Title: Operation Susannah
Author: Aviezer Golan
Golan, Aviezer (1978). Operation Susannah: As Told By Marcelle Ninio, Victor Levy, Robert Dassa And Philip Nathanson. New York: Harper and Row
LCCN: 77003751
Subjects
Date Updated: May 6, 2015
Reviewed by George C. Constantinides[1]
Operation Susannah was the Israeli intelligence effort to sabotage U.S. and British installations in Egypt, using members of a Jewish network there, in such a way that Egyptians would appear to be responsible. It resulted in the arrest of members of the net, the execution of two of them, and the suicide of an Israeli intelligence officer captured in Egypt. Most of this book is devoted to the prison experiences of the net’s members; the first two chapters (about a hundred pages), however, do discuss the operation and the Israeli network-its creation, training, and capture. Many things about this version of the operation are unsatisfactory. The most eye-catching is the effort to deny that the operation was designed to disrupt Egyptian relations with the United States and Britain, with no proof advanced for this twist, which is contrary to expert opinion. The author gives little space to the resultant Lavon affair and to the question of who in Israel ordered the operation and its exact purpose if not as described. There is a faint hint that the book may have been partly designed to counter Avri El-Ad’s version of events (see Decline of Honor[2]), published in 1976. The author never refers to El-Ad by that name but by the Western one of Avraham Seidenberg or his operational name of Paul Frank, a practice that may be significant. Included are names of Israeli and British agents who the Operation Susannah prisoners claim were caught by the Egyptians in separate and unrelated operations. For the most recent treatment of the operation, see Steven’s The Spymasters of Israel. [3]
[1] Constantinides, George C. (1983). Intelligence and Espionage: An Analytical Bibliography. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 214-215
[2] El-Ad, Avri (1976), with James Creech III. Decline of Honor. Chicago: Henry Regnery
[3] Steven, Stewart (1980). The Spymasters of Israel. New York: Macmillan
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