Shulamit Cohen-Kishik was a wife, mother of seven, and… an Israeli spy

Shulamit Cohen-Kishik was a wife, mother of seven, and… an Israeli spy. In an interview conducted a few years before her 2017 passing, she and her daughter Carmela Assel tell a story of unfathomable courage

“MY

mother was a model housewife,” Carmela Assel recalled. “I remember her knitting, embroidering, sewing, cooking, and baking. I never would have imagined she was living a double life, my mother during the day, smuggler and spy at night.”

Few who met the graceful and sweet Shulamit Cohen-Kishik would have suspected she was one of Israel’s most important assets in the hostile Middle East during the first decades of the State, smuggling Jewish refugees across the border, cultivating trusting relationships with Lebanon’s political elite, and passing vital information to Israeli operatives. How did a housewife from the Jewish quarter in Beirut become a highly skilled and valuable spy for the Israeli government, for decades escaping notice of not only the Lebanese authorities, but her very own children?

The story of Shulamit’s double life began not in Lebanon, but far away, in the bustling streets of Buenos Aires. “My mother was born in 1917, in Argentina,” her daughter Carmela continued. “In 1924, when my mother was just seven years old, the family business fell on hard times, prompting them to immigrate to the Holy Land. They settled on Alfandari Street, in the Mekor Baruch neighborhood of Jerusalem.

“At first, their financial situation was manageable. My mother’s father traveled for long periods to South America to help out in the family business, and they lived off the income from that. But after a number of years, the business deteriorated dramatically, and they really struggled.

“At that point, a marriage proposal came: my father, Yosef Cohen-Kishik, an impressive young man from a respected and established family in Lebanon, had come to Eretz Yisrael to look for a bride. All his brothers had married women from Lebanon, but he insisted on marrying a girl from the Holy City. My parents married in 1936 and went to live in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.”

Over the next decade, Shulamit, a powerhouse, integrated into the upper circles of the Jewish community in Lebanon. She also made friends with many Christian Phalangist women, the group who dominated politics at the time. She built close ties with key figures in the Lebanese government, moving in and out of their inner circles. She also bore seven children: Yaffa, Berti (Avraham), Meir, Arlette, Itzhak, Carmela, and David.

Then came the turning point that changed Shulamit’s life.

“At one private social event she attended,” said Carmela, “my mother overheard a conversation between several Arab figures discussing attacking the soon-to-be-established Jewish State.

“My mother was horrified by what she heard and understood she had to get this information to the Jews in Palestine. But mail delivery between the two countries had stopped and the borders were sealed.

“My mother, ever creative, composed a message in invisible ink and managed to have it sent across the border to the Haganah headquarters in Metula in the hope that the message she’d written would be deciphered.”

A few days later, there was a knock at the door.

A Lebanese citizen who was actually an undercover agent working for Shai, the pre-state intelligence service, handed her a reply letter.

“They thanked her for the crucial information,” said Carmela, “and in the same breath, asked her to carry out an urgent mission. My mother felt a new energy surging through her veins and so, in 1947, even before the State of Israel was established, my mother began her journey in the intelligence services as a sharp, skilled, charismatic yet cautious spy, with connections in the highest levels of the Lebanese government.”