Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

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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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