Ex-spy among Israeli ex-intelligence agents in Ireland

An ex-spy and a special forces commander who had a “classified” role at the Israeli prime minister’s office are among the more than 20 Israelis living in Ireland with links to their state’s intelligence services. 

A senior policy specialist at X, formerly Twitter, in Dublin served as an IDF intelligence commander for three years, later advising “the prime minister on… national security and foreign affairs”.

One is a self-described “secret agent” turned senior cybersecurity expert based in Dublin who says she is most “proud of (her) contribution to intelligence collection during the 2003 Iraq war” while serving as an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officer.

‘Trained secret agent’  

The Ditch has identified 21 Israelis based in Ireland who have worked in intelligence roles for Israel. Two other Israelis based in Ireland have worked in senior security positions for the state’s authorities. 

One of those identified is the vice president of a cybersecurity company who describes herself as a “trained secret agent” in her LinkedIn profile. She has lived in Ireland for almost a decade and up until 2022 worked in a senior role at Google’s Dublin office. 

According to her profile page, she served as a commanding officer (lieutenant) in the Israel Defense Forces intelligence corps from 1998 to 2003. From 2003 to 2005 she worked as an intelligence officer in the Israeli prime minister’s office. 

After a three-year stint as a broadcaster for Tel Aviv Radio in 2008 she returned to an intelligence role with the IDF’s Unit 8200  – “probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world” – where she remained until 2010. 

In September 2014 more than 30 IDF reservists issued a public letter outlining wrongdoing within Unit 8200. Intelligence gathered by Unit 8200, the letter read, "is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself". 

The Ditch has discovered another six ex-Unit 8200 operatives working in Ireland, including one who served for four years. 

‘Classified positions’  

Other Israelis in Ireland with security services links include a senior LinkedIn employee who served with the IDF’s Maglan special forces unit from 2005 to 2008. The Dublin-based ex-combat commander worked for the Israeli prime minister’s office from 2010 to 2014 in “classified positions” involving “significant operations”, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

One of the ex-soldier’s senior LinkedIn colleagues, who has lived in Ireland since 2022, previously worked for the Israeli Airport Authority for seven years. From 2013 to 2015 he was head of security at Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion International.

Four months ago, in a post on LinkedIn, he wrote, “Palestinians do not want peace,” adding, “Peace will come when the Palestinians will love their children more than they hate us.” He has further claimed that Israelis are an “indigenous” population in Gaza whose land has been theirs “since the beginning of all times”.

In a post last week he offered Israeli reserve soldiers returning from Gaza free premium LinkedIn subscriptions, worth around €180 a year, to help them “find their next role”.

One of the longest serving and most senior ex-Israeli intelligence officials living in Ireland has worked as a sales manager at Google’s Dublin headquarters since last year. He previously served as a military intelligence captain with the IDF from 2008 to 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Meanwhile a senior employee in X’s policy department in Dublin is a former intelligence and engineering commander with the IDF. After serving for three years she later worked in the Israeli National Security Council where she “advised the prime minister on strategic, policy and legal issues, including national security and foreign affairs” from 2015 to 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Israeli forces have killed more than 30,000 civilians in Gaza since October and have left more than a quarter of its population “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation”, according to the United Nations.