After thirty-eight years with the Mossad, Israel’s legendary foreign intelligence agency, Yossi Cohen, its director from 2016 to 2021, has penned his account of his career. Necessarily limited in what he can disclose, Cohen has written a memoir that is part autobiography, part history, part opinion, part politics, part philosophical and spiritual musings. What comes through most strongly is his total commitment to defending and ensuring the safety of the State of Israel.
Cohen begins with October 7, 2023, in a chapter titled “The Day the World Changed.” Although he was no longer with the Mossad, he offered his expertise and experience to Israel’s leaders, and it was accepted. While acknowledging that there cannot yet be a full assessment, he compares the Hamas attack to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and blames the failure to foresee the Gaza situation on the complacency of Israel’s military leaders. Without naming names, he is scathing in his critique. Those leaders comprise a “self-protective culture” that is “too cozy” and “self-serving.” They “think they know it all.”
Over the years, Cohen either headed or was involved in thousands of Mossad operations, and many of them will likely never be known. But those he can recount make for fascinating reading. For example, the 2018 theft of Iran’s nuclear archive was his idea, Cohen writes. “Yossi, are you serious?” was a not uncommon response when he first broached the subject. It took two years of meticulous planning. The result, as the world knows, was a stunning success. Seven years later it had a bearing on the attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites — the “completion of the circle” for Cohen.
Nameless and faceless throughout his career, Cohen has now taken the opportunity to reveal something of himself. Born and raised in Jerusalem — ninth-generation Israeli-born on his mother’s side, seventh on his father’s side — he is the first Mossad director who is from a religious background. He assesses how this has influenced his approach, his perspective and his devotion to the country.
While not directly claiming political ambitions, he does present his credentials for a different leadership role — that of prime minister. Sounding more like a political candidate than the director of an investment firm, his current occupation, Cohen promises, “I will strive for peace but fight my enemies like hell. I will protect Israel and Judaism, and keep the holy sites for ourselves.… Jews will never again be a landless people, as we were for two thousand years until 1948.” Cohen leaves the last words to David Ben-Gurion: Israel “carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”
