Mossad: Cover Story (2017): Season 1, Episode 3 - Episode #1.3 - full transcript
How should I refer to you
during the interview?
By your real name,
or by your cover name?
"Yael?” "Ella?”
Not "Ella,” not "Yael"...
But you can use "Tamar.”
Tamar. Okay.
You were in "Caesarea",
Mossad's special operations unit.
Yes.
What do you need in order
to become a Mossad operative?
I think that to be an operative
you need to become a storytelling machine.
And the stories always
have to exist on two levels:
The story you tell yourself, why you're
going to do what you're going to do,
and the story you're prepared
to tell the world,
the one you never tell.
Because if you ever get to the point
where you have to tell the story,
you're already screwed.
You should reach a point
where you look the part,
where your accessories,
your demeanor, your...
Everything you do is noticed
and whoever’s looking at you
thinks, looks, says "Wait a minute.
Who is this? Why is she here?
Oh, right.
Welcome."
What happens if your cover is blown?
Look, if I were caught,
then...
I doubt they would have stopped
at a long prison sentence.
I don't know.
Because it's not so nice
to be an Israeli spy,
behind enemy lines.
It's... not advisable.
The military court sentenced to death
Eli Cohen, a resident of Tel Aviv,
for espionage offenses."
The job takes you all over Europe.
You spend most of the week
away from home.
The family and children
remain at home.
And yet, at the same time,
you're busy in your work,
under a false identity,
and maintaining total separation
between those two worlds,
of play-acting on one hand...
Because you're basically a theater actor,
not for a two-hour play,
between 7:00 and 9:00,
but for hours upon hours.
Hours and days.
Is it really theater?
It's not exactly theater,
in the classical sense of the word,
but it's...
I'd say, a system where people play parts.
Everyone knows
exactly what they have to do.
You've got one shot
at performing this show,
and you have to be convinced
that the volume of X's performance,
alongside Y's timing,
combined with this or that line of text,
will eventually have the desired effect
and make the audience applaud,
so to speak.
You can take a bow,
you’ve achieved your objective.
I was recruited because
I was a good actress.
I was recruited because
I spoke different languages.
I was recruited because I was intelligent
enough to deal with changing situations,
and be able to react well in the moment.
I was recruited because sometimes it’s
easier for a couple to stand on the corner
than for a woman alone or a man alone.
That's why I was recruited.
When I was recruited, I was 26,
young and just out
of the IDF special forces,
and, like everyone else, I was at a
crossroads. I didn't know what to do.
When they approached me,
it was a good fit. A very good fit.
It fit in with...
the way I saw myself in the mirror.
When I looked in the mirror,
that's what I wanted to see.
They called me in for an interview.
It was a brief interview
with a rather attractive girl,
which really made me want
to be part of this organization.
They quickly sent me on to a kind of...
personality test,
to see if I was the kind of person
who was suitable for this type of work,
as a secret agent.
Your military service,
in the special forces... Was it helpful?
Serving in an elite unit,
such as Sayeret Matkal and others,
has nothing to do with your success
as a Mossad operative.
One of the best operatives we ever had
was a balloon technician
in the Intelligence Corps.
Serving in outfits such as the Air Force,
being an Air Force pilot,
is even a drawback,
because those people are trained
in a very rigid framework,
and so, their capacity
for open and creative thinking
is a bit limited. I hope no pilot
tries to kill me for saying that.
So you have to think outside the box,
be very creative,
but you can't be nuts.
It's true that most people who are...
on the verge of madness,
are much more creative.
You can see that
in history's great artists.
They were a little nuts.
An organization such as ours
can't afford that.
So you have to find those people
who are free-thinking and imaginative,
who have that fertile imagination,
but at the same, are very sane,
and know why they're doing it.
I grew up in a small town in Europe.
A very conservative France.
Growing up in an all-girls school,
with all female teachers...
It felt like a place that
would never change.
They always made me feel like a stranger.
They always made sure to ask,
"In case of a conflict
between Israel and France,
where would you belong?
Where does your loyalty lie?"
In 1970, the law in France was changed,
and they lowered the age at which
you’re legally an adult from 21 to 18.
I said, "That's it. Bye bye."
I packed a bag and left for Israel.
That's the kind of girl I was.
I knew what I wanted,
and I knew what I didn't want.
I started a totally normal life.
Until one day I got a letter
from the Agency
for International Cooperation.
I went into a room
with a desk and a man.
He said, "What if I told you
that there's a job that our pilots
can't do,
that our paratroopers can't do,
and that you can do?
The job is to be
Israel's eyes outside its borders.
Would you be interested?"
Of course!
Didn't you think of the danger?
No.
Today, would your answer
have been different?
I don't think so.
OK, what should I call you
during the interview?
- Janet.
- Janet?
If you call me Sarah
within five minutes I'll be Sarah.
No problem.
When I was young,
I loved crime and suspense novels.
I spoiled every Agatha Christie movie
for all my friends,
because by the second scene
I already knew who did it.
I like mysteries.
I like solving mysteries.
I like taking part in mysteries. OK?
It was 1970. I was in Israel.
I was very confused.
I enrolled in night school
at the Technion,
studying information systems
and programming.
They sat us in a classroom and a
very handsome man sat in front of me.
It was the middle of winter.
Everyone was pale.
But this guy had quite the tan.
OK. The school year started,
and once in a while,
the guy would disappear,
and come back two weeks later,
even more tan,
smiling from ear to ear, happy as a clam.
He was really enigmatic.
After the third or fourth time,
I took a pencil.
I sharpened it really well,
as sharp as I could.
I put it here, against his artery,
and I said, "Look,
I have no idea what you're up to
but I want in on it."
And that's how I came to Mossad.
They test you for resourcefulness,
improvisation, bravery.
Those who are too brave, fail,
because someone who's
daring, brave, and fearless,
can't read situations well,
doesn't see the danger coming.
You have to be, on one hand,
a reliable person, with strong morals,
and on the other hand, you have to have
the ability, in certain situations,
to be someone else entirely, based on
what you need in a given situation.
So this combination,
of these two qualities,
is hard to find in a single person.
Generally, people are
either honest and just,
or they're crooks.
It's hard to be honest and just,
and to be a crook as well when needed.
In your everyday as an operative,
you have to live deep inside that world,
sometimes for long stretches,
and to manipulate people in a way
you never would in your normal life.
That's the game.
That's why operatives are so hard to find.
That's why one in a thousand fits.
Did the fact that you're a woman
figure in your training?
WE'RE NOT DOLLS!
Look, I came after 1968
from France where girls burned their bras.
THERE CANNOT BE REVOLUTION
WITHOUT WOMEN
The image of the French woman,
in those days,
raised questions about promiscuity,
susceptibility and boundaries,
and my capacity for discipline.
On one hand, they didn't want
to make me a nun. On the other hand,
they didn't want me to get into trouble.
At certain points during training
they decided to test me on this front.
I had a boyfriend,
and they asked me to break up with him.
They needed to test my ability
to obey authority,
which isn't a given for me,
and to be true to my word, that...
OK, I'll break it off,
and we'll never see each other again.
He didn’t like it at all,
but I was very determined.
As the director of Mossad,
how involved were you
in operatives’ private lives?
Let me tell you a story
about one of the operatives,
I won't tell you who, who was to play
a key role in a certain upcoming mission.
He came to me and said,
"I have to go abroad for 3 days."
I said, "But the mission..."
"I'll be back."
So he calls me from abroad and says,
"I'm so sorry, Ephraim.
I can't come back."
"What's the matter?"
“I’ve found the love of my life.
We're going out now, on a catamaran."
And over there, it's... I said, "But...
You know, the mission!"
He says, "Sorry, I can't."
I hung up the phone. It was 2:00 am.
My wife, Hadassah, says:
"What's the matter?
You're white as a sheet.”
And I postponed the mission, without
telling the director of Mossad.
If I had told the director of Mossad,
he would have had no choice,
in my opinion,
but to bar him from participating
in such missions in the future.
So all of Israel had to wait
for him to finish his...
- trip?
- Yes.
I couldn't just get someone else.
It's the kind of thing that
you specialize in over time.
I didn't have a replacement to suggest.
Do you think I made the right decision?
- Was it successful?
- What?
Was it successful?
Is that the test?
Whether the mission was successful?
Maybe it was the wrong decision,
and it went well anyway?
- What do you think?
- I'm not going to tell you.
What do they teach you?
How to use a weapon?
Do they teach you to...
hold a knife in your teeth?
No, not at all.
I know that part of the image
of a Mossad operative is...
the guy with the knife in his teeth,
James Bond, with his fancy weaponry...
The most dangerous thing would be
to get caught with a weapon in a country
where you're not supposed to be.
And so, you don't carry weapons.
Your weapon is your identity, your story.
That's your only weapon.
In the movies,
the lives of operatives and secret agents
are all very glamorous.
In reality, it's true,
there are insane highs,
and unforgettable moments,
but reaching that peak requires
a lot of boring, thankless work.
Hard work.
For instance, you might spend four days
across from an office building,
waiting for a certain
bearded guy to come out.
You can't do anything else.
If you take your eyes off that building,
you'll miss the bearded guy
that's supposed to come out.
That's reality. Reality isn't James Bond.
The James Bond part exists,
but it's ultimately a small part of it.
You might put in a week's work
for a ten-minute act.
But you know, I won't go into specifics,
but sometimes it's worth it
to put in a week's work for ten minutes.
I became active during the Yom Kippur War.
It was a terrible time.
We were genuinely afraid
that our home would be destroyed.
Where did they send you?
To Egypt, while we were still at war.
- How did you get there?
- I went back to Europe,
for a while, to get ready
and to work on my back story.
Because my time in Israel
had to be erased.
Any connection to Jewishness.
Any connection to being Israeli.
Any connection to Hebrew.
Well, these are photos of...
The evening gowns of the 1970s,
that I used from time to time.
Who picked them out?
The commander.
Yes.
We went shopping. Three dresses.
Oh, this is on the plane,
flying abroad for the mission.
This was my 22nd birthday.
Who took it?
Was someone there with you?
Yes.
I had a partner with me,
because the mission required a couple.
Yes.
And that was your cover story?
"The wife of.”
The day of my arrival in Cairo,
I was with my "boyfriend,”
and he wanted to show me around,
to see Cairo by night,
and he took me to Sahara City.
A big tent,
music, food, a belly dancer...
He had been there a while
by the time I joined him.
And I see him, sort of...
tapping his foot along with the rhythm,
and tapping his hand on his thigh.
That told me he was already acclimated,
that he was part of that culture.
I still found it totally foreign.
I play a certain character.
-What kind of character?
I play a blonde and I'm a brunette.
The blonde type is...
a shallow person.
All I care about is a little sport,
and a little social life,
and taking belly-dancing lessons,
it's good for your figure
and good for connecting
with the local culture.
I know exactly what I'm giving off,
what I want people to see, because...
Those two girls who're going
to gossip about me need to be able
to come up with answers to their questions
without having to come and ask me.
The day someone comes and asks me
a question,
that means I screwed up big time.
I constructed my story
ahead of time, of course.
But there are always little details
that you don't...
You can't learn someone else's
entire life by heart,
whether it's real or fake.
You have to make up a life,
but some stuff is always missing.
You deal with it every day,
until it becomes second nature.
You notice things, you make sure
not to talk, not to give anything away.
So basically,
your whole life becomes an act.
Yes, the theater of life.
Look, someone who doesn't enjoy the game
is wrong for the job, obviously.
But if you enjoy the game...
I remember getting on a plane,
alone, for the first time,
on my first trip to Khartoum.
You get on a plane,
surrounded by Muslim men
wearing gallabiyas.
And they look at you,
and you look at them,
and you know that they have no idea
you're from the place you're from.
I sat there on the plane, looking around,
and I really enjoyed that situation,
having a secret that only I know.
On your assignment in Sudan,
what was your cover story?
A businessman?
No. I was a researcher,
an anthropologist,
studying tribes.
It wasn't easy, because...
There weren't a lot of them around,
let's say.
The order came down
from the Prime Minister, no less.
He said,
"Bring Ethiopia's Jews to Israel.”
Just like that.
In those days, Ethiopia
was almost in a state of anarchy,
so we couldn't
transport those Jews directly.
So we decided
to take advantage of the fact
that Sudan and Israel
both border on the Red Sea.
That operation involved breaking
every rule on the book
on how to run an intelligence operation.
First of all, it took place
in an area where we had
very limited field recon capabilities.
We had no real way of knowing
whether or not we'd been exposed.
The people we recruited...
We didn't have time to train them
and properly prepare them for the job.
I made that decision
and we took a shortcut.
We took some people,
some of them Israeli, and trained them,
gave them crash courses,
on operating under an assumed identity
in an enemy country.
So I went to Sudan
in order to check out beaches,
and to test the waters.
We took a tour of the beaches,
and during that tour,
about 65-70 km north of Port Sudan
we saw some huts with red roofs.
It was a diving resort,
built by an Italian company.
The diving spots there
are some of the best in the world.
As soon as I saw the resort,
I realized its potential
from every angle.
Our justification for being
in Sudan in the first place.
What's your connection to a diving resort?
How do you explain that?
So I'm an anthropologist
who got sick of anthropology.
I've been over there for two years,
and it's the most beautiful place
I've ever seen and I decide
to quit my research
and now I want to make money.
That's something everyone can understand.
The team I put together for the job
was required,
on one hand, to play the role
of diving instructors, all the way,
including actual instruction,
and to be part of a team
that does the actual work of...
gathering the Jews and transporting them,
all undercover.
None of them came through the village.
We transported them
through a small inlet,
about 5 km from the resort.
The resort was entirely for the purpose
of maintaining our cover.
Look, I was a troublemaker.
I was recruited as a journalist,
and in the Mossad,
the word “journalist" is
synonymous with “whore.”
And actually, my whole adult life
had been journalism and Mossad,
journalism and Mossad, journalism...
Sometimes at the same time.
What was your job in this mission?
I was co-founder and
manager of the resort.
Among other things,
I was a windsurfing instructor,
a boat operator...
At one point, we brought over the first
windsurfing board in Sudan.
We flew it in special from Israel
on a military plane.
The end of the course was the first time
I found out what I was going to do.
My job was to run the resort,
like a Club Med.
The resort would be the operatives’ cover
and their pretext for coming to Sudan.
One will be the resort's doctor,
one will come to check the books...
You asked about the theater?
There you go.
That was my moment on the stage.
The resort was called Arous.
After the mission ended,
The New York Times wrote
that it was a shame
they’d closed the resort,
because it was a hidden treasure.
The best diving in the world.
Divers came there from all over,
and the food...
We ran something like a...
Michelin two-star restaurant.
We ran the operation at the same time
as the resort, totally unrelated.
Nothing changed in the resort’s routine
during the operation.
Some of the operations
were done by sea.
We'd take the “brothers,”
as we called them, to the beach,
where they were picked up
by Israeli commandos.
Once, we stumbled into
a Sudanese army ambush.
About 60 Sudanese soldiers
suddenly emerged from the dark.
Soldiers?
Armed soldiers, with AK-47s.
- Gunshots, some people got captured...
- Were you captured?
No. I was 100 meters from the beach,
in an inflatable boat,
and I reported back,
because the commandos were already
preparing for a violent rescue operation,
to go back to the beach and rescue
the four people who got captured,
but I told them to wait, because suddenly
I see Danny with his hands in the air,
shouting at the officer.
He was a tall, strong guy.
He started yelling at me in Arabic,
and I knew what he was saying, but...
I answered him in English.
He says, "What are you doing?
Who are these people?
I'm taking you to Port Sudan
for interrogation."
He grabbed me by the arm.
I wriggled free.
I said,
"I'm not going anywhere with you.
You wanna shout? I can shout too."
He started yelling at him.
"You're a moron! You're an idiot!
I work for the Tourism Ministry!
I take tourists on nocturnal dives,
and you open fire at me!
I'll be in Khartoum tomorrow,
and I'll lodge a complaint
with the Chief of Staff!"
And the officer, all embarrassed,
mumbled an apology,
gathered his men, and left.
We always knew it might all end
with a burned-out military plane,
and us hanging upside down from the tail.
Did you ever feel like
your cover was about to be blown?
I had a very difficult test.
Once, when there where no other guests,
two German guests came in,
Germans both.
One of them got the hots for me,
and was always on my tail,
constantly around me,
talking to me, asking questions,
and we talked about
our childhoods, and songs...
The things you talk about when you finally
find someone from your homeland.
That puts you in a very awkward position.
Imagine it.
If someone pretends to be
Israeli around you,
right away you'll know if he's for real
or if he learned it somewhere.
Diving tourists are people
who spend a lot of money
in order to get to any hole
they’ve heard has good diving.
We had Italians, French,
Spaniards, Canadians.
This one Canadian,
he was Jewish by the way,
requested a private dive.
The instructor...
had been undercover,
a former naval commando officer.
Now, underwater,
divers communicate using hand signals.
Military divers use different signals.
To ask if everything's OK,
he goes like this
and you have to answer like this.
In the military, he goes like this
and you have to answer like this.
The hardest thing for them
was to make that switch.
So the guy came from a country
that has serious naval commandos,
and he asked him,
"Why did you go like that?
What's your background?"
He realized his mistake,
so he said "Yeah,
I used to be in the military."
When they get out of the water,
the guy says something like,
"Good dive, huh?" In Hebrew.
And, you know, after an hour underwater,
you get a little...
So he answered, "Yes."
He comes up to me and says,
"I'm burned."
I said "OK, which room is he in?"
He told me the room number.
I knocked on his door. He opened it
and started talking to me in Hebrew.
I said, "I don't understand."
So he switched to English.
And he said, "Listen...
You know, I'm on your side."
I told him,
"You requested another
dive tonight, right?
You asked for a night dive.
We're going to take you to a reef
where there's a special kind of shark.
They only like the taste of kosher meat.
That's where you'll be diving tonight."
"No", he says.
"No, really, I don't...
I didn't mean anything by it, I...
I love Israel..."
I said, "I don't care.
Just remember that our
reach is very long."
What do you do in that kind of situation?
Look, in this line of work,
you always prefer
to avoid violence.
But the goal is to make sure
that these Jews don't get caught,
and that our commandos don't get caught.
- So?
- Listen,
sometimes divers have accidents.
Can I say that I slept well
during those years? No.
I knew that at any moment,
something might happen.
They might get exposed, the Sudanese might
figure out who they are,
and once they're arrested
anything can happen,
starting with torture,
all the way up to not allowing them
to return to Israel alive.
That image of Eli Cohen,
hanged in the town square, in Damascus...
- Is that something that haunts you?
- No.
No. Because if it haunted me,
I couldn't do my job.
I couldn't, and others couldn't,
at every level. No.
The missions are recon missions.
I saw an opportunity to gather intel
that I knew was
highly sought after in Israel.
I joined a certain tour.
I managed to get into
the War Museum in Suez
and took pictures of vehicles
in order to help find missing persons
who were missing in action.
I saw fresh blood stains inside.
It was just days after
those soldiers had been killed.
And I had to keep smiling,
as if everything's OK.
You look so young in these pictures.
And yet you managed to hide your feelings.
There were many moments like that.
I'll give you an example.
Foreigners weren't allowed
to travel freely down most roads.
And I'm traveling, with a partner,
down a dark road at night,
and we don't have many reasons
to be going down that road.
And whatever you see,
you can report.
It could be a place
where long-range missiles are hidden.
It could be antennas.
It could be anything.
We reach a police checkpoint,
and the officer comes up to my window.
He asks where we came from,
and I tell him,
and where we're going,
and I tell him.
And then he says, "Why?"
So I play the wide-eyed dummy,
and I say,
"Because it was so boring there."
And he bought it and let us through.
Our hearts were racing,
because the car was full
of things we didn't want them to find.
You were involved in a mishap,
as team leader
in a mission in a...
"European" country, let's say.
A Mossad fiasco.
Four young Israelis
were caught in Cyprus
while attempting to tap the phones
of the Iranian embassy in Nicosia.
They claimed the were looking for
ladies' rooms for their female companions.
I'll tell you,
in regards to the mishap
which you just mentioned,
that I was involved in,
that I was involved in many more mishaps.
But usually,
you manage to avoid those mishaps,
and then, they don't become mishaps.
but in every case, in every case,
we take a modicum of risk.
On rare occasions,
we fall flat.
What was it like for you, personally,
being under arrest?
To be a free man,
on top of the world,
feeling like the world
is your own private playground,
traveling everywhere,
living it, and then to suddenly
find yourself handcuffed to a chair...
It's a very unpleasant situation.
And then you start asking yourself
some really big questions.
I admit that I even asked myself
why we have to get killed over this.
And the training you get
makes you, at that moment,
set that aside and move forward.
Did they believe you?
Did you manage to maintain your cover?
Of course.
Look, the risks were obvious.
Lillehammer happened around the same time.
The Mossad went after one of the
architects of the athlete
massacre in Munich,
and mistakenly identified
a Moroccan waiter
as the man they were looking for,
and, as a result,
killed the wrong man.
Bouchiki fell to the ground
in a pool of blood.
A neighbor saw it all
and even wrote down the plate number
of the car, a Mazda,
which enabled the police
to trace down the car.
Two men and two women, one of them
a Swede with ties to Israel,
were arrested.
On of them was Sylvia Rafael.
Did you know her through the Mossad?
Yes. Part of the story I constructed
included the capacity
to work as a journalist,
or as a photojournalist.
And that's when I met Sylvia,
who worked in that field.
Sylvia Rafael came from South Africa.
She wasn't even a Jew.
She fell in love with Israel.
At some point, she was recruited.
They constructed a wonderful identity
for her, as a Canadian photographer.
- And she actually was a photographer.
- Whose picture did she take?
The whole Middle East’s,
including kings, rulers...
So there was a Mossad operative
in the courts of kings
all over the Middle East,
with a camera.
Since the time of Israel’s founding,
there were several dozen Israelis
who went places that
how should I put it...
No Hollywood screenwriter has
ever taken enough magic mushrooms
to write about it.
Four of the defendants,
Abraham Gehmer, Sylvia Rafael,
Dan Arbel and Marianne Gladnikoff
came before the Supreme Court of Norway.
She was exposed as a Mossad operative
and imprisoned.
I watched the reading of her verdict
where I was stationed,
in Cairo, at the time.
Did you think what would happen
if they caught you?
Getting caught in Norway
is not like getting caught in Cairo.
With all the fun,
we were also being tested there.
We had guests there who had
CIA written all over them.
They were definitely CIA.
We made them immediately.
We knew that if we were careless,
we could sink the whole operation.
It was surreal even to think
that while we're at the resort,
having fun,
dancing with the guests
because we’re having a party,
the very same night,
at the back of the resort,
there's a convoy of trucks
transporting Jews to an evacuation point.
Every group of Jews that
I saw pulling away
from the shore with the naval commandos,
or going up in the plane,
brought with it…
enormous satisfaction.
And look, this whole operation,
with all its ups and downs,
with all its difficulties,
including firefights, and arrests,
and everything else,
went on for nearly ten years.
Your cover story in Cairo
was as “the wife of.”
How do you maintain such a complicated
relationship over such a long period?
I'd rather go on to another question.
Still,
what does it do to you,
acting out such a close relationship?
And where's the line
between acting and reality,
between acting and real life?
Wherever you want it to be.
And in your case?
Let's begin by saying
I didn't like the guy.
Had I met him socially,
I can assure you that I wouldn't have
spent more than five minutes with him.
He was the total opposite
of the type of person I could see myself
in a relationship with.
How did you keep it up for a whole year?
You were 22 years old.
It's not like going up on stage, acting,
and coming back down
an hour and a half later.
I live life to the fullest,
very intensely. I mean,
when I'm in something, I'm fully in it.
Certainly, spending many months
together, in an enemy country,
with the tensions of the place,
having to count on each other
and the acting...
It brought us closer together,
a closeness that eventually
turned emotional as well.
At that point, it became obvious that
it would be very, very difficult for us
if we didn't become close.
Because of our living conditions,
because we had...
local servants inside the house and...
We had to create that chemistry,
that intimacy.
We said, "Let's try and live it for real."
Until the mission ended,
and then we had to decide:
Do we stay together,
or do we break up?
The person who brought us together,
who knew us both well,
saw himself as responsible
for the impossible situation
he had put us in,
and he thought
it wouldn't be right
to let it go on,
the way it was going,
and he made sure we broke up.
And how did you take it?
I was so angry.
I...
Very angry. Very.
I said to him, "Look,
this might be a mistake,
but it's my mistake to make,
I’m asking you to stop
interfering with my life."
And yet,
my partner could have also
said the same thing I did:
"Wait, hold on. I refuse. Let's...
Do what we want to."
And he didn't do that. Therefore,
the person who made the decision
was probably right
about us not belonging together.
It's not easy.
At the end of the day, we're all human.
You can't...
It has to be very, very clear:
There's your work life,
where you're one person. There's your
home life, where you're another person.
They can't mix.
When they mix, it's very bad.
They mix sometimes and that's very bad.
So you put an end to it.
Can't be helped.
A few months before the mission ended,
I remember we were walking on the beach,
in the late afternoon.
He was called "Tony" there.
I said "Tony, tell me,
who do you prefer: Tony, or...?"
His real name, his name here in Israel.
And neither of us could
answer that question.
Who would we rather be:
the person we are here, in Sudan,
or the person we are in Israel?
I traveled to the US with my wife once.
This American couple asked me,
"Where are you from?"
And instinctively, I said "Italy.”
And the conversation went on.
I had no problem giving them
lots of details about Italy.
Later, we went back to the room,
and my wife said,
"Why didn’t you say Israel?
Why'd you have to say Italy?"
The point is that in this line of work,
you constantly feel the need
to be protected, covert
and not to be exposed.
I trained myself not to respond
to Hebrew in airports.
And it put me in a very embarrassing,
very difficult position,
when I was with my daughter,
on a European vacation,
and in an airport,
she called out to me, "Mom!"
And I didn't move.
It's part of maintaining your cover.
That's what you have to do:
Pretend it doesn't concern you.
She remembers it to this day,
and she's 35.
I remember it to this day.
Subtitle translation by
during the interview?
By your real name,
or by your cover name?
"Yael?” "Ella?”
Not "Ella,” not "Yael"...
But you can use "Tamar.”
Tamar. Okay.
You were in "Caesarea",
Mossad's special operations unit.
Yes.
What do you need in order
to become a Mossad operative?
I think that to be an operative
you need to become a storytelling machine.
And the stories always
have to exist on two levels:
The story you tell yourself, why you're
going to do what you're going to do,
and the story you're prepared
to tell the world,
the one you never tell.
Because if you ever get to the point
where you have to tell the story,
you're already screwed.
You should reach a point
where you look the part,
where your accessories,
your demeanor, your...
Everything you do is noticed
and whoever’s looking at you
thinks, looks, says "Wait a minute.
Who is this? Why is she here?
Oh, right.
Welcome."
What happens if your cover is blown?
Look, if I were caught,
then...
I doubt they would have stopped
at a long prison sentence.
I don't know.
Because it's not so nice
to be an Israeli spy,
behind enemy lines.
It's... not advisable.
The military court sentenced to death
Eli Cohen, a resident of Tel Aviv,
for espionage offenses."
The job takes you all over Europe.
You spend most of the week
away from home.
The family and children
remain at home.
And yet, at the same time,
you're busy in your work,
under a false identity,
and maintaining total separation
between those two worlds,
of play-acting on one hand...
Because you're basically a theater actor,
not for a two-hour play,
between 7:00 and 9:00,
but for hours upon hours.
Hours and days.
Is it really theater?
It's not exactly theater,
in the classical sense of the word,
but it's...
I'd say, a system where people play parts.
Everyone knows
exactly what they have to do.
You've got one shot
at performing this show,
and you have to be convinced
that the volume of X's performance,
alongside Y's timing,
combined with this or that line of text,
will eventually have the desired effect
and make the audience applaud,
so to speak.
You can take a bow,
you’ve achieved your objective.
I was recruited because
I was a good actress.
I was recruited because
I spoke different languages.
I was recruited because I was intelligent
enough to deal with changing situations,
and be able to react well in the moment.
I was recruited because sometimes it’s
easier for a couple to stand on the corner
than for a woman alone or a man alone.
That's why I was recruited.
When I was recruited, I was 26,
young and just out
of the IDF special forces,
and, like everyone else, I was at a
crossroads. I didn't know what to do.
When they approached me,
it was a good fit. A very good fit.
It fit in with...
the way I saw myself in the mirror.
When I looked in the mirror,
that's what I wanted to see.
They called me in for an interview.
It was a brief interview
with a rather attractive girl,
which really made me want
to be part of this organization.
They quickly sent me on to a kind of...
personality test,
to see if I was the kind of person
who was suitable for this type of work,
as a secret agent.
Your military service,
in the special forces... Was it helpful?
Serving in an elite unit,
such as Sayeret Matkal and others,
has nothing to do with your success
as a Mossad operative.
One of the best operatives we ever had
was a balloon technician
in the Intelligence Corps.
Serving in outfits such as the Air Force,
being an Air Force pilot,
is even a drawback,
because those people are trained
in a very rigid framework,
and so, their capacity
for open and creative thinking
is a bit limited. I hope no pilot
tries to kill me for saying that.
So you have to think outside the box,
be very creative,
but you can't be nuts.
It's true that most people who are...
on the verge of madness,
are much more creative.
You can see that
in history's great artists.
They were a little nuts.
An organization such as ours
can't afford that.
So you have to find those people
who are free-thinking and imaginative,
who have that fertile imagination,
but at the same, are very sane,
and know why they're doing it.
I grew up in a small town in Europe.
A very conservative France.
Growing up in an all-girls school,
with all female teachers...
It felt like a place that
would never change.
They always made me feel like a stranger.
They always made sure to ask,
"In case of a conflict
between Israel and France,
where would you belong?
Where does your loyalty lie?"
In 1970, the law in France was changed,
and they lowered the age at which
you’re legally an adult from 21 to 18.
I said, "That's it. Bye bye."
I packed a bag and left for Israel.
That's the kind of girl I was.
I knew what I wanted,
and I knew what I didn't want.
I started a totally normal life.
Until one day I got a letter
from the Agency
for International Cooperation.
I went into a room
with a desk and a man.
He said, "What if I told you
that there's a job that our pilots
can't do,
that our paratroopers can't do,
and that you can do?
The job is to be
Israel's eyes outside its borders.
Would you be interested?"
Of course!
Didn't you think of the danger?
No.
Today, would your answer
have been different?
I don't think so.
OK, what should I call you
during the interview?
- Janet.
- Janet?
If you call me Sarah
within five minutes I'll be Sarah.
No problem.
When I was young,
I loved crime and suspense novels.
I spoiled every Agatha Christie movie
for all my friends,
because by the second scene
I already knew who did it.
I like mysteries.
I like solving mysteries.
I like taking part in mysteries. OK?
It was 1970. I was in Israel.
I was very confused.
I enrolled in night school
at the Technion,
studying information systems
and programming.
They sat us in a classroom and a
very handsome man sat in front of me.
It was the middle of winter.
Everyone was pale.
But this guy had quite the tan.
OK. The school year started,
and once in a while,
the guy would disappear,
and come back two weeks later,
even more tan,
smiling from ear to ear, happy as a clam.
He was really enigmatic.
After the third or fourth time,
I took a pencil.
I sharpened it really well,
as sharp as I could.
I put it here, against his artery,
and I said, "Look,
I have no idea what you're up to
but I want in on it."
And that's how I came to Mossad.
They test you for resourcefulness,
improvisation, bravery.
Those who are too brave, fail,
because someone who's
daring, brave, and fearless,
can't read situations well,
doesn't see the danger coming.
You have to be, on one hand,
a reliable person, with strong morals,
and on the other hand, you have to have
the ability, in certain situations,
to be someone else entirely, based on
what you need in a given situation.
So this combination,
of these two qualities,
is hard to find in a single person.
Generally, people are
either honest and just,
or they're crooks.
It's hard to be honest and just,
and to be a crook as well when needed.
In your everyday as an operative,
you have to live deep inside that world,
sometimes for long stretches,
and to manipulate people in a way
you never would in your normal life.
That's the game.
That's why operatives are so hard to find.
That's why one in a thousand fits.
Did the fact that you're a woman
figure in your training?
WE'RE NOT DOLLS!
Look, I came after 1968
from France where girls burned their bras.
THERE CANNOT BE REVOLUTION
WITHOUT WOMEN
The image of the French woman,
in those days,
raised questions about promiscuity,
susceptibility and boundaries,
and my capacity for discipline.
On one hand, they didn't want
to make me a nun. On the other hand,
they didn't want me to get into trouble.
At certain points during training
they decided to test me on this front.
I had a boyfriend,
and they asked me to break up with him.
They needed to test my ability
to obey authority,
which isn't a given for me,
and to be true to my word, that...
OK, I'll break it off,
and we'll never see each other again.
He didn’t like it at all,
but I was very determined.
As the director of Mossad,
how involved were you
in operatives’ private lives?
Let me tell you a story
about one of the operatives,
I won't tell you who, who was to play
a key role in a certain upcoming mission.
He came to me and said,
"I have to go abroad for 3 days."
I said, "But the mission..."
"I'll be back."
So he calls me from abroad and says,
"I'm so sorry, Ephraim.
I can't come back."
"What's the matter?"
“I’ve found the love of my life.
We're going out now, on a catamaran."
And over there, it's... I said, "But...
You know, the mission!"
He says, "Sorry, I can't."
I hung up the phone. It was 2:00 am.
My wife, Hadassah, says:
"What's the matter?
You're white as a sheet.”
And I postponed the mission, without
telling the director of Mossad.
If I had told the director of Mossad,
he would have had no choice,
in my opinion,
but to bar him from participating
in such missions in the future.
So all of Israel had to wait
for him to finish his...
- trip?
- Yes.
I couldn't just get someone else.
It's the kind of thing that
you specialize in over time.
I didn't have a replacement to suggest.
Do you think I made the right decision?
- Was it successful?
- What?
Was it successful?
Is that the test?
Whether the mission was successful?
Maybe it was the wrong decision,
and it went well anyway?
- What do you think?
- I'm not going to tell you.
What do they teach you?
How to use a weapon?
Do they teach you to...
hold a knife in your teeth?
No, not at all.
I know that part of the image
of a Mossad operative is...
the guy with the knife in his teeth,
James Bond, with his fancy weaponry...
The most dangerous thing would be
to get caught with a weapon in a country
where you're not supposed to be.
And so, you don't carry weapons.
Your weapon is your identity, your story.
That's your only weapon.
In the movies,
the lives of operatives and secret agents
are all very glamorous.
In reality, it's true,
there are insane highs,
and unforgettable moments,
but reaching that peak requires
a lot of boring, thankless work.
Hard work.
For instance, you might spend four days
across from an office building,
waiting for a certain
bearded guy to come out.
You can't do anything else.
If you take your eyes off that building,
you'll miss the bearded guy
that's supposed to come out.
That's reality. Reality isn't James Bond.
The James Bond part exists,
but it's ultimately a small part of it.
You might put in a week's work
for a ten-minute act.
But you know, I won't go into specifics,
but sometimes it's worth it
to put in a week's work for ten minutes.
I became active during the Yom Kippur War.
It was a terrible time.
We were genuinely afraid
that our home would be destroyed.
Where did they send you?
To Egypt, while we were still at war.
- How did you get there?
- I went back to Europe,
for a while, to get ready
and to work on my back story.
Because my time in Israel
had to be erased.
Any connection to Jewishness.
Any connection to being Israeli.
Any connection to Hebrew.
Well, these are photos of...
The evening gowns of the 1970s,
that I used from time to time.
Who picked them out?
The commander.
Yes.
We went shopping. Three dresses.
Oh, this is on the plane,
flying abroad for the mission.
This was my 22nd birthday.
Who took it?
Was someone there with you?
Yes.
I had a partner with me,
because the mission required a couple.
Yes.
And that was your cover story?
"The wife of.”
The day of my arrival in Cairo,
I was with my "boyfriend,”
and he wanted to show me around,
to see Cairo by night,
and he took me to Sahara City.
A big tent,
music, food, a belly dancer...
He had been there a while
by the time I joined him.
And I see him, sort of...
tapping his foot along with the rhythm,
and tapping his hand on his thigh.
That told me he was already acclimated,
that he was part of that culture.
I still found it totally foreign.
I play a certain character.
-What kind of character?
I play a blonde and I'm a brunette.
The blonde type is...
a shallow person.
All I care about is a little sport,
and a little social life,
and taking belly-dancing lessons,
it's good for your figure
and good for connecting
with the local culture.
I know exactly what I'm giving off,
what I want people to see, because...
Those two girls who're going
to gossip about me need to be able
to come up with answers to their questions
without having to come and ask me.
The day someone comes and asks me
a question,
that means I screwed up big time.
I constructed my story
ahead of time, of course.
But there are always little details
that you don't...
You can't learn someone else's
entire life by heart,
whether it's real or fake.
You have to make up a life,
but some stuff is always missing.
You deal with it every day,
until it becomes second nature.
You notice things, you make sure
not to talk, not to give anything away.
So basically,
your whole life becomes an act.
Yes, the theater of life.
Look, someone who doesn't enjoy the game
is wrong for the job, obviously.
But if you enjoy the game...
I remember getting on a plane,
alone, for the first time,
on my first trip to Khartoum.
You get on a plane,
surrounded by Muslim men
wearing gallabiyas.
And they look at you,
and you look at them,
and you know that they have no idea
you're from the place you're from.
I sat there on the plane, looking around,
and I really enjoyed that situation,
having a secret that only I know.
On your assignment in Sudan,
what was your cover story?
A businessman?
No. I was a researcher,
an anthropologist,
studying tribes.
It wasn't easy, because...
There weren't a lot of them around,
let's say.
The order came down
from the Prime Minister, no less.
He said,
"Bring Ethiopia's Jews to Israel.”
Just like that.
In those days, Ethiopia
was almost in a state of anarchy,
so we couldn't
transport those Jews directly.
So we decided
to take advantage of the fact
that Sudan and Israel
both border on the Red Sea.
That operation involved breaking
every rule on the book
on how to run an intelligence operation.
First of all, it took place
in an area where we had
very limited field recon capabilities.
We had no real way of knowing
whether or not we'd been exposed.
The people we recruited...
We didn't have time to train them
and properly prepare them for the job.
I made that decision
and we took a shortcut.
We took some people,
some of them Israeli, and trained them,
gave them crash courses,
on operating under an assumed identity
in an enemy country.
So I went to Sudan
in order to check out beaches,
and to test the waters.
We took a tour of the beaches,
and during that tour,
about 65-70 km north of Port Sudan
we saw some huts with red roofs.
It was a diving resort,
built by an Italian company.
The diving spots there
are some of the best in the world.
As soon as I saw the resort,
I realized its potential
from every angle.
Our justification for being
in Sudan in the first place.
What's your connection to a diving resort?
How do you explain that?
So I'm an anthropologist
who got sick of anthropology.
I've been over there for two years,
and it's the most beautiful place
I've ever seen and I decide
to quit my research
and now I want to make money.
That's something everyone can understand.
The team I put together for the job
was required,
on one hand, to play the role
of diving instructors, all the way,
including actual instruction,
and to be part of a team
that does the actual work of...
gathering the Jews and transporting them,
all undercover.
None of them came through the village.
We transported them
through a small inlet,
about 5 km from the resort.
The resort was entirely for the purpose
of maintaining our cover.
Look, I was a troublemaker.
I was recruited as a journalist,
and in the Mossad,
the word “journalist" is
synonymous with “whore.”
And actually, my whole adult life
had been journalism and Mossad,
journalism and Mossad, journalism...
Sometimes at the same time.
What was your job in this mission?
I was co-founder and
manager of the resort.
Among other things,
I was a windsurfing instructor,
a boat operator...
At one point, we brought over the first
windsurfing board in Sudan.
We flew it in special from Israel
on a military plane.
The end of the course was the first time
I found out what I was going to do.
My job was to run the resort,
like a Club Med.
The resort would be the operatives’ cover
and their pretext for coming to Sudan.
One will be the resort's doctor,
one will come to check the books...
You asked about the theater?
There you go.
That was my moment on the stage.
The resort was called Arous.
After the mission ended,
The New York Times wrote
that it was a shame
they’d closed the resort,
because it was a hidden treasure.
The best diving in the world.
Divers came there from all over,
and the food...
We ran something like a...
Michelin two-star restaurant.
We ran the operation at the same time
as the resort, totally unrelated.
Nothing changed in the resort’s routine
during the operation.
Some of the operations
were done by sea.
We'd take the “brothers,”
as we called them, to the beach,
where they were picked up
by Israeli commandos.
Once, we stumbled into
a Sudanese army ambush.
About 60 Sudanese soldiers
suddenly emerged from the dark.
Soldiers?
Armed soldiers, with AK-47s.
- Gunshots, some people got captured...
- Were you captured?
No. I was 100 meters from the beach,
in an inflatable boat,
and I reported back,
because the commandos were already
preparing for a violent rescue operation,
to go back to the beach and rescue
the four people who got captured,
but I told them to wait, because suddenly
I see Danny with his hands in the air,
shouting at the officer.
He was a tall, strong guy.
He started yelling at me in Arabic,
and I knew what he was saying, but...
I answered him in English.
He says, "What are you doing?
Who are these people?
I'm taking you to Port Sudan
for interrogation."
He grabbed me by the arm.
I wriggled free.
I said,
"I'm not going anywhere with you.
You wanna shout? I can shout too."
He started yelling at him.
"You're a moron! You're an idiot!
I work for the Tourism Ministry!
I take tourists on nocturnal dives,
and you open fire at me!
I'll be in Khartoum tomorrow,
and I'll lodge a complaint
with the Chief of Staff!"
And the officer, all embarrassed,
mumbled an apology,
gathered his men, and left.
We always knew it might all end
with a burned-out military plane,
and us hanging upside down from the tail.
Did you ever feel like
your cover was about to be blown?
I had a very difficult test.
Once, when there where no other guests,
two German guests came in,
Germans both.
One of them got the hots for me,
and was always on my tail,
constantly around me,
talking to me, asking questions,
and we talked about
our childhoods, and songs...
The things you talk about when you finally
find someone from your homeland.
That puts you in a very awkward position.
Imagine it.
If someone pretends to be
Israeli around you,
right away you'll know if he's for real
or if he learned it somewhere.
Diving tourists are people
who spend a lot of money
in order to get to any hole
they’ve heard has good diving.
We had Italians, French,
Spaniards, Canadians.
This one Canadian,
he was Jewish by the way,
requested a private dive.
The instructor...
had been undercover,
a former naval commando officer.
Now, underwater,
divers communicate using hand signals.
Military divers use different signals.
To ask if everything's OK,
he goes like this
and you have to answer like this.
In the military, he goes like this
and you have to answer like this.
The hardest thing for them
was to make that switch.
So the guy came from a country
that has serious naval commandos,
and he asked him,
"Why did you go like that?
What's your background?"
He realized his mistake,
so he said "Yeah,
I used to be in the military."
When they get out of the water,
the guy says something like,
"Good dive, huh?" In Hebrew.
And, you know, after an hour underwater,
you get a little...
So he answered, "Yes."
He comes up to me and says,
"I'm burned."
I said "OK, which room is he in?"
He told me the room number.
I knocked on his door. He opened it
and started talking to me in Hebrew.
I said, "I don't understand."
So he switched to English.
And he said, "Listen...
You know, I'm on your side."
I told him,
"You requested another
dive tonight, right?
You asked for a night dive.
We're going to take you to a reef
where there's a special kind of shark.
They only like the taste of kosher meat.
That's where you'll be diving tonight."
"No", he says.
"No, really, I don't...
I didn't mean anything by it, I...
I love Israel..."
I said, "I don't care.
Just remember that our
reach is very long."
What do you do in that kind of situation?
Look, in this line of work,
you always prefer
to avoid violence.
But the goal is to make sure
that these Jews don't get caught,
and that our commandos don't get caught.
- So?
- Listen,
sometimes divers have accidents.
Can I say that I slept well
during those years? No.
I knew that at any moment,
something might happen.
They might get exposed, the Sudanese might
figure out who they are,
and once they're arrested
anything can happen,
starting with torture,
all the way up to not allowing them
to return to Israel alive.
That image of Eli Cohen,
hanged in the town square, in Damascus...
- Is that something that haunts you?
- No.
No. Because if it haunted me,
I couldn't do my job.
I couldn't, and others couldn't,
at every level. No.
The missions are recon missions.
I saw an opportunity to gather intel
that I knew was
highly sought after in Israel.
I joined a certain tour.
I managed to get into
the War Museum in Suez
and took pictures of vehicles
in order to help find missing persons
who were missing in action.
I saw fresh blood stains inside.
It was just days after
those soldiers had been killed.
And I had to keep smiling,
as if everything's OK.
You look so young in these pictures.
And yet you managed to hide your feelings.
There were many moments like that.
I'll give you an example.
Foreigners weren't allowed
to travel freely down most roads.
And I'm traveling, with a partner,
down a dark road at night,
and we don't have many reasons
to be going down that road.
And whatever you see,
you can report.
It could be a place
where long-range missiles are hidden.
It could be antennas.
It could be anything.
We reach a police checkpoint,
and the officer comes up to my window.
He asks where we came from,
and I tell him,
and where we're going,
and I tell him.
And then he says, "Why?"
So I play the wide-eyed dummy,
and I say,
"Because it was so boring there."
And he bought it and let us through.
Our hearts were racing,
because the car was full
of things we didn't want them to find.
You were involved in a mishap,
as team leader
in a mission in a...
"European" country, let's say.
A Mossad fiasco.
Four young Israelis
were caught in Cyprus
while attempting to tap the phones
of the Iranian embassy in Nicosia.
They claimed the were looking for
ladies' rooms for their female companions.
I'll tell you,
in regards to the mishap
which you just mentioned,
that I was involved in,
that I was involved in many more mishaps.
But usually,
you manage to avoid those mishaps,
and then, they don't become mishaps.
but in every case, in every case,
we take a modicum of risk.
On rare occasions,
we fall flat.
What was it like for you, personally,
being under arrest?
To be a free man,
on top of the world,
feeling like the world
is your own private playground,
traveling everywhere,
living it, and then to suddenly
find yourself handcuffed to a chair...
It's a very unpleasant situation.
And then you start asking yourself
some really big questions.
I admit that I even asked myself
why we have to get killed over this.
And the training you get
makes you, at that moment,
set that aside and move forward.
Did they believe you?
Did you manage to maintain your cover?
Of course.
Look, the risks were obvious.
Lillehammer happened around the same time.
The Mossad went after one of the
architects of the athlete
massacre in Munich,
and mistakenly identified
a Moroccan waiter
as the man they were looking for,
and, as a result,
killed the wrong man.
Bouchiki fell to the ground
in a pool of blood.
A neighbor saw it all
and even wrote down the plate number
of the car, a Mazda,
which enabled the police
to trace down the car.
Two men and two women, one of them
a Swede with ties to Israel,
were arrested.
On of them was Sylvia Rafael.
Did you know her through the Mossad?
Yes. Part of the story I constructed
included the capacity
to work as a journalist,
or as a photojournalist.
And that's when I met Sylvia,
who worked in that field.
Sylvia Rafael came from South Africa.
She wasn't even a Jew.
She fell in love with Israel.
At some point, she was recruited.
They constructed a wonderful identity
for her, as a Canadian photographer.
- And she actually was a photographer.
- Whose picture did she take?
The whole Middle East’s,
including kings, rulers...
So there was a Mossad operative
in the courts of kings
all over the Middle East,
with a camera.
Since the time of Israel’s founding,
there were several dozen Israelis
who went places that
how should I put it...
No Hollywood screenwriter has
ever taken enough magic mushrooms
to write about it.
Four of the defendants,
Abraham Gehmer, Sylvia Rafael,
Dan Arbel and Marianne Gladnikoff
came before the Supreme Court of Norway.
She was exposed as a Mossad operative
and imprisoned.
I watched the reading of her verdict
where I was stationed,
in Cairo, at the time.
Did you think what would happen
if they caught you?
Getting caught in Norway
is not like getting caught in Cairo.
With all the fun,
we were also being tested there.
We had guests there who had
CIA written all over them.
They were definitely CIA.
We made them immediately.
We knew that if we were careless,
we could sink the whole operation.
It was surreal even to think
that while we're at the resort,
having fun,
dancing with the guests
because we’re having a party,
the very same night,
at the back of the resort,
there's a convoy of trucks
transporting Jews to an evacuation point.
Every group of Jews that
I saw pulling away
from the shore with the naval commandos,
or going up in the plane,
brought with it…
enormous satisfaction.
And look, this whole operation,
with all its ups and downs,
with all its difficulties,
including firefights, and arrests,
and everything else,
went on for nearly ten years.
Your cover story in Cairo
was as “the wife of.”
How do you maintain such a complicated
relationship over such a long period?
I'd rather go on to another question.
Still,
what does it do to you,
acting out such a close relationship?
And where's the line
between acting and reality,
between acting and real life?
Wherever you want it to be.
And in your case?
Let's begin by saying
I didn't like the guy.
Had I met him socially,
I can assure you that I wouldn't have
spent more than five minutes with him.
He was the total opposite
of the type of person I could see myself
in a relationship with.
How did you keep it up for a whole year?
You were 22 years old.
It's not like going up on stage, acting,
and coming back down
an hour and a half later.
I live life to the fullest,
very intensely. I mean,
when I'm in something, I'm fully in it.
Certainly, spending many months
together, in an enemy country,
with the tensions of the place,
having to count on each other
and the acting...
It brought us closer together,
a closeness that eventually
turned emotional as well.
At that point, it became obvious that
it would be very, very difficult for us
if we didn't become close.
Because of our living conditions,
because we had...
local servants inside the house and...
We had to create that chemistry,
that intimacy.
We said, "Let's try and live it for real."
Until the mission ended,
and then we had to decide:
Do we stay together,
or do we break up?
The person who brought us together,
who knew us both well,
saw himself as responsible
for the impossible situation
he had put us in,
and he thought
it wouldn't be right
to let it go on,
the way it was going,
and he made sure we broke up.
And how did you take it?
I was so angry.
I...
Very angry. Very.
I said to him, "Look,
this might be a mistake,
but it's my mistake to make,
I’m asking you to stop
interfering with my life."
And yet,
my partner could have also
said the same thing I did:
"Wait, hold on. I refuse. Let's...
Do what we want to."
And he didn't do that. Therefore,
the person who made the decision
was probably right
about us not belonging together.
It's not easy.
At the end of the day, we're all human.
You can't...
It has to be very, very clear:
There's your work life,
where you're one person. There's your
home life, where you're another person.
They can't mix.
When they mix, it's very bad.
They mix sometimes and that's very bad.
So you put an end to it.
Can't be helped.
A few months before the mission ended,
I remember we were walking on the beach,
in the late afternoon.
He was called "Tony" there.
I said "Tony, tell me,
who do you prefer: Tony, or...?"
His real name, his name here in Israel.
And neither of us could
answer that question.
Who would we rather be:
the person we are here, in Sudan,
or the person we are in Israel?
I traveled to the US with my wife once.
This American couple asked me,
"Where are you from?"
And instinctively, I said "Italy.”
And the conversation went on.
I had no problem giving them
lots of details about Italy.
Later, we went back to the room,
and my wife said,
"Why didn’t you say Israel?
Why'd you have to say Italy?"
The point is that in this line of work,
you constantly feel the need
to be protected, covert
and not to be exposed.
I trained myself not to respond
to Hebrew in airports.
And it put me in a very embarrassing,
very difficult position,
when I was with my daughter,
on a European vacation,
and in an airport,
she called out to me, "Mom!"
And I didn't move.
It's part of maintaining your cover.
That's what you have to do:
Pretend it doesn't concern you.
She remembers it to this day,
and she's 35.
I remember it to this day.
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