Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

When the immediate magnitude of the calamity passed, Levi Eshkol’s government ordered a crash program to provide its navy with a new kind of ship to replace the outdated Eilat . In weeks, designers had come up with a gunboat that would be fast, highly maneuverable, and equipped with electronic countermeasures to provide the precious seconds needed to take evasive action against any future missile attack. An order to build seven of the boats was placed with the Chantiers de Construction Mécanique de Normandie, CCM, shipyard in Cherbourg, France.

While they were being constructed, scientists at Dimona were manufacturing the missiles the boats would carry, together with the sophisticated equipment to be fitted once they arrived in Israel.

Matters progressed uneventfully at Cherbourg until President de Gaulle introduced a total French arms embargo after Israel commandos attacked the Beirut airport on December 26, 1968, and destroyed thirteen parked Lebanese aircraft—a reprisal for a Palestinian attack on an El Al Boeing 707 at the Athens airport two days previously. The embargo meant the gunboats would not be handed over to Israel.

The French response ended a decade-long alliance with Israel. It had been forged during the Algerian revolution, which had finally led to the colony’s independence from France in 1962, and was partly rooted in a common hostility to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. During that time, Mossad had supplied intelligence about the anti-French FLN organization, and France had sold Israel arms and frontline Mirage fighter aircraft.

With the loss of Algeria, de Gaulle had quickly restored France’s traditional links with other Arab countries, and the PLO was allowed to open an office in Paris. The Beirut airport raid was seen by de Gaulle as a very public slight to his demand that Israel should not carry out what the president called “revenge attacks” against its Arab neighbors.

The French arms embargo effectively meant Israel would no longer have sufficient replacement Mirage aircraft to dominate the Middle East’s skies, or be able to effectively defend itself from seaborne attack. Perversely, the embargo came at a time when Israel was grappling with the price of its stunning victory in the Six Day War. In those few days in 1967, it had brought the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under its control. With the land came almost a million Arabs, the great majority imbued with hatred for their conquerors.

For Meir Amit, the problem Israel faced “could not be overstated. Within our borders were thousands of mehabelim —the Hebrew for terrorist—and they had the support of the general Arab population who, at minimum, would give them succor and shelter: my first job was to increase Mossad’s targeting and penetration of all Palestinian organizations.”

Meir Amit was told by Israel’s new prime minister, Golda Meir, to devise a plan to get the completed boats out of France. He would recall: “The first suggestion was we should sail into Cherbourg with sufficient armed sailors and just take the boats and head back for Israel. Moshe Dayan, then minister of defense, sat on that—hard. He correctly pointed out that the international reaction would create huge repercussions and see Israel branded a thief. Whatever we did had to be done legally. We had to come up with a watertight right to sail out of French territorial waters. Once we were on the high seas, it would be a different matter.”

The legality of what was to follow would be in the eyes of the beholder. Despite Dayan’s insistence on the letter of the law being obeyed, what was contemplated was pure and simple trickery.

By November 1969, Meir Amit had the first stage of Operation Noah’s Ark in place. A London-based firm of lawyers had been briefed by Israel’s largest shipping company, Maritime Fruit—which freighted produce around the world—to register a new firm named Starboat, after the Star of David. Its principal shareholder was Mila Brenner, a director of Maritime Fruit. The other shareholders were proxies for Meir Amit. The second part of the operation went equally smoothly. For months Admiral Mordechai Limon, the Israeli navy liaison officer at Cherbourg for the gunboat project, had been discussing compensation with the shipyard for breach of contract; each time the French came close to an agreement, Limon had found a new point to argue. On November 10, he informed the shipyard that Israel was once more ready to discuss the matter.

In Tel Aviv, Mila Brenner had contacted one of the most respected shipping magnates in the world, Ole Martin Siem, based in Oslo. He agreed to join the board of Starboat for the specific purpose of purchasing the gunboats.

Limon, with a sleight of hand worthy of a card player, made his move. On November 11, he met with shipyard officials. He listened to their improved offer of compensation and said he was still not satisfied. The officials were astonished; their new offer was a generous one. While they contemplated what to do next, Limon hurried to Paris. Waiting there was Ole Siem. After the two men met, Limon telephoned the shipyard officials to say he would be in touch with them “in a few days.” Within the hour, Siem was seated in the office of General Louis Bonte, the French government’s arms salesman. Siem said he had heard that there “are some gunboats for sale that can be converted to drill for oil.”

Timing his intervention to perfection, Limon at that moment called Bonte to say he was in Paris and was ready to accept a final offer in compensation. The figure he proposed was the one the Cherbourg shipyard officials had offered. Bonte told Limon he was “in negotiation” and would call back. The general then turned to Siem and revealed the offer Limon had agreed to accept but said it was too high for the government to agree to pay. Siem promptly increased Limon’s offer by 5 percent. Bonte called back Limon and said his offer was most agreeable. Bonte believed he had made a good deal in ridding France of a thorny problem. Israel would get its compensation and France would have made a 5 percent profit.

He only had two questions for Ole Siem. Were the boats going to Norway? Could Siem guarantee they would not be reexported after their oil-exploration activities? Siem gave an unequivocal guarantee on both counts. Bonte accepted that, to avoid press inquiries about the site of the oil fields—a sensitive commercial matter in an industry renowned for its secrecy—the removal of the boats from Cherbourg would be done discreetly. A departure date was set for Christmas Eve, 1969, when Cherbourg would be celebrating the start of the holiday season.

There was still a month to go—and Meir Amit was only too well aware that that was more than enough time for things to go wrong. There would be a need to provide 120 Israeli sailors to crew the boats for the three-thousand-mile voyage from Cherbourg to Haifa. To send that many men at one time would most certainly alert the French security service. Once more the inventive Meir Amit had the answer.

He decided only two sailors at a time would travel together to cities all over Europe before going on to Cherbourg. The sailors were instructed not to stay in the port’s hotels for more than a night before moving to another one. They all traveled on Israeli passports so that, in case they were caught, they could not be charged with possessing forged travel documents. Nevertheless, Meir Amit knew the risks were still high. “It just needed one suspicious French policeman to ask why so many Jews were coming to Cherbourg for Christmas and the whole operation could be blown.”

By December 23, the sailors had all arrived in Cherbourg. Scattered around the town, they listened to the incessant carols; some who had been born and raised in Jerusalem joined in the singing.