Israeli media reports suggest that Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service along with the Mossad, tasked with foreign intelligence, have set up a special unit to track down the Hamas members who organised the deadly October 7 attack that killed more than 1,500 Israelis.

The name chosen for the task force is supposedly NILI — a Hebrew acronym for the Biblical phrase meaning ‘The Eternal One of Israel will not lie’. The unit takes on a symbolic value as well, sharing its name with the NILI espionage network which assisted the British in its fight against the Ottoman Empire in Palestine during the First World War.  

Ahron Bregman, an Israeli political scientist at King’s College London who spent six years in the Israeli army tells France24, NILI’s operations are likely to resemble those of the Mossad during Operation Wrath of God, in which the agency tracked down the terrorists involved in the Munich Olympics massacre, killing them methodically over the span of 20 years. 

Operations like Wrath of God contribute to the almost mythical reputation that Israel’s intelligence agencies, and in particular, the Mossad, have developed since 1948. However, while those agencies have overseen a number of successful operations, they have also been held responsible for some of the country’s most devastating intelligence failures.

Pre-1948

Israel’s intelligence capabilities can be traced all the way back to 1909, long before the official formation of the Israeli state. Hashomer, or the Watchmen, was a group founded by some of the earliest Israeli immigrants into Palestine. An unofficial unit, it was tasked with blending into the local communities and collecting information on potential attacks. Over its 10 years of existence, Hashomer had at most 100 members but its modus operandi — of adopting local customs in order to remain overlooked — was the basis of the current intelligence community.

Some members of Hashomer were recruited by the British during World War I, and organised into a network known as NILI. Operational between 1915 and 1917, NILI counted around 30 members but despite its diminutive size, was rendered greatly effective due to British training. Erez David Maisel, in an interview with Spycast, a YouTube podcast, explains why the formation of the NILI was so seminal. Maisel, who formerly served as Brigadier General and Director of the Israel Defense Forces, states, “the most important thing about the World War I experience is that there suddenly is intelligence capability, although its nascent. It’s very new, it’s very small, it’s very secret but it has some success.”

From 1920 onwards, the Hashomer and NILI were replaced by the Haganah, founded to defend Jewish presence in British Palestine. According to Maisel, the Haganah established intelligence services on a national level but their activities were relatively moderate until 1940, in accordance with the Jewish community policy of self-restraint. However by the end of the Second World War, that restraint was to diminish dramatically.