Le’Aliyah Bethin Europe. After World War II, he operated in Arab
countries, and in the fighting in Palestine for the creation of the State
of Israel, Dar was a member of the Palmah underground militia. After
the establishment of the state, he became an intelligence officer in the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in which he served in the 1948–1949 War
of Independence. After the war, Dar retired from the IDF but was re-
cruited again in 1951, now as an intelligence officer in Unit 131with
the rank of major.
In the summer of 1951, Dar was secretly sent to Egypt in the guise
of a British businessman representing an electronics company. His
assumed name was John Darling, born in Gibraltar to a British father
and a Spanish mother, which would account for his un-English ap-
pearance. In Egypt he worked secretly with the emissaries of the
Mossad Le’Aliyah Beth. Dar succeeded in recruiting young Egyptian
Jews for an espionage network. He left Egypt at the end of August
1951, leaving behind two cells of an espionage network, each with an
officer in command and with a radio transmitter for contacting Israel.
These operatives were later involved in the Bad Business.
After the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Dar, together with Aryeh (Lova)
Eliav, directed the Tushia Operation, aimed at contacting the Jews
of Egypt and persuading them to leave the country for Israel. Dar re-
signed from IDF intelligence in 1957 in protest at the inability of the
Israeli government to force Egypt to free the prisoners of the Jewish
espionage network.DARLING, JOHN.SeeBAD BUSINESS; DAR, AVRAHAM.DASSA, ROBERT NISSIM (1932– ).An Egyptian-born Jew, Dassa
received a Zionist education at a religious Jewish school in Alexan-
dria. He later worked for a Jewish import-export company. In 1951 he
was recruited to the Alexandria cell of the Jewish espionage network
in Egypt. He traveled secretly through Europe to Israel to undergo
brief military training for the espionage mission. Dassa took part in
planting an explosive device in the Rio Cinema in Cairo on 23 July- He was arrested following the Bad Businessand was tried and
sentenced to 15 years in prison. After 14 years in jail, the prisoner ex-
change following the 1967 Six-Day Warsecured his release, together
with the rest of the network’s prisoners. They were allowed to leave
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