Zvi Zamir, the former head of the., has died at the age of 98 Mossad who warned in 1973 of the planned attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel. However, the military intelligence and political leaders of the Jewish state did not attach importance to the alarm received, paving the way for what was later called the “War of Israel.” Yom Kippur thereby establishing one of the most serious debacles of the country's intelligence services in the Middle East.
The obituary was reported by the same agency as espionage which Zamir led from 1968 to 1974, key years in the very harsh confrontation between Tel Aviv and the Arab countries and the Palestinian terrorist organizations. “His contribution to Israel's security will be remembered for a long time,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, representative of a government involved in another conflict that, according to various reconstructions in the press, has points of contact with the events in October 1973.
Zamir was born in Lodz, Poland in 1925 and emigrated to Tel Aviv when he was just nine months old. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Palmach, Israel's first military force, and later served as a general in the national army. An unstoppable career that led him a few years later to become the fourth head of the powerful spy service. Under his leadership, the Jewish state organized the campaign of targeted assassinations to eliminate those responsible for the Black September terrorist group's attacks against Israeli athletes Munich Olympics from 1972.
The most dramatic moment in Zamir's life occurred on October 5, 1973, the day before the outbreak of war, when a high-ranking Egyptian source requested an urgent meeting with the head of Israeli intelligence 007. The informant was Agent “Angel”, Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and advisor to his successor Anwar Sadat.
Zamir agreed to meet Marwan at midnight at a luxury hotel in London and received information that the Egyptian and Syrian armies would launch an attack the next day Israel. At 3 a.m., the spy chief called one of his advisers to deliver a coded message: “Tomorrow is a holiday,” which amounted to a warning of impending war. It wasn't the first time the angel had sounded the alarm.
This happened back in May of the same year when Zamir informed the Prime Minister directly Golda Meir but no enemy invasion had taken place. For this reason too, Marwan was considered unreliable and was even suspected of being a double agent. It was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and the head of military intelligence Eli Zeira who concluded that the information transmitted by London was not reliable enough and therefore no special measures were taken.
However, on October 6, Egypt and Syria actually attacked and although Tel Aviv managed to defeat the enemy armies after the initial surprise, the memory of the trauma suffered remains to this day. In these hours, all major political and military leaders of his country remember with respect Zamir, who resigned after the conflict and worked in the private sector. Danny Yatom, head of the Mossad in the 1990s, said of him: “He left with the thought that if he had managed to prevail, the 1973 war would not have happened.” A regret that 51 years later and after The Hamas uprising on October 7th continues to preoccupy Israeli society.