They monitor messages, break codes, wiretap, translate, and process information into data that saves lives and prevents casualties. They’re the brains behind Unit 8200, the country’s first line of defense — but to people on the outside, they’re just jobniks.
There are several thousand of them, sitting in dozens of hidden military outposts somewhere in Israel, with headphones and powerful computers, collecting all kinds of information that help the long arm of the security forces to thwart terror attacks, find the vulnerabilities of the enemy, and track suspicious movements on an international scale. They monitor messages, break codes, and translate, process, and analyze the material. They’re considered the best minds in the military; IDF recruiters had been eyeing their proficiency and talent since high school. These soldiers don’t fight in combat units and never face the barrel of a gun, but they serve as Israel’s real front line of defense.
Israel’s powerful position in the Middle East is often associated with its armed forces, its assumed nuclear weapons arsenal and its covert worldwide Mossad operations. But at the heart of it all is Unit 8200, Israel’s intelligence corps, arguably the best military intelligence gathering apparatus in the world. The innocuous name comes from the number on its military post office box, yet in secret installations from the Urim base in the Negev desert to a mountain cavern on the Hermon close to the Syrian border, soldiers monitor governments, international organizations, foreign companies, political organizations and individuals. They intercept phone calls, e-mails, maritime communications, and satellite transmissions from local terror hotbeds and all over the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia — the Urim base in the Negev is said to run the largest wiretap network in the world. Unit 8200 also reportedly maintains covert listening posts in Israeli embassies abroad, taps undersea cables, maintains covert listening units in the Palestinian territories, and has Gulfstream jets equipped with electronic surveillance equipment. And all that information is funneled to Unit 8200 headquarters in Herzliya, where it’s processed and passed onto military strategists, the GSS, the Mossad, the police, and other bodies responsible for the security of Israel and its citizens.
If Unit 8200 sounds too “politically incorrect,” that doesn’t seem to bother most Israelis. It’s considered the most prestigious military unit in the IDF, its soldiers are handpicked (8200 gets first-choice pick of recruits after candidates are selected for pilot training), and the unit’s graduates are snapped up by high-tech and other companies after their discharge. Many job offers in the highly competitive civilian market will specifically advertise “for 8200 alumni only.” And it’s no coincidence that numerous successful high-tech start-ups originate with Unit 8200 graduates: Many of the technologies developed in Israel and in use around the world were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit 8200 veterans.
But while those veterans might be high-profile with a gold ticket into the job market, the unit’s soldiers while still in uniform aren’t even allowed to disclose where they’re stationed. Although these soldiers are responsible for collecting electronic intelligence, for operating a surveillance and translation network, interpreting and analyzing information and formulating it into effective intelligence data which saves lives and prevents casualties, no one on the outside knows what they do.
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