A forgotten spy — late Israeli agent's Five Towns ties

By Michael Orbach

Issue of Oct. 23, 2009 / 5 Cheshvan 5770

When Joshua Horesh died this past July at the age of 89, he was remembered as a caring father who doted on his three children and ten grandchildren. His family eulogized him as a big-hearted man, who spoke several languages fluently including Arabic, French and Italian. Sadly, the last few years of his life were marred by dementia, according to his son, as Horesh believed he was being spied on and that his phones were being tapped.

Horesh's dementia had elements of truth; he had in fact been a spy for most of his professional life.

“He was a big man, spirituality and physically. He loved Jews and fought for them,” explained son-in-law David Jasse of Cedarhurst.

Horesh’s espionage career was a known secret in the family, as his son Moshe explained.

“Towards the end he started talking about it. He was a very private person. We never knew what he was doing. I suspect it wasn’t appropriate until he wrote the book,” Moshe told the Jewish Star.

Horesh’s memoir, An Iraqi Jew in the Mossad, was published in a limited run in 1997 by McFarland Publishing. In the preface to the book, Horesh writes that he felt

compelled to write the book after he read an encyclopedia entry that credited someone else for his accomplishments.

The elder Horesh was born in Iraq in 1920. His father was a famed Iraqi singer, and after his mother’s death, Horesh immigrated to the then-cosmopolitan city of Beirut, Lebanon. While there he began working as a translator for the British armed forces, a job that would eventually take him all over Europe and Africa, before finally dropping him in Palestine. His career as a spy began in the mid-1940s when the religious and Zionistic Horesh began passing along information to the Haganah, one of the precursors of the modern Israel Defense Force. In his most important assignment, Horesh gained access to the infamous “black list’” of Israeli leaders to be targeted by the British, which he copied and passed along to his controllers.

Later, as the war for Israel’s independence began, Horesh began working as a translator and code breaker.

“I bade farewell to all my friends and relatives and became an Israeli soldier defending our ancient traditions,” he wrote.

One of his most notable accomplishments was to break an Egyptian military code that enabled the Israelis to take Beersheba.

Horesh, who worked during World War Two under the same roof as famed British mathematician Alan Turning, who cracked Germany’s Enigma code, realized that all the Egyptian intercepts had the Arabic word for “thanks” in them. Over several sleepless nights he used that information to decipher the Egyptian communications.

“To us, the Egyptians were an open book,” he later wrote.

In his account, Horesh minimized his own exploits in favor of discussing the war effort in general and the soldiers he served with. Horesh even went so far as to praise the Egyptian general, Seyad Taha, whose messages he decoded. Taha, Horesh wrote, felt that surrender would damage Egypt’s honor; he refused to do so despite being surrounded by Israeli forces. Taha also praised the courage of the Jewish fighters, Horesh revealed.

Horesh was promoted to lieutenant and, alongside future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was part of the Rhodes delegation that organized an early peace treaty with

the Egyptians.  However, promised work failed to materialize. He ended up serving under future Israeli president, Chaim Herzog, and even translated a message that saved the life of another future president of Israel, Ezer Weizman.

The enthusiasm and euphoria for the State of Israel, Horesh recalled, vanished quickly as the country became enmeshed in political conflict and corruption. Like many other Israelis, Horesh refused to sign up with either of the major political parties of the time — the Mapai or Mapam — and was consequently blocked from applying for many jobs. He also faced discrimination because he was Sephardic and Middle Eastern, and not part of the Ashkenazie spectrum that fared prominently in the government.

“The laws of Israel were formed in the imagery of their lords,” he wrote sardonically.

Finally, after failing to secure work elsewhere, he took up work for the Mossad as a spy. His colleagues included Elie Cohn, the famed Israeli agent who was hanged by Syria in 1965. Horesh’s next three years were spent away from his family, traveling in Turkey, Vienna, and Austria under an assumed name as an Iraqi movie producer, eventually befriending a high ranking Iraqi colonel. His days were spent under different assumed names in smoky hotels and cafes, constantly on watch for double agents and KGB spies. Horesh’s portrayal of the  Mossad, the vaunted Israeli spy agency,  makes them look less like James Bond and more like Mr. Bean, plagued by both infighting and incompetence.

At 48, with few career options open to him save for returning to the Mossad and leaving his family again, Horesh immigrated, first to Canada and then to America, where he opened an export-import company. He lived in Forest Hills until he and his wife moved to Florida ten years ago. He remained an ardent Zionist until his death on Tisha B’Av.

“He sacrificed a lot of his time, half his life for the state of Israel. He was bitter towards the governments of the time,” said Moshe.

Horesh dedicated his memoir to his family and to “all the volunteers and low ranking operatives who made the Israeli Intelligence and the Mossad one of the best in the world.”