Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

1984. The commission was headed by reserve major general Meir
      Zorea. Relying on a false statement to the police by senior Israeli Se-
      curity Agency(ISA) officer Ehud Yatom, the commission ruled that
      Yatom had nothing to do with the killing of the terrorists. Two years
      later Yatom confessed to the police that he had killed the terrorists
      himself. He admitted that he and three other ISA officers, under orders
      from the then ISA director Avraham Shalom, had taken the terrorists
      away and beaten them to death in an empty field not far from where
      they were captured. See also NIGHT OF DUCKS.

ZUCKER, RUTH (1915–?).A German-born Jew, Zucker in 1934 im-

migrated illegally to Palestine and joined the Information Service.

She took part in risky espionage missions.

ZWAITER, (ABDEL) WAEL.Yasser Arafat’s second cousin, Zwaiter

was the organizer of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s terror

activity in Europe. He was listed by the Israeli Committee X as a tar-

get for assassination in the Wrath of God Operationfollowing the

Munich massacreof the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games,

and the Kidon team of the Mossadmade Zwaiter its first target.

The team traveled separately to Italy and regrouped in Ostia, a few

miles from Rome, where they secured sleeping quarters at three dif-

ferent sites. They were equipped with .22 Beretta semiautomatic pis-

tols with custom-designed bullets. On 16 October 1972, a vehicle

driven by a support team member and a “shooter” entered the vicinity

of Zwaiter’s apartment complex. A third team member occupied the

passenger seat of a vehicle nearby and was responsible for signaling

Zwaiter’s approach. A “couple,” also members of the support team,

strolled into the target area a minute ahead of Zwaiter. Another woman

hurried to join the couple as they wandered away from the apartment

complex—the final signal that Zwaiter was approaching alone.

The two shooters entered the complex ahead of the target to posi-

tion themselves in the lobby and familiarize themselves with the inte-

rior. Zwaiter stopped for a few minutes at a bar across from the apart-

ment complex to make a phone call before entering the building. This

was not surprising, as the surveillance team had learned that the local

phone company had disconnected Zwaiter’s phone service for lack of

payment and that Zwaiter routinely stopped at the bar en route to his

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