Yossi Melman is the intelligence and security columnist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Dan Raviv is the Washington correspondent for i24News. They are the co-authors of “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars.”
On Sept. 23, 1977, Menachem Begin, the feisty prime minister of Israel elected only four months earlier, convened his security cabinet for a secret meeting. After a short deliberation, a policy titled Decision B/4 was adopted. To prevent leaks, only two copies were typed. The ministers ordered the Mossad, Israel's feared and respected foreign espionage agency, to renew the hunt for Nazi war criminals, “in order to bring them for trial in Israel; and if bringing them for trial will not be possible — to kill them.” The Mossad drafted a list of nine wanted Nazis, with a special focus on Josef Mengele, notorious for his ghoulish medical experiments on Jews in the Auschwitz death camp.