Declassified Documents Shed Light on Lavon Affair That Rocked Israel.

By Israel Hayom

More than 60 years have passed since the Lavon Affair rocked the fledgling State of Israel. The affair, named after then-Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, revolved around a failed 1954 covert operation aimed at implicating the Egyptians in a string of bombings actually orchestrated by Israel. The failure of the operation turned into a scandal, ultimately leading to the collapse of the government.

For years, the question hovering over the affair was: Who gave the order to activate the sleeper cell in Egypt (mostly comprising Egyptian Jews) that carried out the attacks? Rare documents and transcripts of key meetings, declassified by the Defense Ministry on Monday, have shed light on the details of the affair, which ended with the arrests of 13 spies, lengthy jail terms for some of them and the execution of others, as well as a number of severe political crises in Israel.

Immediately after the affair was exposed, the head of Military Intelligence, Binyamin Gibli, and the commander of Unit 131 (the unit that carried out the attacks), Mordechai Ben Tzur, were swiftly dismissed. The chain of events set off by the exposure of the operation led Lavon to resign and ultimately prompted then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to step down as well.

One of the documents -- a transcript of meeting between Lavon and Gibli -- reveals that the two accused each other of giving the order, with Lavon claiming that Gibli gave the order on his own accord, but Gibli claiming he was given the order by Lavon on July 16, 1954, when the two met alone.

In another meeting between Lavon and Gibli, on Dec. 28, 1954, after the operation had been exposed, the two again accused each other of giving the initial order.

"It is inconceivable that without the order of the authorized person -- and I'm not saying that you were the person who gave the order -- people would carry out such actions on their own accord," Lavon said. "I don't believe these people decided to blow up American intelligence services and set the post office in Alexandria on fire just for the sake of adventure. Not possible. But I don't have any proof of that."

Lavon then asked Gibli to tell the truth, and denied outright that the two had met on July 16 that year. "If that meeting and that conversation did not take place on July 16, but rather after the entire affair was over, then I must come to one of two conclusions: Either you did the whole thing on your own, or not on your own, and if so, then who was it?" Lavon said.

To this Gibli replied: "I have never faced such attempts of a liar and fabricator the way you tried to present me just now. One thing is clear to me: I received the order to activate the cells from your mouth after a meeting at your house."

"When you gave the order on the 16th, you did not have the authority to give such orders," Lavon said. "Well, I accept that judgment. Fine," Gibli replied.

Gibli's version is supported by another declassified document, in which Nehemia Argov, Ben-Gurion's military secretary, states that it was Lavon who gave the order.

"Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon considered that it might be good if we did some things that would prevent the British and Egyptians from signing," in reference to the hope that the British would keep their occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal. "The defense minister, Mr. Pinhas Lavon, gave the order to activate the cell in Egypt to sabotage British targets and make it look like the Muslim Brotherhood did it," Argov said.

According to Argov, "this misguided and disastrous decision was made by the defense minister, not by the prime minister [Moshe Sharett]. This decision, this order, was made without the prime minister's knowledge. This horrendous thinking, this hasty and disastrous decision was made while the [IDF] Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Dayan wasn't here in the country."

In the document, Argov described Ben-Gurion's outrage at Lavon. "On Saturday, the Old Man [Ben-Gurion's nickname] remarked on the Egyptian issue. ... He issued a harsh sentence to the one who committed this crime," Argov said.

Argov even quoted Ben-Gurion as saying that "this is not a matter that a defense minister should decide on. This is a political matter, not a defense issue. Who gave him permission to send 13 of our best, most devoted men to be slaughtered?"

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Publication:	Israel Faxx
Geographic Code:	7ISRA
Date:	May 12, 2015
Words:	745
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Topics:	Covert operations