Israelis consider Shulamit Cohen a heroine, and, indeed, in recent years, she was honoured by the Israeli state for services rendered to her country. Today, she is in her nineties and lives quietly in an orthodox area of Jerusalem called Mea Shearim. Its residents are known for their strict keeping of the Jewish Sabbath when visitors are told not to smoke, take photographs, use mobile phones or drive. Those who infringe the no-driving rule often face a barrage of stones.

It’s ironic that Ms. Cohen has chosen to live in such a staunchly religious neighbourhood where almost every street has put up posters advocating “modesty” when her past revolved around sleaze. It appears, however, that Israelis prefer to turn a blind eye to her former activities preferring to take the view that the end was worth the means. In recent times, her story has been cleaned-up for public consumption.

Shula Cohen was a female version of the famous Egyptian-born Israeli spy Eli Cohen (no relation), who was recruited by Israeli intelligence in the early 1960s, given a fake identity and the new name Kamel Amin Thaabet. After a stint in Argentina working on his cover as an Arab businessman, he was poised to pass himself off as a Syrian émigré, which wasn’t difficult since his parents were Syrian Jews from Aleppo. Armed with bags full of cash and a well-practised Syrian accent, he was sent to Damascus via Egypt. His job was to cultivate Syrian politicians and generals in order to filch intelligence about Syria’s defences on the Golan Heights.

Upon his arrival, he wooed his high level targets with lavish parties and hosted his new ‘friends’ in restaurants and cafes where his ears were always open to gossip.  His charm worked so well that according to his brother he became an advisor to the Syrian Minister of Defence and was, at one time, third in line for the Syrian presidency. His star dimmed when he was recognized as a Jew from Alexandria by a Damascus resident. It wasn’t long before Russian intelligence used sophisticated equipment to trace radio transmissions to his home and tipped off their Syrian counterparts. Eli was caught communicating on his hidden radio when he was arrested, tortured and hanged in public view.

Shulamit Cohen’s story mirrors that of Eli Cohen except hers has a different ending. Originally of Russian extraction, she was born in Argentina. As a child, she moved with her family to Iraq where she became fluent in Arabic before finally immigrating to Palestine in 1937. Some years later, her father, brother and fiancé were killed while fighting Palestinians and her mother died soon afterwards. Alone and without financial support, Shula started work as a secretary for a clinic in Tel Aviv, where she began a romantic liaison with an Israeli general. She was enamoured of the fine looking Polish-born soldier, but although Shula was beautiful and intelligent, it wasn’t marriage that he had on his mind. Instead, he lured her into working for the Mossad, which trained her in the art of seducing the rich and powerful and sent her to England to hone her English language skills.

In 1947, under instructions from her bosses, she embarked on a marriage of convenience with Josef Kishik a Jewish shopkeeper from Beirut and returned with him to Lebanon. There, she found a job in a bank and opened a private salon in the Wadi abu Jamil district that was then the religious, economic, social and cultural centre of the Jewish community. In time, she owned five such ‘salons’ in different areas of Beirut, fitted with hidden recording and camera equipment and staffed with female spies.

She also rented a premises on Beirut’s Hamra Street that she turned into a night pub for the purposes of contacting the Mossad spy ring without creating suspicion and to enable her to hire attractive new recruits. Throughout the following 14 years, she bestowed her favours and those of her employees on government officials, politicians and the upper echelons of Lebanese society for a price. 

It should be explained that Beirut had a thriving Jewish community of around 9,000 strong at that time, whose members were protected by the Lebanese constitution, as well as 14 synagogues and, at least, two Jewish banks. Jews in Beirut enjoyed comfortable lifestyles in one of the most glamorous cities on earth but many decided to leave following the 1967 war. The few that remained emigrated elsewhere when civil war broke out in 1975 for reasons of security amid widening sectarian divisions.

Between 1947 and 1961, Ms. Cohen fed her Israeli employers with secrets – including the security protocol between the governments of Syria and Lebanon - and established an organization called “The Jewish Self-Defence Force” that was set-up to infiltrate Lebanese political parties. She is particularly acclaimed in Israel for assisting Syrian Jews from the cities of Aleppo and Sham to covertly travel through the Lebanese mountains to begin new lives in Israel. In this task she collaborated with other undercover Israeli spies in Beirut and Damascus. She is also believed to have used her contacts to transfer Jewish money out of banks in Syria and Lebanon to Zionist organizations.

On August 9, 1961, Shula Cohen was finally arrested with her husband Josef Kishik on charges of spying for Israel along with 22 members of her network. A year later, she received the death sentence which, on appeal, was commuted to 20 years in jail. But Ms. Cohen served only seven years of her sentence. In 1967, she was released as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

Today, Shulamit Cohen is revered by the Israeli public as a person who sacrificed for the sake of the Jewish state. However, her son Yitzhak, who grew up in Lebanon and is said to have visited his mother in prison has eschewed the surnames Cohen and Kishik for ‘Levanon”, which in Hebrew means Lebanon.