It is hard to count how many times Yossi Cohen boasts in his book that he can lie to anyone he wants, as much as he wants. In fact, no author has ever worked so hard to convince his readers that he can lie to them at any given moment. He does not even limit this to a professional context. “I can become the best friend of anyone I want,” Cohen testifies, “until I get what I need from them.” A moment of honesty.
First of all, calling these 239 pages a book would be an exaggeration. It is clear that someone worked very hard to inflate the page count. At times, it reaches the point of absurdity: four short biographies of Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion, Begin, and Meir Dagan, for example, suddenly appear throughout the book. Elsewhere, a speech by Mike Pompeo, when he was CIA director, is quoted, followed by another utterly tedious speech by Gina Haspel, who held the same position (in her case, the reason for including the speech in the book is apparently the compliment to Yossi Cohen buried within it). In other places, Cohen launches without warning into a lecture on what artificial intelligence will do to our world.
There is one part of the book that is actually interesting. It concerns the way Cohen describes his process of becoming secular. Here, Cohen actually sounds genuine. He does not hide behind “I lost my faith,” but describes the process almost as if he were preparing for service in the Mossad. The words he chooses are so transparent — “cover story,” “double life” — that it is clear he is constructing a narrative for us according to which he became an excellent intelligence operative (according to former senior Mossad officials, he indeed was one) because of the lies he told on his way to leaving the religious world. “I felt comfortable with the pretense. I wasn’t necessarily proud of these abilities of mine, but they did not challenge my conscience.”
Most of the book is an almost unfathomable exercise in Cohen flattering himself and his own abilities. A senior German official explains to him that he saved Germany; the head of the British security service tells him that he saved Britain; CIA Director William Burns gives him a special award; and one American president greets him by saying, “I wonder how the most powerful man in the Middle East is doing today?” Every compliment is carefully filed away. Again and again, anonymous voices appear calling on Cohen to save Israel, to lead us. An anonymous left-wing professor, a famous singer, and the CEO of a major communications company all cry out in desperation: Save us, Yossi!
Cohen himself, it turns out, is refusing to save us for now. He describes his disappointment with his conversations with Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman. “I will not be anyone’s number three,” he declares. There is no ideological argument here, but a simple assertion: he is better than they are. According to Cohen, he has more experience and greater capabilities in international affairs. He should lead. Incidentally, this passage, which I found in the English version of the book, which was released earlier, does not appear for some reason in the Hebrew edition.
So what vision does Cohen offer us? Alongside a host of clichés — right-wing on diplomatic issues, left-wing economically, a welfare state — Cohen also reveals a troubling side. His attraction to power, to authoritarian rulers and dictators, is something rarely encountered today. Perhaps only in Trump, and to some extent Netanyahu. Cohen praises the Emir of Qatar, the Saudi crown prince, and the rulers of Bahrain and Morocco.
The scene in which he describes his meeting with Vladimir Putin is almost erotic. “Our eyes met and we shared a silent understanding that both of us, each in his own way, were products of a universe of hidden secrets… and shameless cunning.” Cohen knows that Putin knows that he knows; what pride. Putin called him a “colleague,” and in Cohen’s eyes he is a far-sighted leader, intelligent, a chess player — all the nonsense people used to say about the Russian president until it was conclusively proven that he was an unchecked dictator who had taken his country 30 years backward.
Regarding the confrontation with Ukraine, Cohen does offer criticism. Of Zelensky, of course. Zelensky (“Putin is incomparably smarter than him”) is not a leader. Putin’s calculations, by contrast, Cohen explains at length. And, incidentally, he has an ideal candidate for brokering peace between the two sides: his name is Yossi Cohen. There have already been people who asked him to do it, but they were not the right people. When the right phone calls come, Cohen will step up to the task — and he is certain he will succeed.
Cohen almost takes pride in the fact that he is not afraid of death; that his family struggles to comprehend his indifference to the possibility that he might die. In general, he has no fear. Some of the things he writes create the impression that decades of lying have left strange intellectual scars on his personality. Take, for example, his discussion of the possibility of nuclear war. “Let’s suppose for a moment that Pakistan is wiped off the map following a nuclear attack… the damage would be catastrophic… (but) life would continue with a cursed degree of normality.” In short, nothing to worry about (unless you’re Pakistani).
Regarding October 7, Cohen does not spare his criticism. But it is not entirely clear what, exactly, he is criticizing. He does not seriously address the transfer of money from Qatar to Gaza, in which he played a central role (this was a Shin Bet initiative, he claims, falsely; “a serious mistake,” he writes). Nor does he address the submarine and naval-vessel deals and what the Grunis Commission wrote about them in its warning letters. Nor does he address the role of the governmental overhaul in what happened.
Most of Cohen’s criticism is directed at the heads of the security establishment. This happened on your watch. This is your fault. How did this happen to you, he wonders. Why did you not heed my calls to attack Hamas earlier, to put the Mossad in charge of Gaza? When did he apply pressure? Where did it come from? What was Netanyahu’s role? The book’s only criticism of Netanyahu concerns his inability to ingratiate himself with regional leaders and show empathy.
Cohen tells an anecdote. A former member of the intelligence community told him, “How is it possible that they were on vacation? In my time, I took only one day off.” “What, for the entire day?” Cohen says he replied.
Well, it is nice to know that Cohen knows how to work some humor into his book as well. During research I previously conducted into the relationship Cohen had with a flight attendant and his bizarre attempt to calm her husband, Guy Shiker, I was astonished to discover how much free time the Mossad director apparently had. He would text, talk, drive to see her, come back, go to a “state-related” meeting at a tycoon’s apartment. In the face of this intensive activity, I often wondered how they would ever pull the Mossad director out of all those apartments if something genuinely serious were to happen.