Has Yossi Cohen’s legacy — as the derring-do, swashbuckling master spy who’s credited with snatching the Iranian nuclear archives — been irreparably tarnished by the war’s massive security failure? 

Photos Kobi Katz, Flash90

Since his retirement in 2021 as director of the Mossad, former spy chief Yossi Cohen — considered a close confidant and possible successor of Binyamin Netanyahu — took the mandatory cooling-off period required for high-ranking former security officials before they enter politics, went into private business, and spent two and a half years avoiding the media. But this past July, as demonstrations against the newly-elected government and its proposed judicial overhaul were tearing the country apart, he stepped out of the shadows and published a cautionary article in Yedioth Aharonot, conveying a message that left no room for commentary.

The former Mossad head warned about an acute and immediate security danger as a result of the rift in the nation. He called for a halt in the judicial reform process on one hand, and the cessation of demonstrations on the other, saying that the advancement of the legislative package was causing an immediate threat to national security. Cohen wrote that even if judicial reform was “right and justified,” it was being done in a way that “endangers the national security resilience of the State of Israel in the immediate timeframe.” He said the perceived rift in the nation would harm security resilience and the country’s security edge.

Two and a half months later, while he was celebrating Simchas Torah with his family at his home in Modiin, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel under cover of heavy rocket fire and carried out the most brutal and heinous massacre in its history.

“Reading the political map, I was petrified that something like this would happen, although no one in their wildest dreams could have imagined the scope and brutality of it,” Yossi Cohen says in a wide-ranging interview with Mishpacha. “But the public chaos that reigned was just inviting an attack.”

While Yossi Cohen kept in the shadows before the war, today he’s again become high-profile, having been spotted in Qatar during that host country’s hostage negotiations. Even though he no longer serves in an official capacity, once the news broke that Hamas was holding kidnapped civilians and soldiers, it was widely reported that Cohen went to Qatar to assist in negotiations for their release.

Cohen denies that he was part of the hostage negotiating team, but acknowledges that — due to his wide network of contacts in the Arab world and a long-invested relationship with Qatar — Netanyahu had appointed Cohen as an emissary “for special missions.”

Some might say that both Cohen’s new diplomatic role and his re-entry into the media minefield is his attempt to survive the inevitable fallout that will hit all the government and security players on “the day after,” when investigations into the colossal security failure that led to the war will abound and everyone will have to give a reckoning.

Like the entire security and political leadership, Yossi Cohen’s glorious Mossad career, too, has been tarnished — part of the dirty undercurrent in which all the major players, from Netanyahu on down, will have to take responsibility for October 7.

Although not long ago he was seen as a successor and confidante of Bibi, he seems to have put some distance between himself and the prime minister over comments about the judicial overhaul package, and has assumed an ambiguous role in the Hostage Family Forum, which is seen by many as the extension of the year-long anti-government protest movement.

While Cohen took over the leadership of the Mossad in 2016, nine years after Hamas came to power in Gaza, he had been an integral part of the system in the defense and intelligence community promoting the notion that Hamas was not interested in war and could be bought off with an infusion of cash — most of it from oil-rich Qatar. Later, as head of the Mossad, Cohen flew to the capital city of Doha and returned with Qatari money to be handed over to Hamas on Netanyahu’s behalf. In a recent interview, he expressed regret for this failed policy.

Has Yossi Cohen’s legacy — as the derring-do, swashbuckling master spy who’s credited with snatching the Iranian nuclear archives among so many other larger-than-life missions — been irreparably tarnished by the war’s massive security failure?

As all factions are feeling their way forward in the post-October 7 environment, waiting for the dust to settle and see where they all land, Cohen hopes not.