Shulamit Kishik-Cohen

Shulamit Kishik-Cohen was born in 1917 in Buenos Aires

Shulamit Kishik-Cohen was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1917. Her family moved to the Land of Israel in 1924 and settled in the Mekor Baruch neighborhood of Jerusalem. She attended the Evelina de Rothschild School.

At 16 she married Yosef Kishik-Cohen, a Lebanese Jewish merchant, and from 1936 lived in the Jewish quarter of Beirut. The couple had 7 children. Her son Itzhak Levanon later served as Israel's ambassador to Egypt.

In Beirut she worked in the Jewish community and built ties with the authorities. From 1947 to 1961 she passed intelligence from Lebanon and Syria to Israel and helped the Mossad bring Jews from Arab countries to Israel. Her Mossad codename was The Pearl.

She was arrested in 1961, tortured and sentenced to death. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 7 years in prison. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, she was freed in a prisoner exchange.

She settled in Jerusalem and lit a torch at the Independence Day ceremony in 2007. She died in Jerusalem in 2017.