In May 1960, Rafi Eitan faced a difficult decision: Together with a team of Mossad agents, the spy had prepared to arrest the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in his escape from Argentina. However, shortly before the "Operation Finale", the secret service received the indication that former concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele was in Buenos Aires. What to do? Arrest both? There was no extradition treaty with Argentina at that time, so that if the action succeeded, the Germans would have to be secretly moved out of the country to Israel.

Eitan decided to stay with the original plan: "We were only eleven people and we had our hands full with Eichmann." When we took Eichmann to the house where we kept him hidden until departure, Mossad boss called me He wanted us to arrest Mengele as well, but he was gone now, so we should wait for his return and take him to Israel on the same plane as Eichmann, I refused, I did not want to endanger the Eichmann operation, " he told SPIEGEL in 2008.

Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany helped

"Operation Finale" made Eitan, born in 1926 in Kibbutz En Charod, a living legend. According to concurring reports from Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Jerusalem Post, Eitan passed away on Saturday morning. He was 92 years old.

Already at the age of twelve, Eitan joined the pre-Israeli, Zionist liberation movement Haganah, and after graduating from high school she became its successor, the paramilitary Palmach. During the Second World War, he participated in secret operations to help Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to the then illegal entry into the British protectorate Palestine. In the War of Independence, he served in the Army Intelligence, later in the newly founded Mossad, then as Operations Officer at the Israeli domestic intelligence service Shin Bet.

Netanyahu: "a hero of Israeli intelligence"

In 1978, Eitan was appointed terrorism adviser to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in 1981 he was involved in the planning for the secret destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak. In the scandal surrounding Israel-spying US analyst Jonathan Pollard, for whom Eitan was head of the "Scientific Relations Office," he retired from his intelligence office and became a businessman. He first became head of the state-owned Israel Chemicals Ltd. in the mid-1980s, which was viewed with suspicion by the public. In the nineties he founded numerous construction and agricultural enterprises in Cuba.

Late in life, Eitan returned to politics once more when he was appointed as a minister to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 2006 as chairman of the Gil Pensioner Party. There he represented the interests of Israeli pensioners until 2009. Most recently, Eitan attracted international attention when, in February 2018, he sent a video message to anti-Semitism at an AFD event calling for a halt to "mass Muslim immigration" to Europe. After much criticism, including by the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, Eitan described his message as a mistake.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Rafi Eitan "an Israeli intelligence hero" on Saturday. He described Eitan as a close friend of his family. "No one could match it with his intelligence, wit, and endless devotion to the people of Israel and our country."