French-German artist Charles Duvall was a darling of Cairo’s high society, a bohemian character who styled himself as 'Charduval'. He was a tall young man with a cigarette dangling permanently from his lips. He relocated from Paris to Cairo in 1950 after declaring his love for the land of the Nile. Local Egyptian art critics gushed about his work, which they felt was strongly influenced by Picasso, displaying a modern abstract style with Oriental themes. Charduval was honored with a November exhibition of his work at the national Cairo Museum of Modern Art, which even caught the attention of art lover and the King of Egypt, Farouk I. The Egyptian Minister of Culture was such a fan of his artistry that he bought two Charduval paintings for his personal collection. It was an impressive debut for a young artist, made even more remarkable by Charduval’s real identity: the ‘artist’ was Mossad spymaster Shlomo Cohen-Abravanel, posing as a painter while running an Egyptian spy network for the Zionist State. Cohen-Abravanel operated networks of agents in Egypt and recruited new assets throughout the Arab world. He collected information about Nazi war criminals who had taken refuge in the Middle East, and he reported to his Mossad superiors on the initial attempts of German rocket scientists to sell their services to Arab armies. Shlomo Cohen-Abravanel was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1921, one of four sons. With the rise of the Nazi party his family moved to France and later Palestine in 1935 where he worked as a graphic artist and served in the Haganah. WWII’s end allowed Cohen-Abravanel to return to France in 1947 to study art, but the Haganah recruited him for Operation Aliyah B, based out of Marseilles. His first job for the covert secret services was to use his artistic talents forging passports and travel visa documents used by Jewish refugees smuggled into Palestine in violation of anti-Jewish British Mandate immigration limitations. When Cohen-Abravanel returned to Israel after his stint as an undercover artist in Egypt in 1952, he established the Mossad unit to find and kill escaped Nazis. He was reportedly involved in the search and capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, a German SS officer and the focus of Operation Finale. Shlomo Cohen-Abravanel had obtained a crucial lead in the operation: the Eichmann family's address in Buenos Aires Argentina. Years later, Eichmann was hanged by Israel for his part in the Holocaust and extermination of Jews. In 1960, he was appointed the first commander of the "Amal" unit in the Mossad, a special unit established to combat manifestations of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism around the world. He was said to be a major figure in the Middle East, Europe, and South America, ultimately serving as Mossad’s deputy chief. After taking a command role in Mossad, Cohen-Abravanel also designed the agency’s emblem. At its center is a seven-branch menorah and a seal that bore a legend: "For by subterfuge you will make war." This was later changed to: "Where there is no subterfuge - the nation falls, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety. Shlomo Cohen-Abravanel died on July 4th 1981 at age 60. His cause of death wasn't publicly revealed. However, his name and talent lives on. Cohen-Abravanel apparently spent his spare time in the 1948 War of Independence between his undercover work for the Haganah, illustrating this beautiful edition of the Hagadah.  This rare Hebrew/English edition titled 'Hagadah Eretz-Yisraelit l'Pesach' was published by Sinai in Tel Aviv, at the beginning of the State of Israel. This treasure contains some of Cohen-Abravanel's illustrations highlighting his Zionist pioneering ethos of Jewish self-defense, including photographs of the building of the Yishuv. 7.25 x 4in; 50 Pages, In Excellent Condition