Inside the Secret Life of Israeli Special Forces in the Fictional Thriller, Out of the Far North

Posted on Sep 07, 2023 Topic : Fiction, Men's Christian Living, Prophecy, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn

OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, SYRIA—OCTOBER 4, 2022—02:10 (2:10 AM) EEST

CARL, Lead. We’re through the checkpoint,” Nir Tavor informed his ops center. “How’s the road look to target?”

“Traffic stop fifteen kilometers ahead,” replied Liora Regev, one of CARL’s analysts. CARL was Nir’s team of odd specialists back at Mossad headquarters. The acronym itself stood for absolutely nothing, an inside joke amongst the small group of millennials. “Appears routine. Otherwise, clear.”

Turning toward the driver, Nir said, “Nice work with the guard.” “He was just a clueless kid. Easily controlled,” Alif chuckled. “I could have had him doing pushups on the street if we had the time.”

Nir laughed, figuring he probably could. Alif was a member of the HUMINT-gathering Unit 504, who were masters of human intelligence collection, interrogation, and PSYOP. When Nir was a kid, he and his friends used to talk about the shadowy unit, but always with hushed voices. Formed soon after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it is one of three divisions of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate—and, by far, its most secretive. Recently, he read an article in which one of the unit’s officers said that if you want to understand the activities of Unit 504, you should go to a theater and watch a thriller double feature. Only then will you scratch the surface of the work they do.

Reading those words had sent a little twinge through Nir. As he had approached the end of his mandatory military service and begun weighing the options for his future, he had considered applying for Unit 504. He wanted action in his life. He wanted to make a difference. But living a secret life for years at a time in an enemy country had seemed exhausting to him. Many of the undercover agents that 504 had deployed around the world, and particularly in the Middle East, reminded Nir of Cold War moles deeply hidden by their governments on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. There is the loud war that Israel fights with rockets and fighter jets, then there is the larger quiet war. It is this silent war that Unit 504 fights.

Except for nights like tonight.