Journal of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center
No.16, Spring  2008


 

Yaakov Nimrodi:

OPERATION HAMLET

 

 

Mr. Yaakov Nimrodi with a Jordanian Officer

Since the mid-1940s there was a Bedouin sheikh in the Negev who had good relations with the Jewish settlers and assisted them in various ways, in matters of intelligence and other things. His endeavors gave him a very good reputation here after the establishment of the State of Israel.

When I took up my post in Israel’s Southern Command at the end of 1951 I decided to recruit him for an operation which suited his abilities perfectly. However, he constantly avoided meeting me, and so I had his rifle taken away from him and broke off all contact. The sheikh tried to pressure me through people in the security services, the military governor and others, in order to force me to forgive him. So I decided to give him a second chance. I invited him to my office and told him that if he wanted things to be as they were in the old days, he would have to prove his loyalty by helping us. The task I gave him was to bring over his relative, the village chief (“mukhtar”) from the Gaza Strip. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him for you!”, he said, shook my hand and left my office. A little while later he made good on his promise. He brought in the village chief, who at our request recruited his relative, a teacher and former wireless operator for the British Mandate police in Palestine. The teacher, whom we trained to send us information by wireless, then received the code-name Hamlet. He received a radio transmitter hidden inside a kerosene cooker. For added security he was also provided with a few pigeons.

Once-a-week Hamlet would pass on vital intelligence by way of his radio set. Much of the information he sent came to him from the village chief, a well-known public figure who was acquainted with many Egyptian functionaries and military commanders, including the head of Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza, Mustafa Hafez.

One night Hamlet and his relative were due to come to a routine meeting with us. Zaga, my lieutenant and his operator, waited for him. Suddenly we heard the sound of shots. We were convinced that the two were killed. The commander of our unit, Rehaviah Vardi, was also convinced and told me sadly: “Yaakov, the two are gone”. I had already reconciled myself to the loss of these two good agents when on the following day I received a surprise: a carrier pigeon landed at our base and brought with it the following heartening message: “We were on our way to the meeting and heard shots, so we ran. We are fine and will come to the next meeting”.

From new information which we received from Avner-Yaakov Yaron we learned that the two had indeed been found out, arrested and taken to Colonel Mustafa Hafez. They confessed to being agents of Israeli intelligence. Mustafa Hafez decided to turn them into double agents, who would provide him with information about the operating methods of Israeli intelligence.

 

Mr. Yaakov Nimrodi with a Jordanian Officer

I decided to play their game. I asked them for additional information and promised that if they gave it to us they would receive extra compensation. I met with my unit commander Rehaviah Vardi, the head of the Intelligence Collection Branch Nahman Karni, and later with the head of Military Intelligence on the General Staff, Gen. Yehoshafat Harkabi. I requested permission to undertake a deception operation: to provide the agents with information which I knew would interest the Egyptians. For about a year I maintained contact with Hamlet and his friend. Twice I even replaced the radio set and the cipher, at their request.

At the end of 1953 Yehoshafat Harkabi decided to activate Hamlet, who had in the meantime moved to Cairo where he studied at the university as a devout Muslim. Harkabi’s idea was to sow dissension between the Egyptian leader Naguib and the Muslim Brotherhood, which in those days was becoming increasingly powerful in Egypt. Its aim was to turn all Egypt into an Islamic state and to further pan-Islamic ambitions throughout the world.

Harkabi explained that Naguib feared this extremist Muslim organization and would be happy to find an excuse to act against it. Israeli intelligence operatives fed Hamlet with a certain piece of information, which he duly reported to his operators in Egypt. Muhammad Naguib, acting on this information, arrested Sheikh Hassan al-Hudeibi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, together with several hundred activists, in a campaign described as “a war of annihilation against this extremist Muslim organization”.

That was the finishing touch added to a brilliant operation which had been planned in detail for an entire year.