Nurit Shimon was an Israeli Mista'arvim staffer and undercover operative.
Biography[]
Nurit Shimon was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and she joined the Mista'arvim counter-terrorism unit as a staffer. She developed a romantic relationship with Mista'arvim commander Mickey Moreno, and, during the hunt for Hamas arch-terrorist Taufiq Hammed in 2015, she volunteered to take on undercover work by spying on the Palestinian doctor Shirin al-Abed in Ramallah. Shimon failed in her attempt to steal Shirin's phone at the changing room of a public pool, but Doron Kabilio, pretending to be her brother (and having previously met al-Abed while pretending to be a patient at her hospital, where Taufiq had once been held), managed to trade numbers with Shirin with the ostensible goal of dating her. Shimon would take on additional undercover assignments, donning a hijab to infiltrate Palestinian society and working with her colleagues to track down Hammed. She was uncomfortable with her teammates' use of torture against the civilian Sheikh Awadalla to obtain Hammed's location, but Avihai Konforty said that the team had "attack dog" instincts, and that Shimon would only be a threat to the rest of the team if she could not bring herself to carry out her mission.
In 2018, Moreno was killed by the Hamas terrorist Abu Seif al-Makdasi, and an aggrieved Nurit retired from the service and became engaged to a civilian. However, she occasionally returned to her unit in times of need, including an operation in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping of Yaara Zarhi and Elad Banali in 2020. Her teammate Sagi Tzur, with whom she had previously enjoyed an informal relationship, persuaded her to call off her engagement, and they married in 2023.
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