Cinephilos

007 James Bond, according to Ian Fleming, doesn't have a wife and children or any other close family members so that he can plunge himself into dangerous missions without having to worry about his family back home. Ethan Hunt, in one of the earlier Mission Impossible series, is married to a woman whose life is threatened by his archenemy. So the rest of the movie is about Ethan trying to save his wife instead of fulfilling his mission.

So my question is, why would a gangster get married and settle down when having a family can only make him soft and vulnerable? The plot of the whole series is obvious before you watch them: the protagonist agonizes between his career as a criminal and settling down to a safe and peaceful life. The audience is forced to root for him because the choice between the two is obvious. The family man must play it safe and try to get out at his earliest opportunity, which pits him against his evil boss who will try to keep him in the life of crime.

This construct is too obvious and predictable. It kills the fun of an otherwise fascinating world of organized crime in Britain.

Eli Cohen is hailed as a legendary Mossad agent not only because of the quality of his intelligence, but also because of the drama of his exposure and execution in 1965. The public nature of his trial, the broadcast of his capture, and the image of his hanging made him a symbol-martyrdom often immortalizes.

Had he succeeded and returned quietly to Israel, his name might not be widely known outside intelligence circles.

Syria Was Not the Primary Threat in 1967. Egypt was the dominant military threat to Israel during the Six-Day War. Nasser's Egypt had the largest army, the strongest air force, and a regional hegemonic role. Syria's military, while aggressive and responsible for border provocations (especially shelling from the Golan Heights), was not the strategic centerpiece of Israel's security concerns. Cohen's intelligence on Syrian fortifications did help in the Golan Heights campaign, but it was not the decisive factor in the war's outcome. The real strategic theater was Egypt.

The Greatest Spy Might Be the One You Never Hear About. In the espionage world, the most successful agents are often those who are never exposed. If Mossad had an agent embedded within Egypt's military or political leadership, especially around 1967, and that agent was never caught, the public would never know. There are rumors and claims-some semi-substantiated, others denied-about Israeli assets in Egypt. But no definitive names have emerged. If such spies existed and weren't compromised, they would be protected even posthumously.

Eli Cohen's value was high-but not necessarily higher than any hypothetical agent in Cairo who supplied real-time orders of battle, Egyptian war plans, confirmed the location and vulnerability of the Egyptian Air Force before Operation Focus (when Israel wiped out Egypt's air force in 1967). The true crown jewel of Israeli HUMINT (human intelligence) may remain anonymous.

While Cohen was undoubtedly brave and effective, his prominence is as much the result of public capture and symbolic narrative as it is of operational value. A more vital spy may have worked in Egypt, played a more decisive role in Israel's victories, and remained unknown to history-precisely because they succeeded.