12.08.21
Editorial Note
Dr. Ehud (Udi) Adiv, a former member of the radical group Matzpen who spent twelve years in prison on spying for Syria, pursued a successful academic career. He completed a Ph.D. degree in 1998 in political science at Birkbeck, University of London, under the supervision of Sami Zubaida. His thesis was titled “Politics and identity: a critical analysis of Israeli historiography and political thought.” He then returned to Israel and taught at the Israeli Open University in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication, until his retirement.
Like his Matzpen comrades, he devoted his career to trashing Israel and promoting a distorted view of Zionism, often using hard to comprehend neo-Marxist jargon.
Adiv’s most recent contribution is an article in Academia Letters, a project by Academia.edu, titled “The Israeli ‘Republic of Letters’ between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.” The paper posits that the “Zionist dream was meant to be an ideal Jewish society,” but it ended in a “bloody conflict followed by ongoing war against the local Palestinian people.” Adiv then repeats all the post-Zionist tropes that see Israel as a “colonial project” conducting “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians. Consequently, “demanding its secularization and democratization.”
Following a long lament about the tragic failure of Zionism, Adiv offers his solution that is an odd cross between Marxism and psychobabble. He writes: “I consider the old-new idea of republicanism, by means of which people could transcend their subjective unmediated ‘self love’ by conscious political realization. As it is, republicanism is precisely the political mechanism that enables and induces self-realization.”
The “modern republican nation-state” is Adiv’s solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. He writes, “In Israel, the Jewish-Arab dichotomy as the predominant discourse is indeed specific and divisive. Only a republican perspective could be a unifying and progressive force that could transcend both the antagonisms of Jewish vs. Arab patriotism, and the power of the globalized economy. The republican perspective would require constant efforts to raise the self-awareness of the people, which should ultimately manifest itself in the establishment of a unified Palestinian-Israeli state. Thus, unlike the post-Zionist critics, I believe that only republicanism can convince the two peoples to transcend their ethnic patriotism by ‘exciting their minds with more desire to know.’ For Israel, this is most urgent and crucial.”
According to Adiv, the republic of Israel and Palestine would reach a “mutual understanding, a process of reaching an agreement… to harmonize their interpretations of the world.” He ended his piece by stating this is how “I view the future Israeli-Palestinian polis as a realization of what Aristotle called ‘civic virtue’ by means of political institutions.”
Adiv’s ideas are the reincarnation of the old Matzpen ideal of Jews and Palestinian Arabs living side by side as brothers. If the notion of a brotherly coexistence was misguided during the heyday of Matzpen in the 1950s, it is positively delusional today. The Gaza Strip is under the brutal dictatorship of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which act on the behest of its Iranian masters. The Palestinian proxies and Hezbollah have been equipped with a huge arsenal of projectiles directed at Israel. While not an existential threat, missiles from Gaza have disrupted life in Israel numerous times since the IDF left Gaza unilaterally in 2005. The West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas is a corrupt and stagnant system that jails and kills its critics.
Of course, Adiv would never mention that there is something fundamentally wrong with the political system which the Palestinians created. But even he would probably have a hard time explaining how the Palestinians can “transcend their subjective unmediated ‘self love’ by conscious political realization.”
Matzpen and its intellectual heirs have created an academic equivalent of the “earth is flat theory.” Israeli institutions of higher learning have provided a taxpayer-supported platform for its propagation.
References:
ACADEMIA Letters
The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism
and Post-Zionism
udi adiv
The history of the Zionist movement is a story with an unhappy ending. The story was begotten
by the vision of establishing an ideal Jewish society. It ended in bloody conflict followed by
ongoing war against the local Palestinian people. Indeed, for the early Zionist ideas it was a
tragic end, because it was the inevitable consequence of the immanent inconsistency of the
Zionist idea itself. Like the Greek tragedies, it can be regarded as a necessary failure in the
face of necessity. The incongruity is that of the idea of Zionism as the telos of centuries-long
galut (‘exile’) and the reality of Zionism in the “here and now” as a colonial project, a means
to that end. It was also inconsistent of the Zionists to attempt to introduce enlightened ideas
of liberalism and socialism into the Middel-Eastern European idea of Jewish nationalism. It
was this, as well as the inconsistency of the Zionist idea that sooner or later would trigger the
conflict with the Palestinians and has continued to be its main driving force ever since.
Jurgen Habermas explains that understanding the concept of modernity begins with Hegel.[1]
Thus, contrary to the “radical break” of post-modernism, he argued for the dialectic of modernity
as a synthesis according to which the present is viewed as a continuous renewal of the
past. And indeed, initially, the early Zionists did search for a Jewish safe haven, a national
renewal after the miserable conditions of East-European Jewry. Indeed, as Zionism emerged
in the writings of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber and the socialist writers of Poalei Tzion Smol
(the Zionist Workers of the Left), it could have been interpreted in light of that enlightened
tradition. However, with the establishment of the State of Israel by means of “fire and sword”
it became clear that this was no longer the case. The Zionist Yishuv, as a modem settlement
project, has already accomplished a “radical break” with its European enlightened tradition,
which can only be interpreted in terms of “our world, our time”. Given this post-factum unhappy
end, we must ask ourselves what was the cause and the meaning of such a failure of the
Academia Letters, July 2021
Corresponding Author: udi adiv, udiadiv@gmail.com
Citation: Adiv, U. (2021). The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.
Academia Letters, Article 1838. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1838.
1
©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
early Zionist idea? Indeed, the Zionist idea of a Jewish national revival was initially posited as
a spiritual and pious reward for the sufferings of East European Jewry. This idea was turned
into a civil religion that had some appeal for those Jews vis-a–vis the hostile anti-Semitism
that surrounded them. However, over time, the new civil religion was transmuted into the
collective sentiment and general will of the Zionist settlers, becoming the spiritual dimension
and idea of “good”, in the light of which the Zionist Yishuv sublimated and harmonized its existence
vis-à-vis the local Palestinian people. This attitude has exacerbated the conflict from
the beginning of the Zionist settlement until today.
Nonetheless, despite the apparent conformity and continuity, one can recognize a clear
division among the Zionist movement. On one hand, there were the mainstream writers, who
invented or dreamed up Zionism, which eventually gave rise to the conflict with the Palestinians.
On the other hand, there were the humanists and the socialists who tried to integrate
the Zionist idea of auto-emancipation in the universality of human emancipation. Hence, the
Zionist Movement at the time in a state of flux, could still choose other more enlightened ways
to achieve its Jewish national idea.
During the 1960s and 1970s, writers of what I call the “neo-Zionist school” gradually
came to the fore. This generation, of such writers as Shlomo Avineri, Shmuel Eizenstadt,
Anita Shapira, Yosef Gorni, Israel Kolat, Israel Bar-Tal, Ze’ev Sternhell and Boaz Evron,
privileged offspring of the Zionist Yishuv, were raised as masters of the land and had not
shared the bitter experience of East-European Jewry. It is against these writers, therefore,
that my criticism is directed. They should have remembered Hegel’s definition of hindsightwisdom
that “rises only when dusk is falling”, i.e. an understanding of the tragic end of the
Zionist dream. Moreover, the 1967 War and the occupation of the Palestinian territories that
followed completely negated the image of Israel as an autonomous Jewish state. Since that
time, there has been an ongoing attempt by the neo-Zionist writers to revive and reconstruct
what Anita Shapira called the “Jewish defensive ethos” of Zionism. Nevertheless, in spite
of the occupation of Palestinian teritories, their critical works have continued to appear since
the late 1980s. The new generation of writers has tried to redefine the Zionist movement and
the Israeli polity as they really were. These Israeli-born writers belong to a generation more
critical and less ideologically oriented than previous generations, using terms such as: “pure
settlement” (Shafir, 1989); “ethnic cleansing” (Pappe, 2006); “Center and Periphery” (Kimmerling,
2004); “immigrants and natives” (Yiftachel, 1999); “Occident and Orient” (Yona
and Shenhav, 2005); “a national invention” (Zand, 2008); and “a regime that is not the one..”
(Azulai & Ofir, 2010).
Be that as it may, these works move between “the two faces of the Janus-head of Zionism”.
Lacking “the Jewish spirit”, they see Israeli society as an invention – a modern Jewish-Israeli
Academia Letters, July 2021
Corresponding Author: udi adiv, udiadiv@gmail.com
Citation: Adiv, U. (2021). The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.
Academia Letters, Article 1838. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1838.
2
©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
nation independent of historical Judaism. They try to present the reality of Israeli society
rather than the idealizations of the Zionist myth. Thus, some post-Zionist writers see Israeli
society today as a radical break with the Jewish past. Others see it as a continuation of
traditional Judaism at a higher (or lower) stage. In either case, they essentially remain Israeli-
Jewish nationalists. So when and where was this exclusivist Israeli-Jewish nation created?
The post-Zionist writers, simply refer to the reality of Israeli society, without even raising the
fundamental question of the historical origins of Jewish-Israeli nationhood in Mandate Palestine[
2]. They argue against what Oren Yiftachel called the existence of a “Jewish ethnocracy”,
demanding its secularization and democratisation, but for them it is, nonetheless, an Israeli
nation existing in what Kimmerling called “a socio-political bubble”, in and for itself. Zand’s
recent book “When and How I stopped being a Jew”(2013) is a good example of post-Zionist
critique, in which he regards Jewish tradition, as an historical anchronism. However, if it is
not derived from Jewish ethnicity, how else can one define a discrete Israeli society independently
of the Palestinians if, as we know, nationhood is the “will of the many”, not that of a
chosen few. If this is really the case, the second question must be: What is the significance
and what are the consequences of post-Zionist critique? It only raises the odds by criticizing
some aspects of the outcomes and repercussions of Zionism, but still defines itself within the
frame of reference of Zionist assumptions with regard to the establishment of Israeli-Jewish
nationhood in “the land of Israel”. For this reason, my argument is directed against the critical
writers of the post-Zionist school because I believe that the main problem with Israeli critical
thought as presented in the not altogether unbiased historical and sociological studies, is
its lack of a perspective that extends beyond the positive facts. To paraphrase young Marx,
the point is not only to try to explicate Israeli society as it really is, but also to insist that the
enlightened human ideas stimulated and inspired the historical process – ideas by means of
which the critical writers could transcend their blinkered nationalistic hic et nunc. If this is
not the case, if their criticism is merely a negation of the dominant ideology; if it is only a
representation without political objectification; indeed, if it is, a la Frankfurt School, only the
spirit of the “I” against the “is”, then it is either a very unfortunate criticism, or just criticism
for criticism’s sake; in which case, the inspirational, educative, revolutionary voice of the
intellectual becomes intolerable.
In opposition to the theoretical positivism of post- Zionist writers, I consider the old-new
idea of republicanism, by means of which people could transcend their subjective unmediated
“self love” by conscious political realization. As it is, republicanism is precisely the political
mechanism that enables and induces self-realization, of man as a self-conscious being
in the world. In other words, politics actually applies such a “reintegration of a fragmented,
alienated existence”,[3] enabling people to transcend their immediate existence and become
Academia Letters, July 2021
Corresponding Author: udi adiv, udiadiv@gmail.com
Citation: Adiv, U. (2021). The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.
Academia Letters, Article 1838. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1838.
3
©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
what Aristotle called “a political animal”. The Polis, the modern republican nation-state, is
the realm in which man can be objectively recognized as a self-conscious being at one with
his Polis. In Israel, the Jewish-Arab dichotomy as the predominant discourse is indeed specific
and divisive. Only a republican perspective could be a unifying and progressive force
that could transcend both the antagonisms of Jewish vs. Arab patriotism, and the power of
the globalized economy. The republican perspective would require constant efforts to raise
the self-awareness of the people, which should ultimately manifest itself in the establishment
of a unified Palestinian-Israeli state. Thus, unlike the post-Zionist critics, I believe that only
republicanism can convince the two peoples to transcend their ethnic patriotism by “exciting
their minds with more desire to know.[4] For Israel, this is most urgent and crucial. Moreover,
it is quite evident that ethnic patriotism as well as full globalization would be tantamount to
an absolute and irrevocable bill of divorce from any kind of a conscious political freedom.
As Habermas put it; contrary to the “instrumental” and “strategic” actions that characterize
capitalist globalization, such states would embody “rational action” – mutual understanding,
a process of reaching an agreement between speaking subjects in order to harmonize their
interpretations of the world (Habermas,1995). I view the future Israeli-Palestinian polis as a
realization of what Aristotle called ”civic virtue” by means of political institutions. That is,
politics as a conscious exercise that goes hand-in-hand with the world at large, as an end in
itself, rather than as an expression and\or means of a particular “will to power” and recognition.
References
[1] Habermas offers his interpretation of what Horkheimer and Adorno called “the dialectic
of enlightenment”. He says: “We must return to him (Hegel) if we want to understand the
internal relationship between modernity and rationality [00]. He dates the beginnning of
the present from the break that the enlightenment and the French revolution signified at
the close of the 18th and the start of the 19th century. Hegel believed that “we would come
to the final stage in history – our world, our own time’.
[2] Hence, the answers are varied. During the Mandate period they were the leaders of the
Jewish Section of PCP, who first turned against the radical anti Zionist policy of the PCP,
and argued that following the mass immigration of the German Jews during the 1930s,
such a newly created “Jewish-Hebrew nationhood” came to life in “Eretz Israel”. All the
same, ten years later, in may 1947, following Andrei Gromico “surprising” speech in favor
of the “Partition plan”, the Communists leaders themselves admited that, indeed, after the
Academia Letters, July 2021
Corresponding Author: udi adiv, udiadiv@gmail.com
Citation: Adiv, U. (2021). The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.
Academia Letters, Article 1838. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1838.
4
©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Holocoust, such a new “Jewish nationhood” did create in Palestine. Furthermore, in view
of their new ”post-Zionist” policy, the Communists even fought during 48 War, on the side
of the Zionist forces, in defence of, what they belived was, the right of the Zionist Yishov
to establish its seperate exclusivist “Jewish state”.
[3]
[4] John Milton, Paradise Lost, IV: 513-24, 1667.
Academia Letters, July 2021
Corresponding Author: udi adiv, udiadiv@gmail.com
Citation: Adiv, U. (2021). The Israeli “Republic of Letters” between Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism.
Academia Letters, Article 1838. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1838.
5
©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
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https://www.shabak.gov.il/english/heritage/affairs/Pages/1972.aspx
Exposure of a Jewish-Arab Espionage and Terror Network (1972)
On December 7, 1972 the media released an announcement from the spokesman for the Israeli Police, Northern region: “The security establishment exposed and arrested a covert organization, operating in the northern and central part of the country on behalf of Syria. This organization included Arabs, most of whom were from the northern part of the country as well as Jews with extreme left wing views. Some of the members in the organization were spying against Israel and the organization was preparing for sabotage operations in Israel.
31/12/1971
…so far approximately 20 people were detained. The person suspected as head of the organization in Israel, is a Christian Arab resident of Haifa, a pro-Chinese businessman with extreme communist views, who was formerly a member of the communist party and an activist in the illegal nationalistic organization “Al-Ard”. In recent years he had moved toward “Matzpen” circles.
The main operator of the organization, who is currently located in Damascus, is a former Israeli Arab from Haifa. During his stay in Israel he was one of the heads of “Al-Ard”. He was detained in Israel together with his wife, on grounds of espionage. The couple was released from prison in 1968, and emigrated permanently from Israel after waiving their Israeli nationality. He became an activist for the Palestinian Liberation Organization as well as an agent for the Syrian and Egyptian intelligence.
Amongst the detainees there are two young Israeli-Jews, extreme left wing activists and pro-Chinese communists, who were active in “Matzpen” as well as in an ultra radical left wing movement, which supported violent activities against the government and the establishment. The two are suspected of operating on behalf of the Syrian network and having been sent by the head of the network through Europe to Syria, where they underwent firearm and sabotage training and where they also transferred information to the enemy.
A number of other extreme left-wing activists are also suspected of connections to the network or of having known about its activities and are currently being interrogated… “
This was the conclusion of an intelligence operation conducted by the ISA’s northern region which had lasted two years.
The head of the network in Israel was a Christian Arab by the name of Daud Sam‘an Turki, the owner of a bookstore in Haifa, who was 45 years old at the time. Turki was active in “Maki” (a Communist political party) and was expelled in 1963 due to his pro-Chinese views. In the 60’s he took part in various activities for “Matzpen” (an anti-capitalist and anti-Zionist organization whose official name was the Israeli Socialist Organization) and “Rakah” (an organization that developed from “Maki”). He was well known among the Arab population for his support of terrorist activity.
The ISA began receiving intelligence information about Turki’s irregular activities from the midst of 1968. Specifically, the ISA discovered that Turki maintained a relationship with one Habib Kahwahji in Cyprus, as well as the fact that he carried out a visit to the latter in 1969.
Habib Kahwahji a Maronite Christian, was 38 years old at the time: a teacher and a poet, as well as a nationalist who was a central figure in the “Al-Ard” organization, which was later declared illegal. Kahwahji and his wife were placed in administrative detention after the Six Day War, following the capture of documents demonstrating their connections with Syrian and Egyptian intelligence. In 1968 the couple arrived at a deal with the authorities, according to which, they emigrated and waived their Israeli nationality in return for their release from administrative detention. Since that time, Kahwahji resided in Cyprus, and he was suspected by the ISA as functioning as a spotter for Arab intelligence organizations.
Indeed, in the year 1970, the ISA received intelligence information indicating that Turki was attempting to recruit people for covert activities, most probably for terrorism.
In October 1970 Turki traveled to Turkey where he stayed for about a month, employing the cover story that he needed to make arrangements for his daughter’s academic studies there. Upon his return, in early December 1970, the ISA discovered that he was planning on founding a covert organization to carry out armed combat. Turki told his recruits that he was connected to a Palestinian terror organization – apparently the PLO – and that they were to receive weapons and to carry out terrorist attacks.
The ISA began to monitor Turki and to carry out surveillance on him, and via these means, exposed a number of Turki’s actual recruits as well as his attempts at recruitment.
Later, the ISA learned that Turki had begun recruiting in mid-1969 and that his network was operated from abroad by Habib Kahwahji. Turki was identified as the leader of the network in Israel and the ISA ascertained that he was also connected to the Egyptian intelligence.
In mid-1971 another cell in the network was exposed, which was led by Subhi Na’arani, a Bedouin and former security prisoner. The intelligence information gathered on this cell, beginning in mid-1970 – before the ISA discovered the connection with Da’ud Turki – was the first information regarding the creation of the terrorist network.
The recruits associated with Subhi Na’arani’s cell were all former security prisoners. They were a group used to interrogations as well as rough prison conditions. The group had connections with criminals they had met in jail, and were prepared to achieve their goal via any means possible. From the instant the cell was exposed, the ISA received information about planned kidnappings, armed robberies, assassinations and obtaining weapons.
Turki began sending his recruits to meet Habib Kahwahji abroad in July 1971. The ISA discovered that the purpose of these meetings – besides initial acquaintance, briefings, and intelligence debriefings – was weapon and terror training in Syria. By the end of 1971, Turki had sent five recruits on such missions.
The ISA’s assessment that the network was operating on behalf of the Syrian intelligence was confirmed in September 1971. Following a dispute that arose between Kahwahji and “the organizations”, the Syrians took upon themselves responsibility for financing the activities in Israel. Turki informed his recruits that from that point on, in addition to preparing for terrorist operations, they were to gather information. During that month the ISA discovered that the network included Jewish recruits.
And indeed, in November 1971, a young Israeli was identified as being linked to Turki’s covert activities: a Jewish youth by the name of Udi Adiv, a resident of Haifa. A search on his name revealed that he was well-known: a 25 year old raised on Kibbutz Gan Shemuel, a student in Haifa University and a member of an ultra-Maoist segment of Matzpen called “The Red Front”. This group was at the time Matzpen’s most radical segments. An ISA check of the data revealed that the Red Front had a connection with at least three Arabs who had been identified as associated with the network, among them Subhi and his colleague Anis Kar‘awi, who were among those who had been trained in Syria.
A further check revealed that Udi Adiv had left for Greece on September 28, 1971.
The ISA conjectured that Adiv was the head of a cell in the organization, and that the members of his cell were apparently Jews, and that members of his cell were also to be sent abroad.
On July 26, 1971 Dan Vered, a member in “The Red Front” was sent to Greece. The ISA determined that he too, was a member of Adiv’s group, and had also met with Kahwahji. Later on, two additional Jewish members of the cell, both also members in “The Red Front”, were identified – David Cooper and Yehezkel Cohen.
In September 1972 Adiv embarked for Greece for the second time. He returned to Israel on October 17 after having undergone training in Syria, like those who had preceded him. He brought back one thousand dollars with him in order to help fund the organization’s activities.
In October 1972, the ISA decided to interfere in order to counter the organization’s activities, for fear that it would go out of control. The information gathered to that date was astonishing:
10 cell leaders, including Turki
27 members
117 suspected members and otherwise related individuals!
One of the ISA’s main concerns was that following Turki’s loss of control over Subhi Na’arani’s group it would carry out an independent terrorist attack.
The date scheduled for the beginning of the ISA’s foiling operation, and for arrests, was the beginning of December, 1972.
On the night between December 5th and 6th 1972 the arrests were carried out, and interrogations of suspects commenced.
Sixty individuals were interrogated, of whom forty were indicted. By the conclusion of the investigation, the following picture of the network had emerged:
The organization included 34 people, including Turki’s daughter, who was studying in Turkey and was in communication with Kahwahji.
The organization included ten cells, seven of which were already active and three of which had been assigned commanders and were in the process of being established.
Seven members of the organization had undergone training in Syria, including Turki himself. Eight others were somewhere in the process of being sent to such trainings.
Searches on those recruited to the group revealed pistols, but no explosive devices or materials.
The ISA determined that Daud Turki had initiated the founding of the network following the Six Day War. He had initially attempted to contact the Egyptian intelligence, via his acquaintance Kahwahji, but with no success. In late 1970 he renewed his relationship with Kahwahji and the organization was transferred to the sponsorship of a left wing group within the PLO.
Following the return of his first recruit, Subhi Na’arani, from training, he realized that he had been trained in Syria. He concluded from this that the organization was supported by the Syrian intelligence on the basis of training in return for intelligence. The network was later charged with intelligence gathering missions and was funded in return via recruits who were sent abroad.
Turki had recruited Udi Adiv in the summer of 1971, after meeting him at a “Matzpen” conference. He was appointed as head of the Jewish segment in the covert group that was established.
In September 1971, Adiv traveled to meet with the “representative of a Palestinian organization,” who turned out to be none other than Habib Kahwahji. Kahwahji did not tell him his real name, and instead identified himself as “Abu Kamal” and told him that he was a left wing activist in the PLO. Adiv underwent an intelligence debriefing with him and revealed all of the information he knew, including information about sensitive locations in Israel in which terrorist attacks could be carried out. Adiv agreed to report intelligence information about Israel, including emergency Israeli military callups.
In order for Adiv to do so he was trained in code writing and in fact sent two letters to a covert mailing address that was provided to him.
Adiv began in the work of recruiting Jewish members to the network. In this way, he recruited Dan Vered, David Cooper and Yehezkel Cohen. He also passed on to Turki a recommendation for the recruitment of two Arabs, one of whom was Ghassan Aghbaria, who was recruited as head of a cell. According to Adiv, he intended to recruit the entire Israeli anti – Zionist left.
Dan Vered was sent in July 1971 to a training mission in Syria, and in addition to the military training he underwent, he was instructed on the transmission and reception of coded messages over the radio. Upon his return Adiv and Vered attempted to receive the broadcasts of the program regarding which he’d been briefed, through Radio Damascus.
In September 1972 Adiv was sent once again on a mission on behalf of the network. This time he underwent training in shooting and sabotage in Damascus. He was debriefed there by intelligence and revealed everything he knew regarding the IDF and essential factories in Israel. He was entrusted with a number of intelligence missions and was instructed in sending coded messages. He was assigned the member of the network responsible for collecting the weapons that were to be smuggled into Israel from Lebanon, and to find storage locations for them in Tel Aviv.
The largest and most dangerous cell in the network was run by Subhi Na’arani. It numbered seven individuals, and two of its members trained in Syria. In August 1972 this cell was removed from Turki’s authority.
Five other issues came to light during the interrogations, of which the most well-known was the account of the connection between two members of the “Matzpen” faction “The Revolutionary Communist Alliance” and a member of the PLO. The two, Rami Livne and Mali Lerman, were arrested and confessed. During Adiv’s interrogation, it emerged that he had intended to recruit Livne, the son of a member of parliament from “Rakah”, Avraham Levenbraun, to the network.
In March 1973, Turki, Adiv, Vered, Subhi and Kar‘awi were convicted of treason. Turki and Adiv were sentenced to seventeen years imprisonment, Subhi and Kar‘awi were sentenced to fifteen, and Vered was sentenced to ten years. Yehezkel was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and Cooper was sentenced to five. Other members were also sentenced to various periods of imprisonment. Only one of the accused was acquitted due to insufficient proof.
Rami Livne and Mali Lerman were convicted and after appealing, their sentences were eased: Livne was imprisoned for four years and Lerman for two.
The publication of the affair in the media on December 8, 1972, caused great shock amongst the public, due to the unprecedented fact of Jewish participation in an Arab network of espionage and terror. The media called the network “the Jewish-Arab espionage and terror network”, although the Jews were only one small cell in a broad Arab network.
The effect of this shock was even greater because of its timing: the network was exposed a short time after the Lod Airport Massacre (May 1972), which was carried out by individuals sent by terror organizations, and the murder of the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics (September 1972).
The focus of public attention was, of course, focused on the Jewish members of the group, especially Adiv, a former kibbutz member and Vered, a high school teacher and counselor.
The comparison between Adiv, who betrayed the country and the late Uri Ilan, an IDF soldier who committed suicide in the Syrian prison in the early 50’s, both from Kibbutz Gan Shemuel, was inevitable. The message that Ilan wrote before committing suicide, “I did not betray,” became a national legend in Israel.
The media reports following the arrests and during the trials received wide coverage over a long period of time.
What was unique about this affair – apart from being the first Arab-Jewish ideological terrorist and espionage network in Israel – it was an underground organization, long in the planning, with the purpose of operating mainly as a fifth column carrying out terrorist attacks in strategic locations during times of national emergency, all this, in coordination with the enemy.
The network was also unique by virtue of its large number of members as well as the lengthy duration of its operation.
israel-academia-monitor.com 