The Levon Affair

The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation, a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence for plans to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned targets. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.

Prime Minister Sharett's personal diaries constitute another historical source that is likely to be consigned to oblivion. For informative excerpts and analysis, see Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism. See pp. 37f. on the sabotage operations in Egypt in 1954. Though Sharett was informed of the facts immediately after the sabotage ring was broken up by Egyptian police, when the trial of the saboteurs took place he denounced "the plot . . . and the show trial . . . against a group of Jews . . . victims of false accusations," and his party's paper (Davar, Labor Party), accused the Egyptian government of "a Nazi-inspired policy." Privately, Sharett was much distressed; he described Defense Minister Lavon, whom he apparently regarded as bearing responsibility for this affair, in these terms, to the secretary-general of the Labor Party: "He inspired and nurtured the unworthy adventuristic army and preached the lesson that not the Arab countries but the Western Powers are the enemy, and the only way to deter them from their conspiracies is by a direct action that will terrorize them."

Sharett was no less outraged by the Gaza raid of February 1955, and by the many other acts of violence and terror initiated by Israeli military forces during the period, but did nothing about them.

After his participation in the terrorist actions in Egypt, Lavon became the secretary-general of the Histadrut (the socialist labor union, which plays a major role in Israeli society and in the economy). According to the respected Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, Lavon gave orders that were "much more severe" than those leading to the sabotage operations in Egypt during his tenure as minister of defense, including an attempt "to poison the water sources in the Gaza Strip and the demilitarized zone on the Syrian-Israeli border." Barnea does not make explicit whether these alleged orders were executed (Nahum Barnea, Davar, January 26, 1979).