Book summary “Reuven Shiloah”: summary

Introduction

You often confront complex security challenges where survival depends on building reliable intelligence networks and strategic foreign alliances from scratch.

Reuven Shiloah solved this problem by creating the foundational architecture of Israeli intelligence and foreign policy through covert operations and diplomacy. Haggai Eshed traces Shiloah's career from the early Yishuv observation networks to the establishment of the Mossad and the creation of the Peripheral Alliance.

You will discover the mechanisms behind clandestine statecraft and regional strategy. The book answers several critical questions:

• How did early intelligence units develop during the 1929 riots and World War II?
• What led the Zionist leadership to shift its primary alliance from Britain to the United States?
• How were secret negotiations with Arab leaders conducted before and after statehood?
• In what ways did the doctrine of peripheral alliances shape Israeli foreign policy during the Cold War?

1. Historical Origins and Early Intelligence Missions

Israeli intelligence commenced in the early 1930s as a response to the Arab riots of 1929, driving Reuven Zaslany to master regional observation, network building, and realpolitik.

The 1929 Arab riots forced a complete restructuring of British intelligence and Jewish self-defense, shifting away from solitary informers toward institutional cooperation.

Following the disturbances of August-September 1929, the Jewish Yishuv faced the twofold task of countering immediate threats and gathering intelligence. During the Hebron massacre, 68 men, women and children were killed. Throughout the country during the 1929 riots, 133 Jews were killed and 300 were wounded. The surprise attacks exposed the failure of the minimalist defense concept relying on paid local informers.

General Herbert Dowbiggin was brought in from Ceylon to overhaul the Mandatory Police Force, while Patrick Domville took over RAF intelligence. Haim Arlosoroff initiated this effort upon assuming leadership of the Jewish Agency's Political Department in summer 1931 by recruiting Reuven Shiloah.

The Baghdad Mission and the Triangle Gambit

Arlosoroff recruited Reuven Shiloah, then Zaslany, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sending him to Iraq under the cover of a Hebrew teacher. Moshe Shertok approved a monthly salary of 3 sterling a month for Zaslany's mission starting December 1, 1931.

Zaslany used the position to study local languages and customs, weave a net of contacts, and smuggle vital British documents back to Jerusalem. He managed to acquire and send back a complete copy of the British Report of the Conference on the East from Winston Churchill's 1922 conference.

Zaslany worked as Dov Hos's assistant organizing Arab railway workers in Haifa and harbor workers in Jaffa into a labor union under Jewish instruction. Under the mentorship of Dov Hos, Zaslany learned to maneuver through the Jewish-British-Arab triangle.

2. Wartime Cooperation and British Relations

Zaslany cultivated close intelligence-sharing ties with British officers and organized clandestine infiltration units during World War II while managing the tragic dilemma of fighting both Germany and the White Paper.

A foundational method of Yishuv intelligence was establishing operational, systematic, and permanent liaison and information exchange with foreign intelligence services. Shiloah expanded contacts with British police, army, and secret services, turning informal meetings into structured intelligence operations. He worked closely with Patrick Domville, the Chief of the British Security Service, and introduced regional agents like Emmanuel Vilensky in Haifa and Ezra Danin in Samaria to British counterparts.

Cultivating British Allies

Zaslany successfully cultivated key British intelligence officers within the Mandatory administration to shape policies favorable to the Jewish Yishuv. By exploiting rifts between civil administrators who favored the Mufti and military intelligence officers who opposed him, Zaslany secured vital intelligence and political support. Patrick Domville sat on the Mandatory Joint Committee on Security where Zaslany coordinated with him in advance to secure British support for Jewish positions.

Zaslany utilized local hospitality committees to cultivate personal relationships with British soldiers and officers. He initiated the first Hospitality Committees in Tel Aviv, followed by similar efforts in Jerusalem and Haifa. The Yishuv and the British supported grass-roots anti-Husseini Arab elements known as Peace Gangs to counter terrorist factions. Fakhry Abd-el-Hady shifted his allegiance to the Nashashibi faction and received monthly payments from British Consul Gilbert McKereth to organize local Peace Gangs.

During the three years of the Arab Revolt, 6,000 total Arabs were killed, 1,500 by the British or the Jews, and 4,500 Arabs were killed during acts of internal Arab terror by terrorist gangs. Local SHAI intelligence networks relied on diverse civilian informers operating near hostile regions to gather actionable data. Ezra Danin ran an information network across the Sharon region opposite the Arab Triangle, employing guards, shepherds, scrap dealers, produce hawkers, and cattle thieves.

Fake-Arabs and Wartime Infiltration Units

The Zionist leadership faced a tragic dilemma during World War II regarding how to simultaneously fight Nazi Germany and oppose the anti-immigrant White Paper. David Ben-Gurion formulated the policy stating they must fight Germany as though there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war. In September 1939, 130,000 men and women signed up for the Census of Volunteers.

The Yishuv created specialized clandestine units fluent in Arabic to conduct reconnaissance and sabotage behind enemy lines. Josh Palmon commanded the first group of twelve Fake-Arabs, also known as the Operation of the Thirty, operating in Beirut and Damascus. This followed 30 men who attended the special amphibious landing and sabotage course at the Yarkon River in winter 1941.

Moshe Dayan organized an underground intelligence network to maintain espionage links with the Allies if Palestine was overrun by Axis forces. Dayan organized the Palestine Scheme network, which trained wireless operators and deployed stations in Hadera, Haifa, and Tiberias, including 20 wireless operators trained in September 1941. When the immediate threat of a German invasion receded after the Battle of El Alamein, the British dismantled joint training camps and refused to return stored weapons. A Palmach platoon from Kibbutz Yagur raided the SOE training school on the Carmel on March 28, 1943, removing 277 rifles and 22 machine guns.

3. Resistance Operations and the American Orientation

Following British opposition to Jewish rescue plans in Europe, Shiloah pioneered the strategic shift of the Zionist movement's international orientation toward the United States and established intelligence foundations.

Parachutists and British Opposition

Zaslany cooperated closely with British intelligence unit MI9 to send Jewish volunteer parachutists behind enemy lines. Out of 32 trained parachutists, 26 went on missions and 21 operated through MI9.

British authorities systematically rejected Jewish Agency proposals to form Jewish commando and resistance units due to political fears. Proposals by Zaslany, Shertok, and Bernard Joseph to drop 500 to 1000 armed commandos into Europe to organize ghetto resistance were repeatedly turned down.

Zaslany and Shertok drafted formal memoranda proposing the insertion of agents into Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Slovakia to raise enemy stakes, organize guerrilla activities, and establish escape networks. Zaslany's 1944 memorandum noted that 5 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazis in Europe. Shertok proposed sending two men immediately to each country followed by larger groups of at least 50 people.

Even when British military officers like Brigadier Clayton supported resistance operations after the German invasion of Hungary on 19 March 1944, high-level political vetoes crushed them. Macmillan gave extremely limited approval for only 10 Hungarian-born volunteers under strict SOE command after a seven-month delay. Zaslany stepped down as liaison and was succeeded by Teddy Kollek.

Pioneering the American Shift and the Sonneborn Fund

In his report to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, Reuven Zaslany emphasized that intelligence acts as a crucial political instrument, especially during wartime. The Haifa interrogation office set up in 1940 gathered military and industrial information on Germany and Italy from European arrivals. Gideon Raphael headed an interrogation office that cooperated with British SIME and MI6, interrogating over 5,000 people and submitting over 2,000 reports with more than 900 hand-drawn maps and hundreds of photographs, receiving over 400 remarks from London and Cairo in response.

Recognizing that the focal point of Western power and Zionist fundraising had moved to America, Zaslany established robust contacts with US government divisions. Reuven and Betty Zaslany took a 4-week wartime sea voyage to the United States in December 1944.

A historic meeting on July 1, 1945, chaired by David Ben-Gurion with 19 friends of the Zionist movement, established the Sonneborn Fund to defray the costs of immigration and defense. Zaslany arrived in San Francisco for the opening of the United Nations on April 26, 1945, alongside Eliyahu Eilat and Gershon Agron. Upon the establishment of the State of Israel, Reuven Zaslany officially adopted his underground code name, Shiloah.

4. Statehood, Secret Talks with Jordan, and the Mossad

When Arab armies invaded Palestine in May 1948, the fragmented intelligence community failed to provide adequate early warning. David Ben-Gurion appointed Reuven Shiloah in charge of a military and political intelligence wing on 30 May 1948.

Between 1948 and 1952, Reuven Shiloah managed three simultaneous operational avenues known as the Wars of the Jews, the Wars of the Arabs, and the War of the Gentiles.

You find that the first avenue involved creating the Mossad and dismantling the Foreign Ministry's Political Department. The second focused on talks with King Abdullah of Jordan. The third was his successful struggle to establish covert cooperation with the CIA.

Managing Three Operational Fronts

On 7 June 1948, the state hastily dismantled the pre-state SHAI network into three separate services. This restructuring split intelligence into Military SHAI headed by Isser Be'eri and Haim Herzog, Internal SHAI supervised by Reuven Shiloah and David Ben-Gurion, and Diplomatic/External SHAI headed by Reuven Shiloah.

Reuven Shiloah survived a devastating car-bomb explosion at the National Institutions Building in Jerusalem on 15 March 1948. Haim Herzog met with Colonel Rocher-Lund two and a half hours after the blast, while Shiloah sipped soup through a straw in an embalmer's mask.

The Creation of the Mossad and the Spies Rebellion

To resolve conflicts between military intelligence and the Foreign Ministry's Political Department, Shiloah proposed creating a central authority outside the Foreign Ministry. On 1 April 1951, the Mossad was officially launched as a unified civilian structure for all foreign intelligence operations.

When Prime Minister Ben-Gurion decided to strip the Foreign Ministry of foreign intelligence gathering, the director and heads of branches of the Political Department submitted a collective letter of resignation in protest. On 2 March 1951, Asher Ben-Nathan and the entire directorate handed in their resignations during what became known as the spies' revolt.

Isser Har'el forced Shiloah out of his position as head of the Mossad in September 1952. Har'el bluntly told Shiloah that he would be forced out if he did not leave of his own free will.

Secret Talks with Jordan and the Lausanne Conference

Shiloah participated in secret meetings with King Abdullah's advisors and representatives alongside Moshe Dayan and Eliyahu Sasson. On 25 December 1948, Shiloah met with Shawakat a-Sati, King Abdullah's physician and advisor, while the IDF was fighting Operation Horev in the south.

The Lausanne Conference ran from 27 April to 10 June 1949 for its first stage and from 18 July to 12 September 1949 for its second stage. As chairman of the Israeli delegation during the second stage, Shiloah attempted to win over American delegates using broader economic development plans rather than narrow political claims.

King Abdullah was assassinated at the entrance to the El-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on 20 July 1950. Although the approximate three years of negotiations failed to produce a formal peace treaty, they established a legacy of covert communication and shared security interests.

5. Washington Diplomacy, the Sinai Campaign, and the Peripheral Alliance

As minister in Washington and senior foreign ministry advisor, Shiloah forged a special intelligence relationship with James Angleton, helped navigate the diplomatic crisis of the Sinai Campaign, and spearheaded the Peripheral Alliance.

Forging the CIA Alliance and Washington Lobbying

Reuven Shiloah single-handedly laid the foundations for the special intelligence relationship between Israel and the United States through his tireless efforts. He sought out wartime OSS contacts and eventually forged a deep alliance with CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton. A newly-planted forest and corner in Jerusalem were dedicated in November 1987 to honor James Angleton as one of the chief architects of US-Israeli intelligence cooperation.

Serving as minister in Washington from September 1953 to August 1957, Shiloah navigated profound bilateral crises while laying the groundwork for future strategic alignment. He established the Circle of Friends to bypass the pro-Arab bias of State Department officials and directly influence top US policy-makers. Philip Ehrlich, a wealthy San Francisco lawyer and member of the anti-Zionist Council for American Jewry, arranged crucial loans through the Bank of America when Israel was nearly bankrupt.

The Sinai Campaign and Diplomatic Crisis

The political catalysts for the 1956 Sinai Campaign began with the announcement of the Russian-Egyptian arms deal on 27 September 1955. Ambassador Abba Eban and Minister Reuven Shiloah viewed the Czech-Egyptian arms agreement as an existential threat and proposed a pre-emptive Israeli strike to destroy the Nasser regime. President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to provide arms, citing demographic differences between Israel and Egypt.

The unexpected Sinai Campaign on 29 October 1956 triggered a severe diplomatic rift between Israel and the United States, paralyzing official communication channels. Reuven Shiloah bypassed frozen official channels by cultivating a network of personal contacts among influential non-Jewish figures close to President Eisenhower. Professor Eli Ginzberg served as a mediator, carrying written and verbal messages between the Israeli government and President Eisenhower with the help of Eisenhower's personal physician General Howard Snyder.

Washington initiated economic sanctions by canceling a visit from an Export-Import Bank team that was set to recommend a $75 million development loan. Israel successfully secured international recognition of free shipping rights through the Tiran Straits and the Gulf of Eilat as a condition of its withdrawal. Following the withdrawal, the Israeli ship Queen of Sheba sailed out of Eilat into the Red Sea on 18 March 1957, followed by the Danish Brigitte Toft on 25 March 1957.

The Peripheral Alliance and Regional Security

To counteract Arab radicalism and Soviet expansion, Shiloah spearheaded the creation of the Peripheral Alliance, seeking strategic ties with non-Arab regional states like Turkey and Iran. Reuven Shiloah led the Israeli delegation in secret talks with Turkish officials in Rome from 28 June to 2 July 1958, establishing cooperative frameworks between Israel, Turkey, and Iran.

Intelligence cooperation between Israel, Turkey, and Iran was formalized through a clandestine organization named Trident, which facilitated joint counterintelligence and Soviet threat monitoring. Formed by the Mossad, the Turkish National Security Services, and Iran's SAVAK, the Trident organization engaged in exchanging intelligence information and holding meetings two times per year.

Reuven Shiloah died suddenly from exhaustion and heart disease on 11 May 1959 at the height of his diplomatic momentum, leaving behind an unmatched legacy. Haim Herzog visited Shiloah in Tel Hashomer Hospital to review the draft agreement for military-intelligence cooperation with Iran just one day before Shiloah was found dead in his bed on a Sunday morning in May 1959.

Conclusion

Reuven Shiloah built the foundations of Israeli intelligence and foreign policy through covert networks, strategic partnerships with Western powers, and the visionary concept of regional alliances. You can apply these historic lessons to modern statecraft and organizational strategy by following several practical rules.

1. Build decentralized intelligence networks across contested regions before formal crises erupt to secure vital information.
2. Cultivate deep personal ties with foreign intelligence services to bridge diplomatic gaps and bypass political stalemates.
3. Shift your strategic orientation toward emerging global superpowers when traditional allies abandon your core national interests.
4. Separate intelligence gathering from operational execution and public diplomacy to protect state secrets and maintain operational flexibility.
5. Pursue quiet diplomatic channels with regional adversaries to explore long-term political settlements outside the public eye.
6. Forge alliances with non-Arab minority groups and peripheral states to counter hostile regional majorities.

10 Key Ideas

1. Following the devastating 1929 Arab riots, the Jewish Yishuv replaced its minimalist defense concept of paid local informers with institutional intelligence cooperation and regional observation networks.
2. Operating in Baghdad under the cover of a Hebrew teacher, Reuven Zaslany mastered the Jewish-British-Arab triangle while gathering vital documents and establishing labor contacts.
3. During World War II, Zaslany cultivated close intelligence-sharing ties with British officers and organized specialized clandestine Arabic-speaking infiltration units to conduct reconnaissance behind enemy lines.
4. Recognizing British opposition to Jewish rescue plans, Shiloah pioneered the strategic shift of the Zionist movement's international orientation toward the United States and helped establish the Sonneborn Fund.
5. In the wake of the 1948 invasion, Shiloah managed three simultaneous operational avenues involving internal security, Arab diplomacy, and the creation of a unified external intelligence service.
6. To resolve conflicts between military intelligence and the Foreign Ministry, Shiloah proposed and launched the Mossad as a unified civilian structure for all foreign intelligence operations.
7. Despite failing to produce a formal peace treaty, Shiloah's secret negotiations with King Abdullah established a critical legacy of covert communication and shared security interests with Jordan.
8. Shiloah single-handedly laid the foundations for a special intelligence relationship with the United States by forging a deep alliance with CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton.
9. Bypassing frozen official channels during the diplomatic crisis of the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Shiloah utilized a network of personal backchannels and influential non-Jewish figures to communicate with President Eisenhower.
10. To counteract Arab radicalism and Soviet expansion, Shiloah spearheaded the creation of the Peripheral Alliance and the clandestine Trident organization linking Israel, Turkey, and Iran.