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1000s to Assad-'Where's Eli Cohen's remains'
05.20.2005.09:59
Thousands of people around the world have signed a Web site petition urging Syria to send the bones of Eli Cohen to Israel for burial, Cohen's brother Maurice told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, the 40th anniversary of the Mossad spy's death.
While most of the signatories came from Israel and the US, Cohen said that some came from the Arab world, although he did not say whether any were from Syria, where Cohen was hanged in Damascus's Martyrs Square on May 18, 1965.
The Mossad marked the anniversary Wednesday with a memorial ceremony; it also dedicated a building and a sculpture in Cohen's name. "It was a proud moment, and very moving," said his widow Nadia, "but nonetheless, I sat and cried."
Maurice, who will be 79 next month and recently underwent complicated surgery, renewed the family's plea to Syrian President Bashar Assad to hand over his brother's remains. "I don't have much time left," he said. "I want a grave and a tombstone for my brother in Israel. I want to be able to say kaddish for him."
He said he understood it might be uncomfortable for Assad to have the bones transferred directly across the border but, he pointed out, there were always third-party options.
He said Assad was missing a major opportunity to take a symbolic step toward peace. "I think the Syrian people would like to have peace," he said.
Expressing pride in his own Syrian background – the Cohen parents and grandparents were born in Allepo – Cohen said he knew of many wealthy Jews of Syrian descent worldwide who would be happy to invest in Syria if there were peace.
A former Mossad agent himself, Cohen also detailed how he deciphered coded messages from Eli, among those from Wolfgang Lotz and other Israeli agents in Arab countries, without knowing that his own brother was the source.
He only put two and two together when Eli's messages began featuring personal messages – in particular one in which, Cohen said, Eli asked in code whether Nadia had yet acquired a Singer sewing machine. Cohen looked up "Singer sewing machine" and "Nadia" in the code-book, and found neither. He then went to Nadia's home and found a Singer machine, newly delivered, which she told him had come from Europe from his brother Eli.
In another message, Eli wanted to know whether his infant daughter had started to walk.
"I wanted to tell him to stop doing what he was doing and to come back to Israel," said Cohen. "But I knew that this would be unacceptable to him, and that he would consider me a traitor for even suggesting it. So I said nothing."
Nadia, dispirited at the arrival of yet another anniversary without progress, said in a telephone interview that, "We thought when President [Moshe] Katsav shook President Assad's hand at the funeral of the pope [John Paul II, last month], it might lead to a breakthrough. But it didn't help. Nothing seems to move him."
Under the assumed name of Kamal Amin Ta'abet, Eli Cohen, an intelligence officer, worked for three years as a Mossad agent in Syria.
Immortalized as Israel's Man in Damascus, he had extraordinary social skills that enabled him to penetrate to the highest echelons of Syrian society, including the top brass of the defense establishment; he was even taken on private tours of military installations. He also had excellent contacts in Syrian political circles, and was thus able to supply his controllers with invaluable information.
His cover blown, he was brutally interrogated, and despite protests from world leaders, tried without being allowed a defense and sentenced to death, with his hanging widely televised.
"We don't seem to get any positive reaction," said Nadia Cohen of the failure to sway Syria into returning her husband's remains.
Christian Arabs and European diplomats had interceded on the family's behalf, she said, but while it had been heartening to see that strangers cared enough to make the effort, there had been no change in Syrian attitudes.
She said the family had made a video appealing directly not only to the Syrian president, but also to his wife Asma. It was delivered to Damascus, but evidently to no avail.
Nadia said she appreciated that Katsav and other Israeli dignitaries were using their individual and collective influence with world leaders to put pressure on Assad, but said she was close to giving up hope.
Katsav told the Post there was "no valid reason for the Syrians to refuse to return Eli Cohen's remains... For humanitarian reasons, his family should be able to bury him in Israel."
Katsav has repeatedly urged Assad to put politics aside and take humanitarian concerns into account.
Of the eight Cohen siblings – six brothers and two sisters – four brothers and one sister remain. Their mother died 10 years ago, at the age of 87.
Maurice Cohen is lecturing about his brother on Thursday night, at a memorial event at the Israel Center in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Post
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