Lavon Affair

Pinhas Lavon, who resigned as a result

The "Lavon Affair" refers to a failed Israeli false flag operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. A group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned targets, so as to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.

Discovery

13 Jews were arrested in Oct 1954 after one of their number was caught red-handed in a terrorist campaign. Israeli agents "recruited nine young Egyptian Jews to stage terrorist attacks that, they thought, would be blamed on local insurgents and would discredit Nasser's rule" (Jewish Review, 2004.) Two named individuals served 7 year sentences in Egypt, five(?) served 13 years and two commmitted suicide.

While there were no deaths from the bombs placed in Egyptian, US and UK facilities in Alexandria and Cairo, the consequences for internal Israeli politics and the situation of Jews in Egypt was very considerable. Pinhas Lavon was wrongly blamed and forced to resign and the innocent Prime Minister Moshe Sharrat was replaced by one of the perpetrators, David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion went on to concieve and carry out a number of wanton provocations and killings, including the 1956 attack on Suez, the mass-killing of Egyptian POWs and the first major destruction in Gaza. Six years later, a secret internal inquiry led to David Ben-Gurion's resignation but Sharret and Lavon's reputations were never officially cleared.

Acknowledgement by Israel

One of the perpetrators who had committed suicide was re-interred with military honour on Mount Herzl in 1959.

On March 30, 2005 Israeli President Moshe Katsav. and Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon ended decades of denial by presenting official citations to the three surviving agents and to representatives of those deceased, saying: “This is historic justice for those who were sent on a mission on behalf of the state and became the victims of a complex political affair.”

Israeli Motives

After WW2, a much impoverished Britain was withdrawing from all of its interests "East of Suez" (India independence 1948 etc). It was preparing to give up the giant military base it had in the Suez Canal Zone while Bengurion and Eisenhower had been unable to persuade even a Conservative government under Winston Churchill not to do so. The head of Israeli intelligence, Colonel Benyamin Givli, ordered an existing, but ill-prepared, Egyptian spy-ring into action. He did so without Lavon or Sharret knowing anything about it.

It is easy to assume that Israel sought to cause strife beteen Egypt and the West but historians have largely accepted that the aim was to destabilise Egypt. The Israeli historian Shabtai Teveth goes further in his detailed coverage "Ben-Gurion's Spy" (1996) p.81 and states that the aim was to help the British and strengthen Egyptian opponents of withdrawal from the Suez Canal area. It was aimed at "generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'."

Zionist sympathisers at the Wikipedia have been hostile to calling it a "False Flag Operation" and most such references were removed from the WP again in June 2011. However, the term is used by ex-Knesset member Uri Avnery in his writings and is used in the book "Global Terrorism", 2004. Other Israeli sources have tried to suggest that the fire-bombing was an "Intelligence Operation" rather than an attack.

Israeli Benefit

Israel gained greatly, in public relations (positive in the west, negative in the Middle East) and population terms, from the fall-out of an event which was generally reported as an antisemitic purge. Prime Minister Moshe Sharett denounced "the show trial which is being organized there against a group of Jews who have fallen victims to false accusations". The trade union newspaper Davar claimed that the Egyptian regime "seems to take its inspiration from the Nazis" and lamented the "deterioration in the status of Egyptian Jews in general" For Haaretz the trial "proved that the Egyptian rulers do not hesitate to invent the most fantastic accusations if it suits them" and added that "in the present state of affairs in Egypt the junta certainly needs some diversion". The Jerusalem Post headlined "Egypt Show Trial Arouses Israel, Sharett Tells House. Sees Inquisition Practices Revived."

Jews in Egypt suffer

In July 1954, when the bombings started, there were still at least 50,000 Jews in Egypt (more than half of whom were actually foreign nationals) despite mob and bombing attacks (eg 70 killed in bombings between June and Nov 1948) over the creation of Israel (and the defeat of the Egyptian forces). This, and the revolutionary upheaval four years later (eg eg in Jan 1951 mobs had rampaged through downtown Cairo setting fires and killing scores of people, including thirteen Britons) had caused around 10,000 Jews to leave (though few went to Israel). A Jewish journalist insisted: "We, Egyptian Jews, feel secure in our homeland, Egypt".

In 1956, Israel again attacked Egypt (very shortly joined by the UK and France in the "Suez Affair") and, as discovered in 1995, murdering captured soldiers and at least 49 civilians.[1] Egypt thereupon expelled some 25,000 more Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, while approximately 1,000 Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps.

Descriptions

Despite the fact that it had caused a major and continuing scandal, Israeli military censorship applied to all the details of the "Lavon Affair" and, on the rare occasions it was mentioned in the years to follow it was called "Operation Susannah" or the "unfortunate business". Attacks that are still known in English by the Zionist narrative, the "Lavon Affair", have most of the hallmarks of a significant (though fortunately cut-short) terrorist campaign but are not generally accepted as such.