Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

Egyptian media and confirmed that Ashraf had indeed been an Is-

raeli agent, but he maintained that he was a double agent who de-

ceived Israel and made it possible for the Egyptians and the Syrians

to surprise Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

The Mossad believed that this operative was not a double agent

and that he had delivered the goods for which he had been recruited.

He did indeed provide the warning that a war was in the making, in-

cluding the precise date. Others contrasted this information against

the so-called Concept (Konseptzia), supporting the suspicions that

Ashraf was a double agent. Even after his name had been exposed as

the Israeli Top Source of information, he was seen shaking hands

warmly with President Husni Mubarak at the ceremony held in Egypt

marking the 31st anniversary of the “Egyptian Victory in the 1973

October War,” to which Ashraf had received an official invitation.

Following this event, it was noted in the Israeli press that he had cus-

tomarily driven to meet his Israeli case officers at the Israeli embassy

in London in a car bearing the Egyptian embassy’s identification

plates, which he parked next to the Israeli embassy.

In retrospect, the crisis of May 1973 served as ammunition for the

director of Military Intelligence, Major General Eliyahu (Eli) Zeira,

whom the Agranat Commissionafter the Yom Kippur War held re-

sponsible for the intelligence failure. Zeira argued before the commis-

sion that the Mossad’s agent was, in fact, a double agent who con-

veyed false information in order to lull Israeli intelligence, like the

boy who cried wolf.

ASSESSMENT FAILURES.The Israeli intelligence community has

enjoyed many successes in its assessments throughout its history,

probably outnumbering the failures, but by the nature of this activity

most of them are not known or widely publicized. As for the failures,

many of them were significant and costly.

The list includes the 1955 evolving arms deal between Egypt and

the Soviet bloc, a move that constituted a fundamental threat to Is-

raeli security. Military Intelligence(MI) gave no early warning

about this deal.

On 18 February 1960, in what is known as the Rotem Affair, most

of the Egyptian army was concentrated on the Negev border without

any early intelligence warning. President Gamal Abdel Nasser would

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