Eliminated  

         The Mossad’s most daring cloak-and-dagger operations  

Faced with innumerable threats to Israel’s safety, the Mossad has long reacted by targeting terrorist leaders. A look at the institution’s founding and some of its most famous operations

In late July 2024, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Tehran as a personal guest of newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian and was hosted in the west wing of the president’s five-story guest house. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, July 31, a massive explosion shattered windows and collapsed the wall of Haniyeh’s suite, killing him and his bodyguard.
Haniyeh’s assassination has been attributed to the Mossad, a claim that Israel has neither acknowledged nor denied, as per official policy.
But targeted assassinations is a strategy long relied on by the State of Israel to remove the heads of the snake, the terrorist leaders dedicated to its destruction.

1949: “We have no choice. We must win or we will not exist.” —Yigal Allon, IDF general

The Founding of the Mossad and Early Missions

At 4 p.m. on Friday, May 14, 1948, in a ceremony attended by 250 guests at the Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.

That very evening, sirens pierced the air of Tel Aviv as Egyptian warplanes swooped in and began bombing the city. By morning, the newly formed state had been invaded by seven Arab armies. Over the next ten months, the state would fight the War of Independence, culminating in a hard-earned victory.

Realizing that a sophisticated intelligence network was needed to win the war, on June 7, 1948, Ben-Gurion summoned two former Haganah officers, Reuven Shiloach and Isser Be’eri, who’d been involved with Shai, the pre-state intelligence apparatus. Together, they formed three crucial intelligence agencies: AMAN, the military intelligence arm of the IDF; Shin Bet, responsible for internal security; and the Political Department, tasked with foreign espionage.

Ben-Gurion had been a voice of moderation in the pre-state Haganah he’d headed, speaking out against the more radical actions of the right-wing underground groups, the Lehi and the Irgun, who favored targeted assassinations against high-profile British figures and attacks against British military personnel and infrastructure.