Harel Isser (real surname Halperin; 1912, Vitebsk, now Belarus – 2003, Petah Tikva) - head of the secret services of the Israel from 1948 to 1963.
Isser Harel was born into the family of an industrialist who owned vinegar factories. In 1922, the Harel family left Soviet Russia and settled in independent Latvia, in Daugavpils (known as Dvinsk until 1920). In 1928, Harel graduated there from a Hebrew-language gymnasium and, after completing agricultural training at one of the halutz (see Halutzim) farms in Latvia (see also Zionist Movement in Individual Countries: Latvia), emigrated to Eretz Israel in 1930.
From 1930 to 1935, he was a member of a kibbutz in Lower Galilee. Between 1935 and 1944, he worked in road construction and the installation of irrigation systems, while simultaneously serving as a member of the Haganah and an active fighter in self-defence units that repelled attacks by Arab extremists on Jewish settlements. At the end of 1944, Harel was assigned to the Information Service (intelligence branch) of the Haganah. At the beginning of 1948, he became head of security for Tel Aviv and the surrounding district.
In June 1948, Harel was appointed head of the Shin Bet (abbreviation of Sherut Bittaḥon Klali — General Security Service) of the newly independent State of Israel, and from September 1952 until March 1963 he served as head of the Mossad (literally “institution” or “agency”; official full name: Ha-Mossad le-Modi‘in ule-Tafkidim Meyuḥadim — Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations). During these same years, Harel simultaneously chaired the joint committee of the heads of all Israeli secret services and served as adviser on security and defence matters to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. For a period from September 1965 to June 1966, Harel also acted as intelligence and counter-terrorism adviser to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.
Harel’s principal achievement was the creation of the secret services of the young reborn Jewish state as one of the highly effective instruments safeguarding its security (see State of Israel: Foreign Policy. Israel and the Arab World). Under Harel’s leadership, Israeli intelligence differed from comparable organisations in other countries in that, from the outset, its tasks also included identifying and exposing the initiators and organisers of antisemitic campaigns and actions in countries of the Diaspora, as well as providing assistance wherever possible to Jewish communities facing real threats to the national, civil, or even human rights of their members.
The reputation acquired by the Mossad during the years of Harel’s leadership rested upon the successful execution of a series of difficult and dangerous operations, only a few of which have ever become public knowledge. Among them were the clandestine (1956–60) and unofficial (1961–64) repatriation of more than one hundred thousand Jews from Morocco to Israel; the rescue in the summer of 1961 of several hundred Jews from Bizerte in Tunisia, who were secretly evacuated by sea on the eve of a planned pogrom; the timely discovery of the involvement of former Nazi engineers and scientists in the plans of Gamal Abdel Nasser to develop missile and unconventional weapons in Egypt; and the capture in Argentina and covert transfer to Israel of Adolf Eichmann — an operation in which Harel himself personally participated — among others.
After retiring, Harel devoted himself to literary work. He was the author of the books The Truth About the Kastner Murder (1985), Soviet Espionage: Communism in Eretz Israel (1987), Security and Democracy (1989), The House on Garibaldi Street (1990; concerning the capture of Eichmann), and others (all in Hebrew).