Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

BRANCH 5.The desk in Military Intelligence(MI) responsible for

Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all of the

branches in MI were renamed theaters.See alsoNORTH THEATER.

BRANCH 6.The desk in Military Intelligence(MI) responsible for

Egypt, Sudan, and North Africa. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War,

all of the branches in MI were renamed theaters. See alsoSOUTH

THEATER.

BRANCH 7.The desk in Military Intelligence(MI) responsible for

technological and weapons developments, especially in the Arab

world. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all of the branches in MI

were renamed theaters.See alsoTECHNOLOGICAL THEATER.

BRANCH AIR 4/ANAF AVIR 4. See AIR INTELLIGENCE

SQUADRON.

BRIHA.Hebrew for “escape,” Briha designated the organized illegal

immigration movement of Jews to Palestine from Soviet-occupied

Eastern Europe after World War II. It was perhaps the largest organ-

ized clandestine population transfer in history. Briha is astounding

both in its organization for handling the continuous human flow and

in the mass movement itself. The aim was to reach the Mediterranean

coasts of Europe, where ships waited in secret, arranged by the

Mossad Le’Aliyah Beth. Briha operations were started in July 1945

by Abba Kovner and other surviving partisans of the war from Vilna,

Lithuania; Jewish war survivors themselves constituted most of the

Briha operatives who escorted the escapees. As the exodus of sur-

vivors from Eastern Europe intensified in the summer of 1946, the

decision was made to establish a network of way stations that would

route the survivors through Poland into the American-occupied zone

of Germany. The U.S. zone commanders, along with the Czechoslo-

vak government, tacitly permitted the infiltration. Soldiers from the

Jewish Brigade and the underground Jewish militias in Palestine as-

sumed administration of the program, and funds were provided by

the American Jewish Distribution Committee. Between August 1945

and the end of June 1946, Briha figures show 48,106 refugees had

left Poland in this way. The total number of Jews who reached Pales-

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