, as she took care to appear slightly different on each occasion. Even in their wildest dreams, they would not have imagined that this was an Israeli woman, a Mossad agent with an engineering degree, who had come to Shirobad to collect intelligence on the site they were guarding. Had they suspected her, then one of the most daring operations in the Mossad's distinguished history – stealing Iran's nuclear archive right from under its nose – would probably have failed.

The account of sending the Israeli female agent to Iran, as part of the operation that made waves across the entire world, is one of the many, captivating disclosures in the new book, Target Tehran. The book was published in English last September, shortly before the Hamas attack on October 7, and has recently been published in Hebrew too. The co-authors, Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar provide a rare glimpse into the nerve center of the clandestine war that the Mossad has been waging for many years now against Iran's military nuclear program, a war in which the reality surpasses any fiction. Alongside the operation to pilfer the nuclear archive, they also address the numerous covert actions that Israel has never officially claimed responsibility for, such as, for example, the series of mysterious explosions that rocked a number of nuclear facilities in Iran between June 26 and July 19, 2020. The Iranians themselves have never admitted that this was an orchestrated offensive conducted by a foreign element, but it is clear that the damage incurred by the various nuclear facilities during those weeks, and above all the facility at Natanz, was extremely heavy. The book also recounts the story of the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of the Iranian nuclear program, an individual who earned the title "Iran's Robert Oppenheimer", and the "Father of the Iranian bomb", and it also exposes details on previous attempted assassinations that did not succeed for various reasons.

The co-authors are journalists with a rich background in covering security-related issues: Jeremy Bob is the Jerusalem Post's senior military correspondent, and Ilan Evyatar has served in the past as Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Report. The idea for writing the book, they recount, came about following the famous press conference in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the files and the disks from the Iranian nuclear archive, and he used the products gained from the operation to prove that Iran was in breach of the nuclear agreement and continuing its race towards the bomb. "That gave us a strong platform from which to start writing such a book," says Evyatar. "Such matters are not usually exposed, and here a decision was made to make public use of the operation and its achievements for a broad range of objectives."

"That press conference made it easier for me to access Mossad officials, in terms of their willingness to talk about the subject," says Bob. "From there on in, it was purely a matter of my work as a journalist to understand how to reach those people and get them to trust me and tell me what I wanted to know."

Q: Your book describes a whole series of operations that were designed to compromise Iran's nuclear program. To what extent was the archive theft operation unusual?

Bob: "I think it was the most dramatic of them. The degree of sophistication and audacity in that operation was far beyond the norm, and its impact, above all the fact that the US decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, was far-reaching."

Evyatar: "I agree. I should also point out that of all the operations and missions that we have written about, that is the only one for which Israel has assumed official responsibility. All the other operations have been attributed to the Mossad only 'according to foreign sources'. At the same time, it is important to remember that the war being waged by the Mossad against the Iranian nuclear program is not restricted to one single event, however striking it may be. The assessment that Iran would be able to produce a nuclear device within the space of two years dates back to the mid-nineties. Almost three decades have elapsed since that time and Iran still has some ground to make to get the bomb. This has occurred both due to the diplomatic pressure that has been brought to bear on Tehran and also as a result of the efforts made by Israel and other states too. We can say for certain that the Mossad has enjoyed phenomenal success in slowing down Iran's nuclear efforts."

24 agents and six and a half hours

The story of the Iranian nuclear archive snatch, as Bob and Evyatar expose in their book, begins back in 2016, a short time after Yossi Cohen took office as Director of the Mossad following Tamir Pardo. Cohen was fully in agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it was imperative to invest an all-out effort in order to blow the nuclear agreement (officially termed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) signed between the Western powers and Iran. "Convincing the world that Iran is lying through its teeth with regard to its nuclear program is not sufficient – we must also be able to demonstrate this," Netanyahu told Cohen, and tasked him with getting the desired results.

At that time, the Mossad already knew about the actual existence of the nuclear archive, but its location and precise contents were still a mystery.  Cohen decided to plan an operation to capture the archive and convened a meeting with the Mossad's top spy masters. The list of participants at that fateful meeting included, among others, his deputy Ehud Lavi, who had previously headed the Mossad's elite covert operations division known as 'Caesarea', which is responsible for operating agents in enemy states; Dedi Barnea, the current Mossad chief and at the time the head of the intelligence organization's Tsomet Division in charge of recruiting and operating human intelligence sources; as well as Eyal Hulata a doctor of physics who headed the Mossad's Technological Division and was later appointed Head of Israel's National Security Council.

Following the initial planning stage, the Mossad began its attempts to locate the archive. The search; however, did not begin from scratch; the Western intelligence community already had information sources within the Iranian nuclear program's senior echelons. A strong combination of both HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) generated a wealth of information on the program, including various leads with the potential of pointing the way to the nuclear archive. It emerged that a short while beforehand, the Iranians decided to relocate it, with the intention of evading the implementation of one of their key obligations under the agreement – providing the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) unfettered access to documenting their past nuclear-related activity. Iran's Minister of Energy together with the head of its nuclear program, Professor Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, chose a warehouse in Shirobad from a list of potential sites for concealing the archive, based on the assumption that this neglected and run down building would remain under the radar of various foreign espionage agencies. They just failed to imagine that the Mossad would be monitoring the movements of the key figures in the Iranian nuclear program, and thus be able to detect the transfer of the documents.

So, the archive was located, but the Mossad was still in need of a whole series of highly classified details and data in order to be able to stage the 'smash and grab' operation: as it is clearly not possible to smuggle out the entire mountain of documents – which of them would contain the most incriminating information, the smoking gun that would expose the lies of the ayatollahs' regime? What are the security arrangements at the warehouse and how is it possible to circumvent them? What measures are required in order to breach the vaults in which these highly sensitive documents are kept? And beyond all of these questions, there was also the question of the moment after – how would it be possible to extract the materials and enable the breach team to exfiltrate the site? In order to obtain precise and reliable answers to some of these thorny questions, Yossi Cohen decided to send an Israeli spy to Iran, and to be more precise he sent the female spy mentioned earlier. She remained in Shirobad for some time working on the preparations to capture the archive.

Eventually they received the "green light" from the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. A team of 24 agents, apparently composed of both Israelis and Iranians, arrived at the warehouse in the industrial zone. They had six and a half hours to complete the mission before the security guards would begin their morning shift. At 22:31, the electronics squad managed to override the alarm system and immediately afterward the breaching squad took care of the heavy iron doors leading to the warehouse. The entry stage went by without any issues, but then, all of a sudden, a problem cropped up: it emerged that just on the day beforehand, the arrangement of the warehouse's contents was changed and a number of items had been moved. Many months of intelligence collection and meticulous planning might have gone to waste.. Following consultation with the Mossad headquarters, it was decided to go ahead with the mission. The team members used their extensive knowledge about the facility in order to find what they were looking for. One of the squads used special cutting torches capable of generating a temperature of some 3,600 degrees enabling it to cut open the sides of six of the 32 giant vaults that were concealed at the site. Members of the other squad began to sift through the material, extracting the required files while leaving behind the less important documents.

The main objective of the mission was a collection of black folders containing the plans of the nuclear device that Iran sought to build, but while they were working their way through the vaults, the Mossad agents came across an unexpected treasure trove: more than one hundred disks containing 55 thousand files and videos documenting the nuclear program, along with an additional cache with imagery of secret tests. The team members worked at great speed, and within the short amount of time they had been allotted they succeeded in getting their hands on a half a ton of disks and documents. The materials were then loaded on two trucks that left the premises at precisely five o'clock, heading for Azerbaijan via separate routes. Two hours after the team had left the warehouse the Iranians discovered that it had been broken into, but by then it was too late: under the cover of a complex deception plan, the Mossad agents were able to drive the trucks across the porous border between Iran and Azerbaijan. Later on, all the agents taking part in the operation were also extracted. On April 30, 2018, in a special address broadcast from the IDF GHQ at the Kirya in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu exposed the findings indicating that the regime in Tehran had never, for one moment, ceased in its efforts to strive for a nuclear bomb.

This operation might have been the most daring of all, but, as we have stated, it was not the only action undertaken by the Mossad in the effort to put a stop to the Iranian nuclear program. In their book, Bob and Evyatar single out Meir Dagan, the Director of the Mossad during 2002-2011, as the one who decided to move ahead with this matter. "Dagan believed in what he referred to as 'divine intervention'. In other words, all sorts of incidents that occurred mysteriously and slowed down the Iranian program," Evyatar recounts. "However, having said all that, we still cannot avoid the fact that the Iranian bomb is much closer than ever. Only a few days ago, the IAEA warned that Iran is only a number of weeks away from enriching sufficient uranium to manufacture a bomb."

Q: So breathtaking actions such as stealing the nuclear archive were in fact a failure? The mission was accomplished with an impeccable level of performance but the desired outcome was not attained?

Bob: "The main outcome of the retrieval operation was the subsequent withdrawal of the US from the nuclear agreement, and there are varied opinions on this issue. I personally adopt the position of the former IDF Director of Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin: according to him there was indeed a need to pull out of the agreement; however, not in 2018 but now, towards the upcoming expiration of the limitations on centrifuge activity in Iran in 2025. Pulling out six years ago, without a backup plan – might possibly have been too early, but at the end of the day the superpowers did need to do so in order not to give Iran the green light to move ahead towards attaining a nuclear weapon. And even more importantly: the exposure of the materials from the archive led the IAEA to apply much greater pressure on Iran, and this has had an impact to this very day.

"I personally feel that all the talk about failure results from a lack of understanding. Without the Israeli intervention, Iran would have had its hands on a nuclear weapon already back in the nineties, so that we should be talking about 25 years of success. Is that the end of the story? Of course not. But it is not right to talk about failure."

Having said that, Evyatar actually voices doubts as to the rationale behind the effort to appropriate the archive. "There are people in the Israeli security establishment who definitely objected to the use to which the materials were put. In the book, we bring a number of the arguments surrounding this issue. Only history will be able to judge whether or not the theft was the right thing to do. The current reality of the situation is that Iran is extremely close to attaining a bomb. Usually, there is no point in building alternative scenarios and asking, 'What would have happened had we...?' but this is an important point. Had the nuclear agreement remained valid, then Iran would still ostensibly be subject to limitations that would have prevented it from making a dash to the bomb."

Q: Perhaps in any event the war against the Iranian nuclear program is pointless? After all, this is technology that has been around for almost eight years now. Maybe it doesn't really matter what Israel does, in the end, Iran will have a bomb in any case?

Bob: "That is in fact the approach of the former Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo. He is extremely angry at Netanyahu's decision to push towards abandoning the nuclear agreement and the undermining of our relations with the current US administration under President Joe Biden. According to him, the American commitment to protect Israel also against an enemy armed with a nuclear weapon, is far more important than blocking the nuclear program. It's not that he doesn't want to stop the Iranians; during his tenure, the Mossad was responsible for the assassination of a large number of figures involved in the nuclear program, at least according to foreign reports. Pardo is certainly ready to fight, but his way of thinking is different. In contrast, Yossi Cohen's view is that Israel is capable of assuming the task of preventing Iran from reaching the bomb at any point in time, ever. There are only nine countries in the entire world with a nuclear capability, and according to foreign publications, one of them is Israel. Preventing another state from joining that elite club is not impossible, and according to Cohen, Israel must take risks in doing so if necessary."

Evyatar claims that we do not need to delay the Iranian nuclear program indefinitely: "Though Iran is dashing towards attaining a nuclear capability, but if the pace of this dash is slowed down, as indeed has been the case following the actions taken by Israel and additional states, then changes might occur within Iran itself in the meantime. The ayatollahs' regime will eventually be toppled, and if we succeed in postponing Iran's nuclearization until that point, in effect we will have accomplished our goal."

When we feel the sword on our necks

Yonah Jeremy Bob (46), married with four children, made Aliyah 15 years ago and currently resides in the city of Modi'in in central Israel. His colleague, Ilan Evyatar (58), is married with three daughters and lives in the town of Mevasseret near Jerusalem. They have known each other for many years: "In the past I was the news editor at the Jerusalem Post, and it was here that I got to know Yonah," Evyatar explains. "He is a military correspondent and intelligence analyst, and I also had connections in those specific communities, so we decided to join forces with a view to writing the book."

Bob explains that his connection with the world of intelligence evolved when he worked as a lawyer in the public sector. "I studied law at Columbia University, and even back then when I was a student studying for my bachelor's degree, I worked for a year or so as a volunteer at Israel's embassy in the UN. After completing my degree, I went on to work for a further year at the Israeli consulate in New York. In the US, I worked as an attorney in the private sector, and here in Israel I worked in the International Law Department of the IDF's Military Advocate General's Corps (the MAG Corps) and at the Ministry of Justice, and I was involved, among others, in Israel's effort to contend with the Goldstone Report following the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict in 2009, as well as additional sensitive issues. Working in that field enabled me to forge a variety of ties and this helped me considerably when I decided to turn to journalism, as people tended to look at me slightly differently and perhaps felt that they could trust me. From there, I ended up writing about the Iranian issue and the Israeli intelligence community – the Mossad and the Shin Bet. At a certain point, I interviewed the former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, and subsequently I was able to approach all the past Mossad chiefs as well as additional former senior officials in the organization,"

In relation to this specific point, he refers to the notes and reference pages in the book, where it is stated that the former Director of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, was a key partner in gathering the information prior to writing the book. "I held the first public interview with Yossi Cohen to be conducted in English, which was essentially the second interview after he completed his term of office at the head of the Mossad – the first one he gave to Ilana Dayan," notes Bob. "Evyatar and I also spoke with additional figures, and all of them were aware that I no longer work for the state, but my background did enable them to trust me."

Q: This interview is being held less than two weeks after the direct Iranian attack on Israel. In retrospect, would you have preferred to have the book released later on, and thus update it in relation to this significant event and the subsequent Israeli response?

Evyatar: "The two-step between Israel and Iran has been replete with dramatic incidents over the year. We released the book in the US on September 26, 2023, and less than two weeks later the events of October 7 occurred, which shifted the spotlights elsewhere. I believe that the terrorist attack only further underscored the relevance of the book, as even if Hamas did not act on direct Iranian orders, this move was completely in keeping with their 'ring of fire' doctrine – the desire to undermine Israel and to ensure that it is engaged in a constant state of combat.

"There are those who believe that Iran wants a nuclear bomb for the express purpose of dropping it on Israel. I personally do not share that view. In my opinion, Iran wants the bomb as part of that strategy of surrounding Israel with hostile elements from all sides. It seeks to gradually choke Israel, to undermine the economy here, to shake the confidence of Israel's citizens and their trust in the state, and to reach a situation that we are seeing today, where Israeli citizens are unable to return to their homes. That is exactly what Iran seeks to achieve. So, going back to your question, things are constantly changing. Though the missile and drone attack conducted on April 14 was the most dramatic moment to date in the war between Israel and Iran, there is absolutely no guarantee that this is its pinnacle. Iran might attempt to cross the nuclear threshold, and when we feel the sword on our necks, we will reach the conclusion that there is no choice but to attack. There are many diverse possible scenarios. So, had the English version been released two months earlier, it might have been better for us; however, had the Hebrew version gone out two months later, it would not have been such precision timing as now."

Bob states that an additional chapter relating to the events of October 7 was added to the Hebrew version. "That event proved that Israel had no choice but to adopt a different approach to its operations in the Palestinian theater, and it simply could not afford to neglect that issue. Maybe it should have acted with much greater urgency in its efforts to reach agreements, and perhaps more robust military action was needed, but whatever the case may be, it is clear that it had to try a different tack.

"Although Iran was not directly involved in the events of October 7, it was definitely the one that issued Hezbollah with a directive from October 8 onwards to engage in an incessant wave of attacks against Israel. It was patently clear that we needed to relate to this in the book, as the situation vis-a-vis Iran had dramatically changed. On the other hand, you simply cannot constantly sit down, to wait and see what will happen. As we have no idea what developments will occur next month or the month after that." We can only hope that the situation will improve."

Q: The Iranian race to the bomb involves considerable danger but it is also one of the factors leading to the signing of the Abraham Accords. To what extent have the Accords changed the state of affairs in the Middle East?

"These are extremely dramatic agreements for Israel, and it was actually during the recent Iranian missile attack that we saw the real practical application of the Accords. The Saudis publicly censured Iran; even the Jordanians themselves, according to foreign publications, intercepted missiles or drones launched against Israel; the UAE provided real-time intelligence information, and the Saudis apparently also did so. The Arab hostility towards Iran has concrete effects, and in the book we write about the establishment of the joint air defense, the one that was activated on April 14. All this is part of the ongoing process that has been evolving over the last two decades, a pact that has been built based on the shared concern of Iran's growing military power."

Q: And now, turning back to you, what have you learned from the experience of co-authoring a book? How is it different to writing alone?

Evyatar: "On the one hand, it is easier, as each of us conducted research for different parts of the book. Having said that, on occasions it is difficult," he smiles. "In such a process there will always be differences of opinion, but on the whole this is constructive debate and that is only natural."

Bob: "It is good that you can benefit from the perspective of another person, and each one of us brings with him different skills and sources. Of course, there were issues on which we did not agree, and we had to find a formula that we could both live with. But on the whole, the advantages outweigh the difficulties."

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