Operation Susannah [Hardcover]

Aviezer Golan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 383 pages
• Publisher: Joanna Cotler Books; 1st edition (September 21, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060115556
• ISBN-13: 978-0060115555
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,541,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mission impossible, May 20, 2001

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Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Operation Susannah (Hardcover)

"Operation Susannah" was the ill-planned attempt by the nascent Israeli Mossad to destabilize Nasser's Egypt in the early 1950's using Egyptian born and other non-Israeli jews. Fearful of Gamel Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabism and his popularity in the west where Isreal had come to expect it would enjoy support, Israel mobilized a small guerrila force of young and mostly Egyptian Jews (in an ironic hint to the Exodus, Egyptian Jews were called "Hawagat", signifying that they were less Egyptian citizens then residential aliens) to execute small attacks around that country, less to destroy it than merely make it look less orderly than Nasser could claim. Under circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery to this day, the conspiracy fell apart and the usual suspects were soon rounded up, tortured and imprisoned in brutal Egyptian jails. When the Egyptians published their findings to the world, the feedback wreaked havoc in Israel, bringing down the government and destroying long constructed public careers. For those not executed by the Egyptians (once their ties were firmly linked to Israel and not merely some super-patriotic gang of Egyptians leery of any contact with the west) the ordeal only began with their convictions around 1954. Though Israel captured hundreds of Egyptians in her wars of 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967 (including the military officer who presided over the trial), the surviving members of the operation (in this book, the term used is "the mishap") remained incarcerated through early 1968. Even still, a gag order prevented them from telling their story until the mid 1970's, by which time, they still had more questions than answers. Mostly - why was there no warning that they had been compromised?; why had no escape route been prepared?; and most heartbreaking of all - why were they left to rot when Israel held hundreds of Egyptian POWs in the Sinai campaigns of '56 and '67?

Author Aviezer Golan seeks no answers, rather tries telling an absorbing story that only begins with the mishap's participants entrance into 14 years of incarceration. The book is actually most poignant when looking inside the Egyptian prisons. If De Tocqueville was right about analyzing a nation through its jails, then those in Egypt have a strange story to tell. Though jailed with many petty criminals and murderers, the Mishap's conspirators also meet political prisoners - both far-right Islamists of "The Brotherhood" and various leftists who had run afoul of the Nasser regime in its many political shifts. Prison conditions, like politics make strange allies and leftist Egyptians who befriended the imprisoned Jews at first, turned against them when politics shifted in their direction. The hardcore Islamists, though taught to abhor the Jews as a matter of eternal religion, forge a more durable bond with the Jews, admittedly not one that can be expected to change things outside of prisons. All in all, "Operation Susanah" isn't a story you'll forget.