Isser Harel (Hebrew: איסר הראל, born Isser Halperin 1912 – 18 February 2003) was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad (1952 - 1963).
Childhood and Youth
Isser Harel was born in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus) to a large, wealthy family. The exact date of his birth was not passed on to him because the book of Gemara in which the date was recorded was lost in the migrations of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and World War I. The family had a vinegar factory in Vitebsk. It was a gift of his maternal grandfather, who had a concession to make vinegar in large parts of Tsarist Russia. Young Isser was five years old when the revolution broke out and Vitebsk passed several times between the Whites and the Reds. On one occasion he saw Leon Trotsky give a speech in the town.
The Harel family faced hardship when the Soviet regime confiscated their property. In 1922 they emigrated from the Soviet Union to Dvinsk in independent Latvia. On the way, Soviet soldiers stole their suitcases, which contained the rest of their possessions. In Dvinsk, Isser began his formal studies, completed primary school, and began secondary school. As he grew, a Jewish national consciousness grew within him and he joined a Zionist youth organization.
When he was 16, Harel began preparations to immigrate to Israel. During this preparatory year he worked in agriculture with the aspiration to join a kibbutz.
With the outbreak of the 1929 Hebron massacre, his friends decided to move up their immigration date in order to reinforce the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Documents were prepared for the 17-year-old Harel stating that he was 18 and eligible for a British visa. At the beginning of 1930 he immigrated to Israel. He crossed Europe from north to south to board a ship in Genoa, carrying a pistol that he concealed in a loaf of bread.
He had one child, a daughter, from his first marriage. She currently works for the Shabak (General Security Service) in Israel. She did not serve in the Israeli Defense Forces but instead in the National Work Program which is an alternative for women who do not or cannot serve the mandatory 18 months in the I.D.F.
Mossad Chief
On September 22, 1952, Harel became head of the Mossad and was the first man to be given the Hebrew title of HaMemuneh ("the supervisor"), a reference to his unique position as the head of both Israeli civilian intelligence services, Mossad and Shabak.
Harel was the head investigator in the 15 year manhunt for Adolf Eichmann. The hunt ended in May 1960, when the Mossad covertly kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina to Israel. Eichmann was the man responsible for technical coordination of the Final Solution in WWII, which resulted in the systematic murder of 6,000,000 Jewish people. Harel documented his 15 year investigation in The House on Garibaldi Street.
He resigned as head of the Mossad following a dispute with Ben-Gurion over conflicting reports concerning Egyptian development of advanced weapon systems and even 'dirty bombs' and bacteriological weapons with the assistance of German (mostly escaped Nazi) experts. Harel and the Mossad were convinced there was clear and present danger, while the Aman (military intelligence) considered the reports exaggerated. After Ben-Gurion sided with Aman, Harel resigned in protest.
Political career
After leaving Mossad, Harel turned to politics. He joined David Ben Gurion's newly created National List prior to the 1969 elections, and was elected to the Knesset as the party won four seats. However, after Ben Gurion resigned from the party it began to disintegrate, with two of the MKs defecting to Likud and the other to the Alignment. As a result, Harel lost his seat in the 1973 elections.
Personal life
Harel's powerful position stood in sharp contrast to the austerity of his personal life. According to biographers, nobody who saw this small, nebbishy man being bossed around by his wife would ever have guessed this was Israel's spymaster. His neighbors took him for a minor government official.
One popular anecdote has it that Isser Harel only took orders from two people: his wife and David Ben-Gurion.
Another has him boarding a taxi, the driver asking "what's your destination", and Harel giving the answer "that's a secret".
Bibliography
- The Great Deceit: a Political Novel (1971) (Hebrew)
- Jihad (1972) (Hebrew)
- The House on Garibaldi Street (1975) (Hebrew)
- The Anatomy of Treason (1980) (Hebrew)
- Operation Yossele (1982) (Hebrew)
- The Crisis of the German Scientists (1982) (Hebrew)
- Brother Against Brother: the Authorized Comprehensive Analyses of the Lavon Affair (1982) (Hebrew)
- The Truth About the Kastner Murder (1985) (Hebrew)
- Soviet Espionage (1987) (Hebrew)
- Security and Democracy (1989) (Hebrew)
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