Aliza Magen, Mossad’s only female deputy director, dies at 88
A key figure in landmark missions by the spy agency, Magen redefined what women could achieve in Israeli intelligence
Stav Levaton is a military reporter for The Times of Israel
Aliza Magen, the first and only woman to serve as deputy director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, died Monday at age 88, the Prime Minister’s Office announced.
Born in 1937 and raised in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, Magen joined the Mossad in 1958 in her early 20s and quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the most influential operatives in the agency’s history.
Her intelligence reports early in her career drew the attention of then-director Isser Harel, who assigned her to high-profile missions — including the international search for Yossele Schumacher, a 10-year-old kidnapped by his ultra-Orthodox grandparents in 1960. Magen successfully persuaded an accomplice to reveal the boy’s location, a breakthrough that helped resolve one of Israel’s most dramatic cases of the time.
Throughout her decades-long career, Magen was involved in hundreds of covert operations, both in Israel and abroad. She was dispatched to Salzburg, Austria, in the 1960s on a mission to recruit a German scientist employed by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime, and later held a post at the Mossad’s station in Germany.
Magen also played a role in Operation Wrath of God, which tracked down and assassinated dozens of Palestinian terrorists linked to the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
In 1997, Magen was appointed deputy director of the Mossad, a position she held under three successive agency chiefs — Shabtai Shavit, Danny Yatom, and Efraim Halevy — until her retirement in 1999.
Her promotion to the top echelons of the Mossad broke gender barriers in one of the world’s most secretive and male-dominated security institutions.
In the PMO’s statement mourning Magen’s death, Mossad Director David Barnea, along with current staff and retirees, praised her as a respected and dedicated trailblazer of the organization whose leadership left a deep and enduring legacy.
“Aliza Magen was one of the pillars of the Mossad, leaving a lasting mark on generations of Mossad employees who were trained according to her legacy and values,” the statement read.
The Times of Israel Community.