Ron Cantor Podcast

Whenever I visit the beautiful Golan Heights in Northern Israel, I can’t help but think of Israel’s most revered spy, Eli Cohen.    Eli was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His parents were Syrian Jews from the once great town of Aleppo. The same Aleppo that has been torn to shreds by the Syrian civil war.  He was raised as a Zionist. When Israel became a nation most of his family made Aliyah, moved to Israel, but Eli stayed behind and worked on behalf of Israel in Egypt. In 1956 he was arrested by Egyptian authorities and eventually deported along with the rest of the Alexandrian Jews in Egypt.  He started a new life in Israel at the age of 29 in 1957.  He assumed that because if his background, Israel would want to train him as a spy but he was rebuffed by the Mossad. Despite scoring high on all the tests: IQ, bravery, amazing memory—there was concern that he had a bit of a hero complex and could put himself and maybe others in danger. However, the Mossad never forgot Eli Cohen. About a year after he married Nadi