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History’s Juiciest and Intriguing Scandals

Khalid Elhassan January 11, 2021 32 min

Cheryl Crane - Johnny Stompanato — Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl being escorted from jail to juvenile court. Getty Images

7. The Communist Spy Who Rose to the Heights of Israel’s Government

Yisrael Bar, right, seated next to Moshe Dayan. Kadan Auction House

Yisrael Bar (1912 – 1966) was at the heart of a scandal that rocked Israel’s government in the 1960s. An Austrian-born Israeli officer, Bar rose to prominence as an expert on Israeli military history. That secured him a high-ranking position in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which commissioned him to write a book on the Israeli War of Independence. It also won him a place within the inner circle of Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion, whose trusted confidant and advisor he became.

Bar arrived in Palestine in the late 1930s with an impressive martial resume, having graduated from the Austrian military academy, and served as a commissioned officer in the Austrian army. He then went on to fight in the Spanish Civil War with the International Brigades, where he was known by the nom de guerre “Colonel Jose Gregorio”. Between his martial exploits, Bar found the time to get a doctorate in literature from the University of Vienna. That CV was all bunk: the real Yisrael Bar had died years earlier.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.