Yossi Cohen is a behind-the-scenes figure of immense stature. Drafted into the IDF in 1979 and joining the Mossad in 1982, he boasts a 40 year career working for the agency. From 2016, he served as it’s director. In the five years that followed, he oversaw some of the most consequential intelligence activity in the modern history of the Middle East, including the agency’s infiltration of Iran’s nuclear programme in 2018, and the Abraham Accords in 2020.
In 2021, he stepped down, retiring from four decades in national intelligence.
Why did we invite him on?
Israel-Palestine has dominated geopolitics for nearly two years, and that conversation cannot ignore the role of Mossad. An institution marvelled at and scrutinised in comparable measure, it has inevitably found itself under the world’s microscope. We had questions too, and we were lucky enough to ask the man who oversaw the agency’s activities for decades. This is that conversation.
What did we talk about?
As an outsider, one presumes that all the intelligence agencies and wings of the military, for any given country, share a common goal and act in the interest of one another.
That’s not always rue. Yossi has been fiercely critical of the IDF, particularly with regard to their ‘failures’ on October 7th. And he’s not alone. Mossad is one of the most capable intelligence agencies in the world. Yet, a terror group with a fraction of the prowess at Israel’s disposal was able to stage a comparable primitive attack without detection. The worst in the country’s history. How could they not have seen it coming?
Did they? What did they know about October 7th, before October 7th?
”We did, but we didn’t know enough. On a national level, you have two lines of defence. This applies to every country. The first is the one you don’t see: ‘the intelligence line’. This is all the agencies, who try to discover what the enemy has planned. This collapsed. We didn’t have zero information, but we didn’t have enough.”
Why not? The reason, Yossi argues, can be traced back to 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza. Since then, the strip has operated in a limbo outside the jurisdiction of several agencies - a blindspot in their panopticon. Israel didn’t understand that. Hamas did.
”When you leave a territory, you see less, and you engage with less. We missed all of that … This isn’t our jurisdiction, betecause we [the Mossad] only operate behind enemy lines. Abroad. The trouble is, Gaza behaves like it is abroad when it isn’t. This created a gap between what we knew, and what they had planned.”
Listening to this account, it’s alarming to hear how quickly a semantic error can snowball into a horror of such scale. A game of definitions lay the groundwork for arguably the most catastrophic oversight in the nation’s history. Yossi saw it coming and, by his account, tried to help. His offer was not welcome.
”When I returned to the Mossad in 2016, I said that. I offered for the Mossad to help with the intelligence war inside Gaza. I was intensely rejected.”
Why?
What’s more, why did it even need suggesting?
Francis puts directly to Yossi: Why hadn’t Israel already infiltrated Hamas? Wouldn’t your nation’s nearest and most ferocious adversary be the primary essential target for espionage?
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