Bus 300 affair
Based on Wikipedia: Bus 300 affair
In 1996, a retiring Israeli intelligence officer sat down for an interview with a daily newspaper and calmly described how he had murdered two men with rocks and iron bars. "I smashed their skulls," Ehud Yatom told Yediot Aharonot. "I'm proud of everything I've done." Seven years later, he was elected to the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
This is the story of the Bus 300 affair—a scandal that exposed how Israel's domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, operated above the law, lied systematically in court, and implicated an innocent general in murders its own operatives committed. It is also a story about what happens when national security becomes a blanket justification for any action, and when those who cover up crimes advance while those who expose them are forgotten.
The Hijacking
On the evening of April 12, 1984, four young Palestinians from the Gaza Strip boarded a routine intercity bus in the coastal city of Ashdod. They paid for their tickets like any other passengers. The bus, operating on route number 300, was traveling from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon with forty-one people aboard.
Shortly after 7:30 in the evening, the four men revealed their weapons—knives and a suitcase they claimed contained anti-tank rounds—and took control of the bus. They forced the driver to change direction, heading toward the Egyptian border.
The hijackers made demands that would prove impossible: the release of five hundred Arab prisoners from Israeli jails, and safe passage to Egypt. But almost immediately, cracks appeared in their operation. They released a pregnant passenger south of Ashdod. She hitchhiked to a gas station and called the authorities. The element of surprise was gone.
Israeli military forces gave chase. The bus, racing at 120 kilometers per hour, smashed through two hastily erected roadblocks before soldiers shot out its tires near a Palestinian refugee camp called Deir el-Balah. The bus ground to a halt just ten miles from the Egyptian border.
A Gathering of Power
What happened next would become the subject of a decade of lies, investigations, and cover-ups.
As the standoff began, an extraordinary collection of powerful figures converged on the scene. The Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Moshe Levi, arrived. The Minister of Defense, Moshe Arens, came to observe. And critically, the director of the Shin Bet—Israel's equivalent of the FBI or Britain's MI5—Avraham Shalom, positioned himself at the site.
The Shin Bet, formally known as the Israel Security Agency, is responsible for internal security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. Unlike external intelligence agencies that operate abroad, the Shin Bet works within Israel and the occupied territories. Its director reports directly to the Prime Minister, and its operations are shrouded in secrecy.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai was given command of the rescue operation. Throughout the night, negotiators engaged with the hijackers while commandos from Sayeret Matkal—Israel's elite special forces unit, comparable to the British SAS or American Delta Force—prepared to storm the bus.
Shin Bet operatives at the scene quickly reached a troubling conclusion. The hijackers were amateurs. One agent later remarked that "it's a bit ridiculous to call this a hostage-bargaining terrorist attack." The four young men did not pose the threat they claimed.
The Assault
At around seven in the morning on April 13, the decision was made to end the standoff by force. Commandos led by Doron Kempel stormed the bus, firing through the windows at the hijackers.
Two of the four Palestinians died in the assault. The other two were captured alive.
But there was a terrible cost among the hostages. A nineteen-year-old female soldier named Irit Portuguez was killed—not by the hijackers, but by Israeli gunfire during the rescue. Seven other passengers were wounded.
Here is where the story most people heard ended. Initial reports, filtered through Israel's military censor, stated that all four hijackers had been killed during the assault. Case closed. A successful counterterrorism operation, despite the tragic loss of one hostage.
This version of events was a lie.
What Actually Happened
The two surviving hijackers were bound and dragged to a nearby field. A crowd gathered around them. People beat them.
Then Avraham Shalom, the director of the Shin Bet, approached the bound prisoners along with his chief of operations, Ehud Yatom. Before Shalom left the scene, he gave Yatom an order.
Kill them.
Yatom and several other Shin Bet operatives loaded the two men into a vehicle and drove them to an isolated location. There, away from cameras and witnesses, they beat the prisoners to death with rocks and iron bars.
The Photograph
The cover-up might have worked. Israel's military censor had broad powers to suppress information deemed harmful to national security, and the initial blackout held. News organizations in Israel and around the world reported the official story: four hijackers killed in the rescue.
Three days later, everything began to unravel.
The Israeli newspaper Hadashot—a relatively new publication that had not been absorbed into the cozy relationship between established media and the security establishment—cited a report from The New York Times stating that two hijackers had been captured alive. By quoting a foreign source, Hadashot technically bypassed the military censor's domestic prohibitions.
Then came the photograph.
Photographer Alex Levac had been at the scene. He captured an image that made the cover-up impossible: one of the hijackers, clearly alive and fully conscious, being led away from the bus in handcuffs. Hadashot published this photograph on its front page.
The image showed what the government denied—that at least one hijacker had survived the assault. Yet all four were dead. The public could do the arithmetic.
The Investigation That Wasn't
Public pressure forced the government to act, or at least to appear to act. Defense Minister Moshe Arens established a committee of inquiry headed by Reserve General Meir Zorea.
Hadashot reported on this committee's existence—information that had been shared with Israel's major newspaper editors on condition that they keep it secret. But Hadashot wasn't part of this "Editors Committee," an informal arrangement between mainstream media and the government that critics saw as institutionalized complicity.
The punishment was swift and revealing of priorities. Hadashot was ordered to stop publishing for four days. This sanction hadn't been applied to a Jewish publication in over fifteen years. The crime wasn't printing false information—it was printing true information that embarrassed the security establishment.
The Zorea report, delivered in secret to a parliamentary committee in late May 1984, reportedly "stunned the security establishment." Its findings were not made public.
The Wrong Man on Trial
In 1985, charges were finally brought. But not against the Shin Bet operatives who had committed the murders.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai—the military commander of the rescue operation—was put on trial along with eleven others. The accusation: they had beaten and kicked the prisoners to death. Witnesses testified that they saw the General striking the prisoners with his pistol.
Mordechai was acquitted. The charges against the others were dropped.
It would later emerge that the Shin Bet had deliberately implicated Mordechai while concealing that their own director had ordered the executions. The intelligence agency had manufactured false evidence, coordinated witness testimony, and allowed an innocent man to stand trial for murders committed by its own operatives.
The Whistleblowers
The truth finally surfaced in spring 1986, from an unlikely source: three senior Shin Bet officials who could no longer stomach the cover-up.
Reuven Hazak, the deputy chief of the Shin Bet, along with officials Rafi Malka and Peleg Raday, requested a meeting with Prime Minister Shimon Peres. They told him what had really happened. Their superior, Avraham Shalom, had ordered the murders. The Shin Bet had coordinated false testimony to frame General Mordechai. The entire trial had been a charade.
Peres refused to act on this information.
The three officials were fired from the Shin Bet.
But they didn't stop. They took their evidence to Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, who launched a criminal investigation into the senior Shin Bet officials responsible for the cover-up.
The System Fights Back
What followed demonstrated how thoroughly the security establishment could protect its own.
Attorney General Zamir was forced to resign in May 1986. The official justification accused him of "disregarding national security" by pursuing his investigation. The real crime was refusing to let powerful men escape accountability for murder.
His replacement was Yosef Harish, described at the time as "a little-known judge." Within weeks of taking office, Harish faced a decision that would define how Israel handled crimes committed in the name of security.
President Chaim Herzog issued blanket pardons to Avraham Shalom and four other Shin Bet officers—before any charges had even been formally laid. This was a preemptive pardon for unspecified crimes, a legal maneuver designed to ensure that no trial would ever examine what had happened.
The Supreme Court Appeal
The pardons were challenged in Israel's Supreme Court. During the proceedings, documents emerged in which Shalom made a remarkable claim: all his actions had been "authorized and approved."
This was an implicit accusation against the Prime Minister at the time of the killings—Yitzhak Shamir. If Shalom was telling the truth, the order to execute prisoners had been sanctioned at the highest levels of Israeli government.
On August 6, 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the pardons. Attorney General Harish promised there would still be an investigation.
The Landau Commission
The scandal did produce one lasting consequence: the establishment of the Landau Commission to investigate Shin Bet procedures.
What the commission discovered went far beyond the Bus 300 affair. It found that Shin Bet members routinely committed perjury in court—lying under oath as standard operating procedure. The agency that was supposed to protect Israeli law had been systematically subverting it.
The commission also documented the Shin Bet's routine use of physical force during interrogations. This finding led to formal guidelines on interrogation methods, though critics argued these guidelines merely legitimized practices that should have been banned outright.
The Aftermath
The affair damaged the Shin Bet's reputation and public image in Israel. It exposed how military censorship had been used not to protect genuine security interests but to cover up crimes. It revealed an intelligence agency that considered itself above the law, willing to murder prisoners, frame innocent officers, and lie systematically to courts and the public.
And yet.
According to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, the people who exposed the scandal—the three Shin Bet officials who risked their careers to tell the truth—were never honored for their courage. Those who participated in the cover-up, by contrast, went on to prestigious careers.
Ehud Yatom, the man who admitted to crushing the skulls of two bound prisoners, served in the Knesset from 2003 to 2006. In his 1996 interview, he showed no remorse. "Only clean, moral hands in Shin Bet can do what is needed in a democratic state," he said—apparently without irony.
The Larger Pattern
The Bus 300 affair raises uncomfortable questions that extend far beyond one incident in 1984.
How many other extrajudicial killings occurred that were never photographed? If the Shin Bet routinely committed perjury, as the Landau Commission found, how many other trials were corrupted by manufactured evidence? If an attorney general could be forced from office for investigating security service crimes, what kind of accountability was possible?
The affair also illuminates a tension that exists in every democracy that faces security threats. Intelligence agencies argue they need secrecy to operate effectively. But secrecy without accountability creates the conditions for abuse. When powerful men know their actions will never be scrutinized, some will commit acts they would never risk in daylight.
The Bus 300 affair became public only through an unusual confluence: a photographer in the right place, a newspaper willing to defy the censor, three officials willing to sacrifice their careers, and an attorney general willing to lose his job rather than abandon an investigation. Remove any of these elements, and the official story—four hijackers killed in a rescue operation—would have remained the only story.
Memory and Justice
The incident has been dramatized several times for Israeli audiences. Director Uri Barbash created a mini-series in 1997 focusing on the legal battle between the attorney general and the Shin Bet. A 2011 documentary by Gidi Weitz aired to strong reviews and significant public interest. The affair was also referenced in "The Gatekeepers," a documentary featuring interviews with six former Shin Bet directors.
These cultural works ensure that the affair isn't forgotten. But remembering is not the same as accountability. No one served prison time for the murders. No one was punished for the perjury or the cover-up. The presidential pardons remain in force.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who sanctioned the assault and was present at the scene, defended the operation even after the truth emerged. "It was a long and difficult night," he said, "and we followed the policy that has been traditionally laid down by Israel that we do not give in to terrorist demands."
He did not address what happened after the operation ended—when two bound prisoners were driven to an isolated location and beaten to death by men who faced no consequences for their actions.
Within hours of the hijacking's end, before any investigation, before any questions were asked, Israeli forces demolished the homes of the four hijackers' families. This collective punishment, applied before guilt was even established, offers its own commentary on the relationship between security and justice in the territories Israel controlled.
The Question That Remains
Every democracy that faces terrorism must answer a fundamental question: Does security justify abandoning the principles that make a society worth defending?
The men who hijacked Bus 300 committed a crime. They terrorized innocent passengers. They might have killed hostages. No reasonable person would argue they deserved sympathy.
But they were captured. They were bound. They were helpless. And they were murdered by agents of the state who then lied about it, framed an innocent man, forced out an attorney general who wouldn't stop investigating, and received presidential pardons before charges could be filed.
The Bus 300 affair is not ultimately about four hijackers from Gaza. It is about what happens when a security establishment operates without accountability, when covering up crimes is treated as patriotism, and when the people who tell the truth are punished while the people who lie advance.
Ehud Yatom summarized one view in his 1996 interview. He expressed no regret for crushing the skulls of two bound men. He was proud of everything he had done. And voters sent him to parliament.
That, perhaps more than the murders themselves, is the lasting legacy of the Bus 300 affair.