The Strange Case of the Assassin Spy from Cape Town

The world premiere of the documentary about a South African woman who became an Israeli Mossad agent and an assassin took place in Ra’anana, Israel, on Tuesday.

“Sylvia: Tracing Blood” is the story of Cape Town-born Sylvia Rafael, who was, as one review puts it, “a woman with a secret life, comprising triple identities, who went on to become one of Mossad’s most effective agents”. She was born in 1937, grew up in Graaf Reinet, and died in Pretoria in 2005 at age 67.

Even though her mother wasn’t Jewish, but her father was, Rafael moved to Israel in 1963. According to Wikipedia, she was sent to Paris as a freelance journalist with a Canadian passport posing as real-life Canadian photojournalist Patricia Roxburgh. A Jerusalem Post story in 2005, which came out after Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”, referred to her as “Mossad’s legendary blonde femme fatale”.

One of those interviewed in the movie is journalist Jon Swain, who, it was reported this week,was a young reporter in Paris in the 1960s when he had a girlfriend named Sylvia Rafael who was a brilliant and glamorous photojournalist. “Only later did he learn that she was a Mossad assassin in the hit team that gunned down an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway,” the report said.

According to the cover for the book “Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy”, Rafael was known for her “intelligence work trying to locate Ali Hassan Salameh – the leader of Palestine’s Black September organization and the mastermind behind the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Her team’s misidentification of their mark would eventually lead to her arrest and imprisonment for murder and espionage.”

“Rafael was part of a group of Israeli Mossad agents who assassinated a Moroccan-born waiter Ahmed Bouchiki (brother of the renowned musician Chico Bouchikhi), whom they claimed to have mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, in Lillehammer on 21 July 1973. The victim’s pregnant Norwegian wife witnessed the murder,” Wikipedia says. It became known as the Lillehammer Affair.

David Kaplan talks at the premiere about how he came to take part in the movie:

https://youtu.be/Wu68MID1ezs

In a strange twist, Chico Bouchikhi, who is part of the band Gypsy Kings, plays music together with the band for the movie. The original score, which is apparently very moving, is by Helena Grier Rautenbach.

Sylvia was arrested shortly after the Lillehammer Affair and sentenced to five years, which was commuted. She was deported from Norway, but married her defense attorney, and they settled in Norway before moving back to South Africa in 1992. She is buried in Israel.

The movie, by Saxon Logan, which will feature in Cannes this year, crisscrosses the globe to meet people who knew Sylvia. She was part of the Mossad team that went to avenge the killings at the Munich Olympics in 1972 (her part in the Steven Spielberg movie was apparently changed into a man played by Daniel Craig).

“During the course of this riveting human interest story,” says a review on Facebook, “we encounter Sylvia’s brother Bunty; her widower Annaues Schjodt; Chico Bouchikhi – renowned musician, founder of The Gypsy Kings and brother of the man mistakenly killed in Lillehammer – her former lover Sunday Times correspondent Jon Swain and other friends and associates who share their memories of her.”