Uri Bar-Joseph, (The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel - A Netflix Original: The True Story of Mossad Espionage and the Yom Kippur War [hc, Harper, 2016]) 978-0062420107 [pb, HarperPb, 2017] 978-0062420138 [See related film] [- chronicles the true story of Ashraf Marwan, a high-ranking Egyptian official who acted as a top-secret spy for Israel’s Mossad under the codename “The Angel”. Bar-Joseph, a former Israeli intelligence analyst, uses meticulous research to prove how Marwan’s warnings prevented the absolute destruction of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Marwan was the son-in-law of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and later became a close advisor to his successor, Anwar Sadat. This positioning gave him access to Egypt’s most sensitive state and military secrets. Driven by complex psychological motives—partially rooted in resentment toward his father-in-law—Marwan approached the Mossad and turned Egypt’s war plans into an “open book” for Israeli intelligence. Just hours before Egypt and Syria launched a massive, coordinated surprise attack on October 6, 1973, Marwan delivered a definitive warning to Israel. Though Israeli military intelligence famously downplayed the threat due to cognitive biases, Marwan’s urgent alert allowed Israel to mobilize its reserves at the last possible moment, narrowly saving the nation from a catastrophic defeat. Bar-Joseph heavily details the internal Israeli blame-game after the war. He strongly debunks claims made by some officials that Marwan was an Egyptian double agent, arguing his leaked information was too damaging to Egypt to be a ruse. Marwan lived out his later years as a wealthy businessman in London. His identity was eventually leaked to the public by a former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence. In 2007, Marwan died mysteriously after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in London. The book explores the conspiracy theories surrounding his death, pointing to assassination by entities who wanted his secrets silenced. – Google/AI] See entry on movie version of “The Angel” in the companion list of Movie, Films &; TV Series.
Section 5.4
Non-fiction Books and Articles on Israelis and Crime/Espionage
Books and articles, by authors A-Z
Michael Bar-Zohar & Nissim Mishal, (Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service [Ecco, 2014, translated by Bar-Zohar himself and Nathan K. Burstein]) [hc] 978-0062123411 [pb] 978-0062123411
Bar-Zohar, Michael & Nissim Mishal, (No Mission Is Impossible: The Death-Defying Missions of the Israeli Special Forces [hc, Ecco, 2015, translated by Bar-Zohar himself and Nathan K. Burstein] 978-0062378996 [pb, Ecco, 2016] 978-0062379009
Bar-Zohar, Michael & Nissim Mishal, (The Mossad Amazons - The Amazing Women in the Israeli Secret Service [hc, Ktav Publishing House, 2021, translated by Bar-Zohar himself and Nathan K. Burstein] 978-1602804463
Bar-Zohar, Michael, (Iron Swords, Bleeding Hearts [hc, Ktav, 2024]) 978-0062379009
Bar-Zohar, Michael, (Spies in the Promised Land: Iser Harel and the Israeli Secret Service [hc, Davis-Poynter Ltd., 1972, translated from the French by Monroe Stearns] 978-0706700336
Sarah Ben-David & Leonard Weller, “Religiosity, Criminality and Types of Offences of Jewish Male Prisoners in Israel”, Medicine and Law, Volume 14, Issue 7–8, pages 509–519, February 1995. [The research investigated the correlation between religious adherence and criminal behavior among Jewish men, specifically analyzing crime rates and offense categories. Key Findings:
Significantly Lower Incarceration Rates: The percentage of religious individuals among the prison population was drastically lower than their representation in the general public. At the time of the study, religious inmates made up only 3.7% of the studied Jewish male prison population, compared to roughly 20% of the general Israeli population.
Overrepresentation in Sex and White-Collar Crime: While religious and non-religious prisoners generally committed similar types of crimes, religious inmates committed proportionately more sex crimes and white-collar crimes than their secular counterparts.
Underrepresentation in Security Crimes: Religious Jewish inmates were found to commit significantly fewer security-related offenses compared to non-religious prisoners.
Objective: The paper evaluated the broad sociolinguistic and criminological theory that consistent religious observance acts as a deterrent to typical antisocial and criminal behavior (it does, but not completely), while documenting the specific sub-types of deviations that still occur within highly observant communities [more sex and white-collar crimes].- ChatGPT]
Eli Ben-Hanan, (Our Man in Damascus: Elie Cohn [hc, Crown, 1969]) B000KA3AJI [pb, Steimatzky, 1969] B0006CP9UI
Raffi Berg, (Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort [hc, Icon Books, 2020]) 978-1785786006 [pb, Icon Books, 2020] 978-1785786419 [See related film] [To rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jews stranded in refugee camps in Sudan, the Mossad established a fake luxury diving resort called the Arous Holiday Village on the Sudanese Red Sea coast. By day, Mossad agents lived as diving instructors and hotel staff, hosting real international tourists who were completely unaware of the staff’s true identities. Under the cover of night, the team smuggled refugees from the camps to the coast. From there, the refugees were transported to Israel via Israeli naval vessels and, later, secret airlifts from improvised desert airstrips. Berg wrote the account in collaboration with the operatives involved, including commander Dani Limor and former Mossad head Efraim Halevy. Raffi Berg, born around 1971 in Southport England, is the Middle East editor for the BBC News website. He has been a journalist for over 30 years and has reported extensively on events in Israel and the surrounding region. – Google/AI] [See movie presentation of this story - The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019) – in the companion Filmography.]
Ronen Bergman, (born 1972 and raised in Kiryat Bialik, Israel) - (Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations [hc, Random House, 2018, translated by Ronnie Hope] 978-1400069712 [pb, Random House, 2019] 978-1473694743
Ian Black (born in Sheffield, England, 1953–2023) & Benny Morris (born in 1948 at Kibbutz Ein HaChoresh, Israel), (Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services [hc, Grove Weidenfeld, 1991]) 978-0802111593
Yossi Cohen, (born 1961 in Jerusalem, Director of the Mossad [2016–2021]) - (The Sword of Freedom: Israel, Mossad, and the Secret War [Broadside Books, 2025, no translator specified] [hc, 978-0063259607 [pb] 978-0063479173
Gabriel Dayan, (Mossad: The Secret History of Israel [pb, independently published, 2025, no translator specified]) 979-8309106592
Meir Elran, Ephraim Kavie, Meni Itzhaki & Mohammed S. Wattad, “Curbing Violence and Crime in the Arab Sector in Israel: Policy Recommendations”, The Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, November 9, 2021.
Anita Engle, (The Nili Spies [pb, Routledge, 1997]) 978-0714642932
Matti Friedman, (born 1977, Toronto, Canadian-Israeli journalist and author. resident of Jerusalem) - (Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel [Algonquin Books]) [hc, 2019] 978-1616207229 [pb, 2020] 978-1643750439
Robert R. Friedmann [ed], Crime and Criminal Justice in Israel: Assessing the Knowledge Base Toward the 21st Century [hc, SUNY Press, 1998] 978-0791437131 [pb, SUNY Press, 1998] 978-0791437148
Assaf Gur, “A Field Guide to Israeli Organized Crime”, Tablet, February 5, 2019. [This article details the rise of figures like Itzhak Abergil and the expansion of Israeli syndicates into international narcotics and money laundering. – Google/AI]
Aviva Guttmann, (est. born in 1986, in Basel, Switzerland) - (Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad’s Assassination Campaign [hc, Cambridge UP, 2025] 978-1009503075
Ben Hartman, “The Israeli Gangster’s Reading List”, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, Autumn, 2019. [Ben Hartman’s article examines the life and trial of Israeli crime boss Yitzhak Abergil, focusing on the contrast between his brutal criminal career and his unexpected engagement with philosophy.
Abergil, the central figure in the massive “Case 512” trial, is accused of leading a global crime network responsible for drug trafficking, bombings, and multiple murders. His testimony recounts a childhood in extreme poverty in Lod, where he was immersed in crime from an early age and committed serious offenses as a teenager, eventually receiving a long prison sentence.
While in prison, Abergil learned to read and became deeply influenced by books such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He claimed these ideas helped shape his thinking and sense of individuality. However, prosecutors argued that he distorted these philosophies to justify violence and selfishness.
The article presents Abergil as highly intelligent and charismatic, suggesting that under different circumstances he might have succeeded in legitimate society. Ultimately, it questions whether his exposure to literature truly rehabilitated him, noting that he returned to crime and remained one of Israel’s most powerful and dangerous criminals. – ChatGPT]
Hermon, Zeev, Crime Among Jews: A Comparative Study of Criminality Among Minorities and Dominant Groups, monograph (43pp), National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Number: 18204, (1974) [- examines how minority status, social integration, and national sovereignty impact criminal behavior patterns among Jewish populations. Hermon argues that there is an inverse correlation between Jewish involvement in crime and their participation in the broader social, economic, political, and cultural life of their country of residence. The study shows that under conditions of discrimination, Jewish minority crime differed significantly in character from the dominant population. However, as Jews achieved legal emancipation and integrated into majority societies, their types of crime became more similar to those of the dominant groups. Hermon presents a detailed review of crime in the Palestinian region both before and after 1948. He documents a sharp increase in Jewish crime following the establishment of Israel. He uses this to illustrate the theory that when a people’s national life is “normalized” (moving from a minority to a sovereign majority), the amount of deviant and criminal behavior in their society also normalizes to match typical majority rates. The text includes comparative data on Jewish participation in various crime categories versus majority populations across multiple countries. It also provides an analysis of Israeli crime rates categorized by immigrant origin groups, juveniles, and female offenders. – ChatGPT]
Hertzog, Esther & Erella Shadmi [eds], Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking in Women: Israel’s Blood Money [hc, Routledge, 2019] 978-1138364585 [pb, Routledge, 2020] 978-0367582029 [This book critically analyzes the sex industry in Israel, using feminist concepts and scholarship to elaborate on the power of prostitution to shape a world in which women are objects for fulfilling men’s desires. A comprehensive collection of research-based articles that examine prostitution, trafficking in women and pornography from divergent disciplinary angles, it reveals the interconnectedness of these three aspects of the sex trade which objectifies, commercializes and exploits human – and in particular women’s – sexuality. Showing these practices to be embedded in a capitalist and patriarchal oppressive context that is accommodated by state institutions, this volume rejects the argument that it is possible to choose prostitution, and that feminist pornography is possible.
With case studies including the conspicuous context of migration that attracts sex traffickers, the liberal discourse introduced by cinema, the media and the arts that serve to legitimate prostitution and pornography, the chauvinist-macho culture that perceives and treats women as sex objects, and the issues of male prostitution and men as clients, Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking in Women: Israel’s Blood Money constitutes a study of Israel as a unique context in which the sex trade can prosper, in spite of geographical, religious and institutional constraints. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies and gender and women’s studies. – Amazon]
Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) – The website of this Israeli think tank (https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1929) offers numerous analyses, articles, op-ed pieces and book references to issues of governance, corruption and civil liberties in contemporary Israeli society.
Samuel M. Katz, (born 1963) - (The Ghost Warriors: Inside Israel’s Undercover War Against Suicide Terrorism [hc, Berkley Caliber, 2016] 978-1592409013 [pb, Diversion Books, 2025] 979-8895150108
Katz, Samuel M., (The Architect of Espionage: The Man Who Built Israel’s Mossad into the World’s Boldest Intelligence Force [hc, Scribner, 2025] 978-1668059746 [Biography of Meir Dagan]
Katz, Samuel M. (Guards without Frontiers: Israel’s War against Terrorism [hc, Arms and Armour Press, 1990] 978-0853689300
Yaakov Katz & Amir Bohbot, (While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East [hc, St. Martin’\s Press, 2025]) 978-1250345684 [- tells the inside story of how Hamas, Israel’s weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a surprise attack on one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to October 7, 2023, the book exposes the intelligence and strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion. It takes readers back in time, showing how years of complacency, mistaken intelligence analysis, and a misguided policy of containment enabled Hamas to prepare for an assault that Israel did not believe was possible and that would change the Middle East.
The book unveils the dramatic events of the night before the attack, highlighting the cracks in Israel’s military and political leadership. It provides unprecedented details on how key warnings were missed, and how Israel ignored the growing threat from Hamas, believing that the group was weak and deterred. By exposing these failures, While Israel Slept offers a stark, sobering account of how overconfidence and complacency paved the way for disaster, while underscoring the critical lessons Israel must embrace to safeguard its future. – Amazon]
Aaron J. Klein, (1960–2016, American-Israeli journalist and author) - (Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response [hc, Random House, 2005] 978-1400064274 [pb, Random House, 2007] 978-0812974638
Lotz, Wolfgang [1921–1993], (The Champagne Spy: Israel’s Master Spy Tells His Story [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 1972]) 978-1299261235 [pb, Corgi, 1974] 978-0552095235 [See related film] [- autobiography of the German-born Mossad operative who penetrated the highest levels of Egyptian society during the 1960s. Posing as a wealthy, horse-breeding ex-Nazi officer, Lotz threw lavish, champagne-fueled parties to gather critical military intelligence that later helped Israel win the Six-Day War. He and his wife were eventually exposed and imprisoned, and returned to Israel in the prisoner exchanges following the Six-Day War. See the companion list of movies/films for the documentary about Lotz – “The Champagne Spy”.]
Dan Porat, (born 1964, Israel, Hebrew U. Professor of History) - (Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators [hc, Bellknap/Harvard UP, 2019]) 978-0674988149
Aryeh Rattner (born 1950, Israel) & Gideon Fishman, (est. born 1942, in Israel) - (Justice for All?: Jews and Arabs in the Israeli Criminal Justice System [Praeger, 1998]) 978-0274662746
Dan Raviv [born 1954, New York City] & Yossi Melman [born 1950 in Zabrze, Poland, arrived in Israel 1957] - (Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars: Updated & Revised [pb, Levant Books, 2014]) 978-0985437893 [Updated version of Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community (1990) by same authors]
Zeena Saiffi & Jeremy Diamond, “A killing a day: How a crime epidemic is spotlighting inequality in Israeli society”, CNN, Feb. 15, 2026.
The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) provide ongoing analysis on why clearance rates for murders in the Arab sector remain as low as 10–15% compared to over 70% in the Jewish sector
Mor Shimoni, “‘This story will never end’: The chronicles of organized crime in Israel” Ynet, 07.08.23.
Gad Shimron, (Mossad Exodus: The Daring Undercover Rescue of the Lost Jewish Tribe [transl. by Uriel Masad, pb, Gefen Publishing House, 2007] 978-9652294036 [See related film] [In 1977, the Mossad spy agency was ordered by then Prime Minister Menachem Begin to rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jewish refugees in Sudan and deliver them to Israel. The agency established a covert forward base in a deserted holiday village in Sudan, and deployed a handful of operatives to launch and oversee the exodus of the refugees by sea and by air, in the early 1980s. First published in Hebrew in 1998, this updated English version offers a firsthand account of how the operation was put in place, and how the Mossad team in Sudan brought it off, despite great personal risk, running a partying vacation spot for wealthy tourists by day as they stole through the Sudanese desert to rescue desperate refugees by night. The book sheds light on American involvement in the latter stages of the operation, when the White House facilitated an airlift of Ethiopian Jews and the CIA station in Khartoum sheltered the last Mossad operatives, on the run from Libyan secret service agents, and spirited them out of Sudan in special boxes labeled “Diplomatic Mail”. – Amazon] Gad Shimron (born 1950, Tel Aviv) served in the Mossad for over a decade and was a key member of the team that ran the secret diving resort in Sudan. Following his intelligence career, he became a prominent journalist. He served as the European correspondent for the daily newspaper Ma’ariv and was an anchorman for the “Good Morning Israel” show on TV Channel 1. He currently lives in the Tel Aviv area, where he continues to work as a defense commentator and senior editor for the Ma’ariv daily. [Google/AI] [See movie presentation of this story - The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019) – in the companion Filmography.] Shimron also co-authored the following:
Kuenzle, Anton & Gad Shimron, (The Execution of the Hangman of Riga: The Only Execution of a War Criminal by the Mossad [transl. from the Hebrew by Uriel Masad, hc, Vallentine Mitchell, 2004] 978-0853035336 [pb, Vallentine Mitchell, 2004] 978-0853035251 [- an account of the operation carried out in 1964-65 to identify, locate and execute the notorious Nazi war criminal, Herbert Cukurs, who was personally responsible for the murder of over 30,000 Latvian Jews. Note: “Anton Kuenzle” was a pseudonym for Yaakov Meidad, who passed away in Tel Aviv in 2012.]
Efrat Shoham, (Prison Tattoos: A Study of Russian Inmates in Israel [pb, Springer, 2015] 978-3319158709
Dina Siegel, (The Israeli Mafia: A Cultural Journey into Israeli Organized Crime [hc, Springer, 2024] 978-3031735608 [pb, Springer, 2025] 978-3031735639 [This book undertakes a comprehensive examination of the intricate socio-economic and cultural landscapes that have shaped the criminal operations of a diverse array of Jewish and non-Jewish criminal entities, spanning 1948–2024.
Drawing upon meticulous ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Israel between 2020 and 2024, alongside rigorous media analysis, interviews conducted both domestically and internationally, and a wealth of visual material captured by the author during fieldwork, this study offers unparalleled insights into the dynamics of Israel’s underworld. It examines the multifaceted activities of various criminal organizations, including but not limited to drug and human trafficking, protection rackets, gambling enterprises, and contract killings.
Moreover, this book critically examines the responses of authorities and law enforcement agencies to the escalating influence of organized crime amidst the backdrop of major socio- political upheavals in Israel, ranging from wars and waves of immigration to terrorist attacks. By contextualizing these criminal phenomena within broader historical and contemporary narratives, this work not only fills a significant gap in scholarly discourse but also provides a nuanced understanding of the intersections between crime, society, and governance in the Israeli context. – Amazon]
Gordon Thomas, (1933–2017, born in Wales) - (Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad [pb, St Martin’s Press, 2015, revised edition] 978-1250056405
Marc E. Vargo, (born 1954, US) - (The Mossad: Six Landmark Missions of the Israeli Intelligence Agency, 1960–1990 [McFarland, 2015]) 978-0786479146