Israel ‘mislead’ by double agent in 1973 war

A retired Israeli intelligence officer revealed that Cairo had “sedated” Tel Aviv just before the 1973 war, by using a man who was thought to be working for the Israeli secret service but in effect was an agent for the Egyptians. The former Israeli officer, Shimon Mendes, said that the Egyptian businessman Ashraf Marwan , who was also the son in law of the former Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, had been misleading Tel Aviv while carrying out the plans of the then Egyptian president Anwer Al Sadat.   Marwan was killed in suspicious circumstances in June 2007, after falling from the balcony of his flat in London, prompting the Israelis to claim him as an agent of their own, alleging that he had provided them with the timing for the launch of the Egyptian military operations against Israel 38 years ago. In an interview with an Israeli magazine concerned with military and security affairs, Mendes conceded that there is still disagreement within Israel over the true role played by Marwan, but the retired Israeli officer said that:  “in fact, he work for Egypt to mislead Israel and he was taking orders directly from the former Egyptian president Anwer Al Sadat to achieve this mission.” Mendes laid the blame of the Israeli intelligence failure to anticipate the start of the Egyptian operation on the doors of the Mossad and Amal, who had taken the reports of Marwan at face value, as if they were directly “from God”, undisputed and unquestioned. The Israelis felt that Marwan was like a reincarnation of Mosses, born in the palace of Pharaoh but will ultimately lead to his demise, said Mendes, who stressed that the Egyptians understood the Israeli mentality, but the Israelis failed to understand them. “It’s time that we get down from our high horses and begin to look at the greater Middle East in which we live in,” said Mendes.