It has been 56 years since Mossad’s top spy, Eli Cohen, was executed in Damascus in a public hanging. His story was recently highlighted by Sacha Baron Cohen in the 2019 Netflix series The Spy.

Cohen had previously helped Egyptian Jews emigrate to Israel in the 1950s at a time when there was intense governmental and civic pressure on them. He became part of a local spy network that was dismantled by Egyptian authorities in 1954. He was later recruited by Mossad to enter Damascus and engage with local political leaders at a time when there was little information coming out of Syria.

It was Cohen’s infiltration of Syria’s political and military leadership that gave Israel vital information on troop movements and attempts by the Syrian army to sabotage key infrastructure projects that would have caused great instability in Israel. His work assisted the 1967 war effort that saw Israel defeat multiple armies at once and helped to launch strikes that hobbled Syrian army attacks and defeated them on the Golan.
One key piece of information that Cohen brought out was that the Syrians were attempting to divert the waters of the Jordan to the Lake of the Galilee to cause significant water shortages and logistical problems, thereby tying up Israel’s civil and military resources at a key time of war.

Iraqi born Nadia Cohen, Eli's widow, has never given up hope that his body will be returned before she dies. Syria is in a dire situation and Assad knows that if Israel wanted to it could launch destructive strikes to cripple his land forces, which are just recovering from the brutal civil war. Surely now is the time to pressurise Assad into the release of Cohen’s remains?

Israel has always said it will not leave its human assets behind in war, dead or alive. Let’s hope 2022 sees Cohen’s remains brought back to Israel for a state burial. Fifty six years has been too long a wait.