Eli Zeira

Eli Zeira
Zeira in February 1973
Native name	אלי זעירא
Born	(1928-04-04) 4 April 1928 Haifa, Palestine, United Kingdom
Allegiance	Israel
Service / branch	Israel Defense Forces
Years of service	1946–1974
Rank	Major General
Commands	Director of Aman

Eli Zeira (Hebrew: אלי זעירא) (born 4 April 1928) is a former major general in the Israel Defense Forces. He was director of Aman, Israel's military intelligence, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He is most remembered for his ill-conceived prewar assessment that Egypt and Syria would not attack (also known as "The Concept"), despite intelligence to the contrary.

The postwar Agranat Commission, set to investigate the reasons for the costly war, found Zeira to be negligent of his duty, and he resigned.

In 2004, former Mossad Director-General Zvi Zamir accused Zeira of leaking the identity of Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian billionaire who served as a Mossad informant. The State Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation, which proved inconclusive and was closed in 2012.

Biography and military career

Eli Zeira was born in Haifa. He was the son of Shlomo Zeira (Grossman), an electrical engineer, and Ada (née Halperin), a homemaker and daughter of Rabbi Moshe Eliyahu Halperin, the Chief Rabbi of Lodz and a member of the Polish Parliament during the Second Polish Republic. He completed his primary and secondary education at the Reali School in Haifa. In 1946, he joined the Palmach, was part of the Beit HaShita Training Group, and served as a platoon and company commander in the First Battalion of the Yiftach Brigade during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After the war, he became the first IDF officer to be sent for studies at the U.S. Army’s Infantry Company Commanders School. Upon his return to Israel, he completed a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Statistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From 1954 to 1955, he served as the Chief of Staff’s aide under Moshe Dayan. He then served as a battalion commander in the Givati Brigade. During the Sinai Campaign, he was the Head of the Operations Branch in the General Staff. Subsequently, he was sent to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in the United States. In 1960, he was appointed commander of the Paratroopers Brigade, and two and a half years later, he became head of the Operations Division in the General Staff.

In 1963, he transferred to the Intelligence Directorate (Aman) and headed the Collection Department. In January 1970, he was appointed IDF Military Attaché in the United States and Canada and was promoted to the rank of Major General. In September 1972, he returned to Israel, and in October, he was appointed head of Aman.

He resides in the Tzahala neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Maj. Gen. Giora Romm was his cousin.

Yom Kippur War

Responsibility for an erroneous intelligence assessment

On October 1, 1973, an alert was declared in the armies of Egypt and Syria. Due to a flawed intelligence assessment based on the "concept" developed in the IDF—that Egypt would not attack as long as Israel maintained air superiority—and due to poor judgment by Israel's top command fed by a calming intelligence estimate, only limited actions were taken by the IDF. There was no full reserve mobilization, and frontline forces were not properly positioned. An intelligence report issued by Aman on the morning of October 5 stated that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were in a state of war preparedness, yet Aman's assessment remained that war was "of low probability." In a meeting of the IDF General Staff held that day, Zeira stated that war was "of low probability, even lower than low."

In the early morning hours of October 6 (Yom Kippur), after a war warning was conveyed by Mossad Chief Zvi Zamir, following his meeting with Ashraf Marwan a few hours earlier, the Chief of Staff, David Elazar, was convinced that war would break out that day. However, the head of Aman, Eli Zeira, and the Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, continued to believe that war would not erupt.

Zeira is widely regarded as primarily responsible for the surprise that struck the IDF at the start of the Yom Kippur War, both due to errors in judgment and for misleading the Chief of Staff and Defense Minister in the "Special Means" affair. Due to his role in this failure, the Agranat Commission recommended his removal from the head of Aman. The commission left a deep imprint on Israel’s collective memory, identifying the war foremost as an intelligence failure centered on Aman's concept. The Agranat Commission did not recommend Zeira’s discharge from the IDF, and according to him, he was offered a different position as a Major General. However, Zeira opted to study at Stanford University for a year, after which he ended his IDF service.

He published his version of the events leading up to the Yom Kippur War in the book Yom Kippur War – Myth versus Reality (Yediot Aharonot, 1993). This edition, approved by the Military Censor, mentioned the "high-ranking Egyptian source" who warned of the war without revealing his name. A second edition, published in 2004, was titled Myth vs. Reality – Yom Kippur War: Failures and Lessons. In this book, Zeira made considerable efforts to clear his name, blaming others for the intelligence failure. Among other claims, Zeira argued that the high-ranking Egyptian source activated by the Mossad was a double agent (opinions vary on the validity of this claim) who deceived Israel. The book also criticized the conduct of the Agranat Commission. Zeira further claimed that Prime Minister Golda Meir withheld information from the Agranat Commission, including her private meeting with King Hussein of Jordan ten days before Yom Kippur, during which he sought to warn her of the planned war. According to Zvi Zamir, this accusation is false, and Golda did testify before the Agranat Commission about her meeting with King Hussein, which the commission agreed to keep confidential.

Failure to disseminate the war plans of Egypt and Syria

Detailed war plans of Egypt and Syria were in Aman’s possession months before the war and were distributed to high-level officials, but regional commanders, for example, were unaware of these plans. The Agranat Commission criticized Aman for not preparing the army for war in accordance with these plans:

"Had Aman correctly perceived the unprecedented enemy troop concentrations against the backdrop of the enemy plans in our possession and instilled this awareness at the highest command levels, proper preparations could have been made for the future."

Maj. Gen. Zeira

The criminal case regarding his role in the Ashraf Marwan Affair

In 2004, the former head of the Mossad during the Yom Kippur War, Zvi Zamir, made a serious allegation that Zeira, years after the war, had exposed the identity of Israel's highest-ranking source in Egypt at the time, causing significant harm to Israel's ability to recruit agents (in 2023, the Mossad confirmed that the agent in question was Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser). Zamir submitted his complaint to the Attorney General to initiate an investigation on the matter. Zamir was not alone in his accusation; two senior officers who served in Aman under Zeira's command, Amos Gilboa and Yosef Langotsky, also signed the complaint. The investigation was requested "for the purpose of drawing conclusions and preventing such disclosures in the future." Uri Bar-Joseph, a researcher on the Yom Kippur War, wrote:

"The head of Aman during the war, Eli Zeira, has long since become a serial revealer of the most sensitive intelligence secrets entrusted to him, to unauthorized individuals within and outside Israel" (Haaretz, November 17, 2004).

Retired judge Theodore Or, appointed as arbitrator in this matter, accepted Zamir's version on March 27, 2007, concluding that Zeira leaked information to four newspapers and exposed the identity of Ashraf Marwan. He also ordered Zeira to compensate Zamir and cover arbitration costs. In his decision, Or wrote:

"Zeira had an interest in revealing the agent’s identity to try to substantiate his theory that he was a double agent working for Egypt. Through this theory, he hoped to shift some of the responsibility for the failure onto Mossad, which had recruited the agent."

In his defense, Zeira claimed that he had not mentioned Marwan’s name before 2004. Marwan’s name was exposed in the Egyptian press in 2002. This publication in Egypt was cited in the global press, and later also in Israel, and Zeira relied on these publications when he revealed Marwan’s name in 2004, in the second edition of his book.

In July 2012, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decided to close the case. One of his reasons was, "He is now about 84 years old, and he has made a considerable contribution in the fight for the establishment of the state and in ensuring its security."

Further reading

• Yoel Ben-Porat (who was the commander of the Central Collection Unit during the war), Naila – The Story of the Yom Kippur War Surprise, Yediot Aharonot, 1991.
• Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Who Fell Asleep – The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources, Zmora-Bitan, 2001.
• Eli Zeira, Yom Kippur War: Myth versus Reality, 2nd Edition, Tel Aviv, Yediot Aharonot, 2004.
• Uri Bar-Joseph, The Angel: Ashraf Marwan, Mossad and the Yom Kippur Surprise, Zmora-Bitan, 2010.
• Zvi Zamir and Efrat Mas, With Eyes Wide Open – The Mossad Chief Warns: Is Israel Listening?, Or Yehuda, Kinneret, Zmora, Dvir, 2011, pp. 165–209, Chapter: "On Blindness," edited by Shahar Alterman.