Her precise intelligence allowed an elite IDF commando force to infiltrate Beirut by sea and eliminate senior PLO targets within two hours.

By Hezy Laing

Yael Man, born Eileen “Ellie” Steiner in November 1936, transformed from an assimilated Jewish girl raised in Princeton, New Jersey, into one of the most effective clandestine operatives in the history of the Mossad.

Though her physicist father and homemaker mother maintained almost no connection to Judaism or Israel, her personal trajectory shifted dramatically after she studied psychology and computer science at Columbia University.

Driven by an emerging interest in Zionism, she immigrated to Israel in February 1968, working initially as a defense systems analyst.

In early 1971, an acquaintance helped put her in contact with intelligence officials, who quickly noted her sharp analytical mind.

Following consecutive interviews with Caesarea division commander Mike Harari and Mossad Director Zvi Zamir, she was officially recruited under the operational code name Nielsen.

Man’s defining contribution came in preparation for Operation Spring of Youth, a daring targeted strike in Beirut on April 9, 1973.

Posing as an American screenwriter developing a film script about the nineteenth-century British aristocrat Lady Hester Stanhope, she successfully established a deep-cover residence in the heart of Lebanon.

To make her persona flawless, Israeli author Shabtai Teveth explicitly coached her on the distinct daily working habits of a novelist.

Man rented a strategic apartment directly across from two high-rise buildings on Verdun Street, which housed top-tier Palestine Liberation Organization leaders.

Using a custom sawn-off camera, she single-handedly mapped out the exact schedules, guard shifts, light patterns, and vehicles of Kamal Adwan, Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, and Kamal Nasser.

Her precise intelligence allowed an elite IDF commando force to infiltrate Beirut by sea and eliminate the targets within two hours.

Man courageously remained in Beirut for five days after the raid to preserve her cover before slipping away to Brussels.

Upon her return, Zamir and Harari personally presented her to Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Over a distinguished fifteen-year career, Man executed numerous high-risk missions across hostile nations before passing away in August 2021 at eighty-five.