Today the ISA is responsible for security against any who seek to
undermine Israel by terrorist activity or violent revolution. It is also
charged with providing the IDF with intelligence to support coun-
terterror operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and for
counterespionage.
The most notable counterespionage achievement of the ISA was the
capture in 1961 of Dr. Yisrael Baer, who was revealed to be a Soviet
spy. Baer was an IDF reserve lieutenant colonel, a senior security
commentator, and a close friend of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion with
access to high Israeli circles. Baer was tried and sentenced to life in
prison, where he died. The same year, Kurt Sitta, a Christian Sudeten
German who succeeded in becoming a professor at the Technion, the
Israel Institute of Technology, was uncovered as a Czech spy.
After the Six-Day War, the ISA was assigned to monitor terrorist
activity in the Occupied Territories. This became the organization’s
most salient role, but it was ill prepared for this mission and its chal-
lenges. Its workforce until then had consisted of 600 agents. The ISA
director at the time, Yosef Harmelin(1964–1974), did not want to
employ any superfluous people. He considered the ISA a solid, mod-
est, and effective body primarily engaged in preventing espionage. In
the first few years after the Six-Day War, the ISA acquired hardly any
information on any of the villages in the Occupied Territories. Later,
under the directorship of Avraham Ahituv(1974–1981), it adjusted
to the new missions. Ahitov transformed the ISA, making it a fight-
ing organization. The title of the professional in the central phalanx
of the service came to be “intelligence fighter.”
From 1984 to 1986 the ISA underwent a major crisis following the
Bus 300 Affair, in which two terrorists who hijacked a bus and took
hostages were executed without trial by ISA officers, who later cov-
ered the event and gave false evidence. Following the affair the ISA
director at the time, Avraham Shalom(1981–1986), was forced to
resign. The event resulted in the creation of the Landau Commission
(1987), headed by a judge of Israel’s Supreme Court, which regulated
ISA interrogation methods.
Another crisis erupted in 1995 with the assassination of Prime Min-
ister Rabin by Yigal Amir. An investigation committee found serious
flaws in the personal security unit. It also revealed provocative and in-
citing behavior by Avishay Raviv, an agent-provocateur of the ISAISRAELI SECURITY AGENCY/SHERUTH BITAHON KLALI • 13106-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:24 AM Page 131