In Baghdad, Shemesh had a Christian mistress. Her sister, Camille, was married to the Iraqi Air Force pilot Munir Redfa, also a Christian. Shemesh knew that Redfa was frustrated and bitter; even though he was an excellent MiG-21 pilot, he was not promoted in rank. Moreover, he was ordered to fly an antiquated MiG-17 to fulfill a disgusting mission—to bomb the Kurd villages. He regarded this as a humiliation and a demotion. He complained to his superiors and was made to understand that as a Christian, he would never be promoted and never become a squadron leader. Redfa, a very ambitious man, concluded that there was no sense in living in Iraq anymore.
For almost a year, Shemesh held long conversations with the young pilot, and finally succeeded in convincing him to make a short trip to Athens. Using all his eloquence and powers of persuasion, Shemesh explained to the Iraqi authorities that Redfa’s wife suffered from a serious illness, and the only way to save her was to have her examined by Western doctors. She must fly to Greece right away, he said, and asked on her behalf that her husband be allowed to join her, as he was the only one in the family who spoke English.
The authorities capitulated, and Munir Redfa was allowed to travel with his wife to Athens. There they met another pilot—Colonel Ze’ev Liron (Londner), an Israeli Air Force officer. Liron, born in Poland and a Holocaust survivor, was the chief of Air Force Intelligence. He had been asked by the Mossad to help in the Redfa case. Liron and Redfa had several tête-à-tête discussions. Liron pretended to be a Polish pilot working for an anti-Communist organization. Munir told him about his family, his life in Iraq, and his deep disappointment with his superiors who sent him to bomb Kurd villages. All the able Kurdish men had gone to fight, he said, and those who had stayed in the villages were women, children, and old people. These were the people he had to kill? For him it was the last straw that made his decision final: he would leave Iraq for good.
Following the Mossad’s orders, Liron invited Munir to join him on a small Greek island. The Mossad gave Redfa a code name: “Yahalom” (Diamond). In the serene, tranquil atmosphere of the island, the two men continued their conversations and became good friends. Late one evening, Liron asked Redfa what would happen if he left Iraq with his plane.
“They would kill me,” Redfa said. “Besides, there is no country that would agree to give me asylum.”
“There is one country that will welcome you with open arms,” Liron said, and revealed the truth to his astounded friend:
“I am an Israeli pilot, not a Pole.”
There was a long silence.
“Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” Liron said and they parted for the night. The following morning, Redfa told Liron he had decided to accept his offer. The two of them started discussing the conditions for Redfa’s defection and the sum of money he would get.
Redfa was very modest. “Meir Amit told me to offer Redfa a certain amount of money,” Liron said later, “and to double it if needed. But Redfa immediately accepted my initial offer. We agreed that his family would join him in Israel.”
From the Greek island they flew to Rome. Shemesh and his mistress arrived from Baghdad. A few days later, they were joined by Yehuda Porat, a research officer at Air Force Intelligence, who started debriefing Redfa.
“He was polite, very considerate, a man of honor,” Porat recalled. “He was brave, not talkative; he had none of the inhibitions that you would expect of a man in his situation.”
In Rome, Liron and Redfa discussed communication methods. It was agreed that when Redfa heard at Radio Kol Israel in Arabic the popular Arab song “Marhabtein Marhabtein,” that would be the signal for him to be on his way. But he did not know that while he was meeting his handlers in various cafés in Rome, he was being watched by the heads of the Mossad.
“I decided,” Meir Amit told us, “to have a personal look at the pilot before the operation got into its final stage. I flew to Rome and went to the café where the Iraqi pilot and my men were supposed to go. I sat at a neighboring table and waited. Then quite a few people walked into the café. The guy made a good impression; I signaled to our officer who was sitting with him that everything was all right; and I left.”
During our meeting with Amit, he insisted on reading to us a passage from his book Head On, which described the group that had walked into the Rome café: “The Jewish lover (Shemesh), wearing slippers because of a wound in his foot; his mistress, a fat and almost ugly lady (I didn’t understand what he saw in her); and Diamond (Munir’s code name), a short, sturdy, and broad-shouldered man with a serious face. They didn’t know they were being tested.”
Only when he was convinced that he could trust Diamond did Amit give Rehavia Vardi the order to proceed with the next stage—briefing the Iraqi pilot in Israel. Liron and Redfa returned to Athens to catch a flight to Tel Aviv. But a snag at Athens Airport almost ruined the operation. By mistake, Redfa boarded a flight to Cairo instead of Tel Aviv. Only when he boarded the El Al flight, did Liron realize that Redfa had vanished.
“I was desperate,” Liron reported later. “I was certain that everything was lost. But a few minutes later, Munir appeared beside me. It turned out that the flight attendants in the Cairo plane counted the passengers, found out that there was an extra passenger, checked the tickets, and sent Munir to the Tel Aviv flight.”
Redfa spent only twenty-four hours in Israel. He was briefed, and even rehearsed the flight itinerary into Israel. In a Mossad compound, he was taught a secret code; his new friends then took him on a stroll down Allenby Street, one of Tel Aviv’s main arteries, and in the evening hosted him in a fine restaurant in Jaffa, “to make him feel at home.”
Redfa flew back to Athens, changed planes, and landed in Baghdad, in preparation for the last stage.
But . . . “at that moment, I almost got a heart attack,” Amit recalled. “A few days before his desertion, the Iraqi pilot decided to sell his home furniture. Now try to imagine the implications of a sudden garage sale by a fighter pilot. I was scared to death that the Iraqi Mukhabarat (security service) would find out about the sale, would interrogate Redfa, arrest him, and the entire operation would collapse. Thank God, the Mukhabarat didn’t hear about that, and the stupid sale of this miser’s belongings didn’t lead to his arrest . . .”
Then, another problem: how to get the pilot’s family out of Iraq, first to England and later to the United States? He had quite a few sisters and brothers-in-law that had to be taken out of Iraq before he flew. His immediate family, it had been agreed, would be flown to Israel. Redfa’s wife didn’t know a thing about this, and he was afraid to tell her the truth. He had only told her that they were going to Europe, for a long stay. She flew with her two children to Amsterdam. Mossad people waiting there took them on to Paris, where Liron met them. She still had no idea who these people were.
“They were settled in a small apartment with one double bed,” Liron recalled. “We sat on this bed, and there, on the night before the flight to Israel, I revealed to her that I was an Israeli officer, that her husband would land in Israel the next day, and that we are going there as well.”
Her reaction was dramatic. “She wept and yelled all night,” Liron reported to his superiors. “She said that her husband was a traitor; that this was treason against Iraq; and her brothers would kill Munir when they found out what he had done.
“She wanted to go right away to the Iraqi embassy and tell them what her husband intended to do. She didn’t stop screaming and crying all night long. I tried to calm her down; I told her that if she wanted to see him, she had to come to Israel with me. She realized she had no other choice. With swollen eyes and a sick child, she got on the plane and we flew to Israel.”
On July 17, 1966, one of the Mossad stations in Europe got a coded letter from Munir, informing them that his flight was approaching. On August 14, he took off, but a malfunction in the aircraft’s electric system made him turn back and land at Rashid Air Base. “Later,” Amit said, “he found out that it was not a serious hitch. T
he cockpit suddenly filled with smoke because of a burned fuse; if he stayed the course, he would have arrived without any problem. But he didn’t want to take risks and returned to base, and I got some more white hairs . . .”
Two days later, Munir Redfa took off again. He stuck to the planned route, and on the Israeli radar screens a dot appeared, indicating the approach of a foreign aircraft to Israel’s airspace. The new air force commander, General Mordechai (Motti) Hod, had let only a couple of pilots in on the mission. They would escort the Iraqi plane to their base. All the other units, pilots, squadrons, and bases of the air force were given an order by Hod: “Today you don’t do anything, but absolutely anything, without a verbal order from me. And you know my voice.” Hod didn’t want some overzealous pilot to shoot down “the enemy aircraft” breaching Israel’s perimeter.
The MiG-21 penetrated into Israel’s air space. Ran Pecker, one of the aces of the air force, had been chosen to escort Redfa. “Our guest is slowing down,” Ran reported to air force control, “and signals me with his thumb that he wants to land; he also tilts his wings, which is the international code indicating that he comes in peace.” At eight A.M., sixty-five minutes after taking off from Baghdad, Redfa landed in the Hatzor Air Base in Israel.
A year after the operation started, and ten months before the 1967 Six-Day War, the air force got its MiG-21. The two Mirage fighters that had escorted it from the border landed with it. Meir Amit and his men had accomplished the impossible. The MiG-21, which at that time was considered the crown jewel of the Soviet arsenal and was regarded as the main threat to Western air forces, was now in Israel’s hands.
After he landed, still stunned and confused, Munir was taken to the home of the Hatzor base commander. Several senior officers threw him a party, with inexcusable disregard for the man’s feelings.
“Munir was surprised by the party and at first felt as if he had strayed into another man’s wedding,” Meir Amit recalled. “He sat down in a corner and kept quiet.”
After a short rest, when he was assured that his wife and children were already on an El Al plane on the way to Israel, Munir Redfa was taken to a press conference. In his statement, he spoke about the persecution of Christians in Iraq, the bombing of the Kurds, and his own reasons for defection.
After the press conference, Munir was driven to Herzliya, an ocean-front city north of Tel Aviv, to meet his family. “We did our best to calm him down, encourage him, and compliment him for the operation,” Meir Amit wrote. “I promised him to do all in my power to help him and his family to recover, but I feared the next stage, as we had learned that Munir’s family was very problematic.”
A few days after Munir had landed his MiG in Hatzor, his wife’s brother—an officer in the Iraqi Army—arrived in Israel. He was accompanied by Shemesh and his lover, Camille. The officer was mad with rage. He had been told that he had to urgently visit his sister, who was very sick, in Europe, and to his amazement, he was taken to Israel. When he met with Munir, he blew his top, called him a traitor, jumped him, and tried to beat him up. He also accused his sister, Munir’s wife, of being aware of her husband’s plans all along, which made her an accomplice to an unspeakable crime. She denied his accusations, but in vain. A few days later, the brother left Israel.
The first to fly the MiG was Danny Shapira, a famous air force pilot and the best test pilot in Israel. Motti Hod called him the day after the plane’s landing and told him: “You’re going to be the first Western pilot to fly a MiG-21. Start studying this aircraft, fly it as much as you can, and learn its strengths and its flaws.”
Shapira met with Redfa. “We met in Herzliya a few days after his arrival,” Danny Shapira said. “When they introduced us, he almost jumped to attention. Later we met in Hatzor, by the plane. He showed me the switches, we went over the labels that were in Russian and Arabic, and after an hour I told him that I was going to fly the plane. He was amazed. He said: ‘But you haven’t completed a course!’ I explained that I was a test pilot. He seemed very worried and asked to be beside the plane when I took off. I promised.”
All the senior officers of the air force came to Hatzor to watch the maiden flight. Ezer Weizman, until recently the air force commander, was also there. “Ezer came to me,” Shapira remembered, “patted my shoulder, and said: ‘Danny, no tricks, bring the aircraft back, okay?’
“Redfa was also there. I took off, did what I did, and after I landed, Redfa came to me and hugged me. He had tears in his eyes. ‘With pilots like you,’ he said, ‘the Arabs will never beat you.’ ”
After a few test flights, the air force experts understood why the West held the MiG-21 in such esteem. It flew very high and very fast and weighed a ton less than the French and Israeli Mirage III.
The MiG-21 operation made the headlines of the world press. The Americans were amazed. Soon after, they sent a delegation of technicians and asked to study and fly the aircraft. Israel, however, refused to let them near the plane before the United States shared with it its files on the SAM-2, the new Soviet antiaircraft missile. The Americans finally agreed; American pilots came to Israel, examined the MiG-21, and flew it.
Learning the secrets of the MiG-21 was a tremendous help to the Israeli Air Force and was essential in preparing for the confrontations with the MiGs that finally occurred ten months later, in the Six-Day War of June 1967. “That MiG had an important part in the victory of the Israeli Air Force over the Arab air forces, and in particular in the destruction of the Egyptian Air Force in a few hours,” Amit proudly said.
The Mossad and the Israeli Air Force had indeed achieved a tremendous victory, but Munir Redfa and his family paid dearly for it. “After his arrival, Munir had a very hard, miserable, and sad life,” a senior Mossad officer said. “Building a new life for an agent [out of his country] is almost a mission impossible. Munir felt frustrated, but his family suffered, too. A whole family was broken.”
For three years, Munir tried to make Israel his home, and even flew Dakota aircrafts for the Israeli oil companies to the Sinai and back. His family lived in Tel Aviv; they were given a cover, as Iranian refugees. But Munir’s wife, a devout Catholic, was unable to make friends, felt isolated, and couldn’t adapt to life in Israel. They finally left and moved to a Western country under false identities. Even there, far from home and relatives, surrounded by local security agents, they felt lonely and feared the long arm of the Iraqi Mukhabarat.
In August 1988, twenty-two years after his desertion, Munir Redfa died at his home of a sudden heart attack. His wife, in tears, called Meir Amit (who had long ago left the Mossad) and told him that earlier that morning, her husband had come down from the second floor of their house and, while standing next to their son, suddenly collapsed in the entrance hall and died instantly.
The Mossad held a memorial service for Munir Redfa. Veteran officers couldn’t hold back their tears. “It was a surreal sight,” Liron said. “The Israeli Mossad mourns an Iraqi pilot . . .”
Following the success of Operation Diamond and the subsequent astounding victory in the Six-Day War, Meir Amit saw an opportunity to launch a new operation. He requested that his superiors demand the release of the Lavon Affair prisoners as part of a POW exchange. The young captives had been rotting in prison for thirteen years, with no chance of pardon or early release. Israel, Amit felt, seemed to have forgotten them. Now that the Six-Day War was over, Israel was in negotiations with Egypt. Israel had captured 4,338 Egyptian soldiers and 830 civilians—while Egypt only captured 11 Israelis. Yet the Egyptians firmly refused to include the Lavon Affair prisoners in the deal.
Meir Amit wouldn’t let go. “Forget about it, Meir,” Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan told his friend. “The Egyptians will never release them.” Prime Minister Eshkol agreed. But Amit refused to give up. He finally sent a personal note to President Nasser, “as a soldier to a soldier,” and demanded the prisoners’ release, as well as that of Wolfgang Lutz, the “Champagne Spy,” who had been arrested during t
he German scientists affair.
Amit negotiated for a prisoner exchange with the Syrians as well. He had a personal stake in this negotiation. He asked the Syrians to help release Mrs. Shula Cohen from her Lebanese jail. Shula Cohen (code-named “the Pearl”) was one of the legendary Mossad spies. A simple housewife, she had established relations with high-placed leaders in Lebanon and Syria, organized the clandestine emigration of thousands of Syrian and Lebanese Jews, and directed a highly successful spy ring.
To his amazement, his plea to Nasser worked, and the Syrians followed suit soon after. Meir Amit won. In a covert transaction, the Lavon Affair prisoners, Lutz, and Shula Cohen were returned to Israel.
Sometimes the missions to bring home a nation’s own are the most meaningful.
Chapter Eleven
Those Who’ll Never Forget
In early September 1964, a bald, sturdy man in his mid-forties, wearing sunglasses, arrived in the Rotterdam railway station in Holland on the express train from Paris. He checked into the luxurious Rheinhotel in the city center under the name “Anton Kunzle,” an Austrian businessman. He then went to the nearby post office and rented a P.O. box under the same name. From the post office, he went to Amro Bank, opened an account, and deposited $3,000. At a printer’s shop, he ordered business cards and stationery in the name of Anton Kunzle, manager of an investment company in Rotterdam. From there, he hurried to the Brazilian consulate and filled out forms for a tourist visa to Brazil. At a doctor’s clinic, he underwent a perfunctory checkup and got a medical certificate about his health, then visited an optometrist, cheated during the test, and ordered thick magnifying glasses, even though he didn’t need them at all.
The following morning, he made a short trip to Zurich and opened an account in the Credit Suisse bank, in which he deposited $6,000. Then he returned to Paris, where a makeup artist attached a bushy mustache to his face; a photographer took his pictures with his new glasses and handed him a set of passport photos. Back in Rotterdam, he brought the photos to the visa clerk at the Brazilian consulate, and the tourist visa to Brazil was stamped in his Austrian passport. Now he could buy his plane tickets to Rio de Janeiro and, from there, to São Paulo and Montevideo, in Uruguay. Wherever he went, the loquacious Kunzle spoke of his flourishing business in Austria. The generous tips that he spread on his way, his choice of the best hotels and the most exclusive restaurants spoke for themselves—Kunzle, indeed, was a rich and successful businessman.
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