Operation Susannah

Plot

"Operation Susannah" was the ill-planned attempt by the nascent Israeli Mossad to destabilize Nasser's Egypt in the early 1950's using Egyptian born and other non-Israeli jews. Fearful of Gamel Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabism and his popularity in the west where Isreal had come to expect it would enjoy support, Israel mobilized a small guerrila force of young and mostly Egyptian Jews (in an ironic hint to the Exodus, Egyptian Jews were called "Hawagat", signifying that they were less Egyptian citizens then residential aliens) to execute small attacks around that country, less to destroy it than merely make it look less orderly than Nasser could claim. Under circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery to this day, the conspiracy fell apart and the usual suspects were soon rounded up, tortured and imprisoned in brutal Egyptian jails. When the Egyptians published their findings to the world, the feedback wreaked havoc in Israel, bringing down the government and destroying long constructed public careers. For those not executed by the Egyptians (once their ties were firmly linked to Israel and not merely some super-patriotic gang of Egyptians leery of any contact with the west) the ordeal only began with their convictions around 1954. Though Israel captured hundreds of Egyptians in her wars of 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967 (including the military officer who presided over the trial), the surviving members of the operation (in this book, the term used is "the mishap") remained incarcerated through early 1968. Even still, a gag order prevented them from telling their story until the mid 1970's, by which time, they still had more questions than answers. Mostly - why was there no warning that they had been compromised?; why had no escape route been prepared?; and most heartbreaking of all - why were they left to rot when Israel held hundreds of Egyptian POWs in the Sinai campaigns of '56 and '67?