In 1960, an eight-year-old Soviet-Israeli boy was abducted and taken out of the country by friends of his strictly Orthodox grandparents, who were worried the child would grow up secular. Two years later, it was Mossad agent Aliza Magen who located the whereabouts of Yossele Schumacher and brought him back to Israel, solving a national crisis.
Leading the international hunt for the boy was just one of hundreds of missions that Magen, who died aged 87, played a major role in during her 40 years of service at the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.
The Mossad described the Jerusalem-born veteran agent as "an esteemed commander, groundbreaking, who had devoted her life to the security of Israel and its citizens”. As the only female deputy director in the 75 year history of the organisation, Magen torpedoed the glass ceiling in the male-dominated security institution with her sheer brilliance.
Two years after the Yossele Schumacher affair, which became a cause célèbre in Israel, Magen played a pivotal role in Operation Damocles: a covert mission that targetted German scientists – many of whom were former Nazi rocket technicians – who were building missiles for Egypt. As a fluent German speaker, Magen was stationed in Salzburg, Austria, from where she recruited a former top-ranking Nazi officer to the Israeli side.
Magen is possibly best known for her unblinking work in Operation Wrath of God, the name given to Israel’s assassination campaign against the Palestinian terrorists responsible for killing 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Magen was responsible for gathering the intelligence necessary to track down the suspected killers over the course of a two-decade mission.
She was born on July 5, 1937 in Jerusalem – then known as Mandatory Palestine – to German Jewish parents who had fled the Nazis before the outbreak of the Second World War. Growing up, she spoke fluent German, English and Hebrew.
She was recruited to Mossad in 1958, and soon caught the eye of the then-director Isser Harel because of her impressive work during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann: the Nazi official who fled to Argentina to escape justice, before being kidnapped by Israel and executed for his crimes in the Holocaust.
"I was a 22-23-year-old child,” she said in an interview with Ynet. “I used to write reports as part of my job, and Isser Harel read them and said: ‘Bring the girl over.’” The quality of her trial notes and analysis stood out to the security chief, leading her to quickly rise up the ranks.
In 1962, Magen helped to locate Schumacher, whose kidnapping to the US had been arranged by his Charedi grandparents who feared his parents would bring him up secular. She convinced Ruth Ben David – Schumacher’s female smuggler – to reveal the child’s location, leading to his safe return home. The high-profile scandal exacerbated the social chasm separating Israel’s strictly Orthodox Jews and the secular population.
Soon after, Magen was influential in Operation Diamond, during which Mossad agents persuaded an Iraqi pilot to defect to Israel, acquiring his MiG-21 – the most advanced Soviet fighter plane at the time.
She was appointed deputy head of the Tzomet Branch (Mossad’s largest division responsible for recruiting and handling overseas agents) in 1980, before becoming head of the Administration Branch in 1984. She made history in 1990 by becoming the first woman to serve as deputy director of the Mossad, working under three successive security chiefs: Shabtai Shavit, Danny Yatom, and Efraim Halevy.
But not all missions she oversaw went to plan. In 1998, her superior Yatom was forced to resign following the botched attempt by agents to bug the Switzerland home of Abdullah Zein, a suspected fundraiser of Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy. Magen also played a role in the failed assassination attempt of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, whom undercover Israeli agents poisoned on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman in 1997.
She married Avraham Magen in 1973, who died in 2011. The couple never had any children – a sacrifice the loyal security agent made for her job.
"To have a career [in Mossad], you have to get through the operational field, and a woman has to sacrifice a lot to get there,” she said. “It’s not simple. A family, children, don’t fit in with a career.”
But being a woman proved to be a lethal weapon. “Women can easily be in places where men have to make up 1,001 excuses to be in,” she said.
“In one exercise, we had to observe a certain place, and there was no observation point we could be in without raising people’s suspicions. So I found a small store across the street with a pavement in front of it.
"I asked the salesman if I could get a chair and rest outside for a while, because I was exhausted and felt dizzy. When everyone else was looking for a way to observe, I just sat down on a chair calmly.
"I don’t think a man could do such a thing.”
And though she didn’t harness seduction as a weapon herself, Magen believed it was an acceptable and legitimate tool to use as a female agent. “Seduction is definitely moral. It’s a case of ‘the end justifies the means’. The agent doesn’t seduce someone to develop an affair, but in order to reach a situation in which she would be able to manage him, keep him at distance.”
In a statement mourning her passing, the Mossad said: "The Mossad family bows its head in deep sorrow over the loss of our comrade Aliza – a respected, trailblazing and dedicated commander who devoted her life to the security of Israel and its citizens.
"Aliza was one of the pillars of the Mossad, and she left a profound mark on generations of agency personnel, who were trained according to her legacy and values."
