[Jerusalem Post] It was a hot night in June 1951. Summer’s daytime roasting heat had somewhat abated, but it was still hot. Running for one’s life, hoping to escape a country that sought his life, did not help. Heart pounding, the man’s sweat quickly evaporated into the dry desert air.As instructed by Israel’s precursor to today’s intelligence agency, Mossad, the undercover shaliah of Mossad LeAliya Bet crouched behind a berm at the end of the runway. It was almost 1:30 in the morning. Head shaved by a gaoler and with two broken teeth, his body ached from recent blows; his battered face was swollen. Making his way through a swamp to the hiding place, he was covered in mud. After more than two years of work posing under numerous false identities ‐ including Habib, Zaki, Nissim, Salman, Nouri, Noa, Dror ‐ his cover was blown.
A commercial plane full of passengers taxied to its place for takeoff. Pausing to flash its lights, the signal was given. Dashing out, exposed and in the open, Mordechai Ben-Porat raced to the aircraft’s tail where, he was told, a rope would be dangling. He would have to climb to freedom ‐ if it was there, that is ‐ and if the secret police did not appear, if the pilot and crew did not panic, if he had the strength to shimmy up the thin and prickly cord.
Arrested three weeks prior, he had been chained and brutally tortured for information. Subjected to beatings, nakedness, sleeplessness, innuendo and threats, his cell mates ‐ murderers and thieves ‐ were sympathetic. His tormentors were compelled to relent only when a Muslim attorney, Yousif Fattal, convinced a judge to grant him bail, including a little extra for the magistrate.
Within days of being freed, he answered the summons to the equivalent of a small claims court. That judge, infuriated that the defendant, a Jew, had not been disciplined when a drunken bicycle rider hit his car, sent him back to prison. When once again his release was obtained by Fattal, Ben-Porat knew his days were numbered. If he did not get out of the country, his real identity as an Israeli emissary would be revealed. He would be hanged.
While being escorted by an armed warden to Iraqi Secret Police Headquarters, he slipped away in a crowded market. Hidden by friends, he urged Mossad LeAliyah Bet to find a way to get him out of the country.
There was also intelligence to share. While being tortured, Dror (one of his more common pseudonyms) had gathered information instead of revealing it. What he learned would save the lives of the remaining fellow Jews who still lived in a land to which they were sent into exile 2,400 years ago.
In Babylon, now Baghdad, Jewish exiles had obeyed instructions by God through his prophet, Jeremiah: