Country
Israel
Three principal services — Mossad (foreign), Shin Bet (domestic), and Aman (military) — reporting directly to the Prime Minister.
The Israeli intelligence community is built around three principal services. The Mossad (HaMossad le-Modiʿin u-le-Tafkidim Meyuḥadim — "Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations") handles foreign human intelligence, covert action, and counter-terrorism abroad. The Shin Bet (Shabak) is the domestic security service. Aman, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, is the largest of the three by personnel and runs signals intelligence through Unit 8200.
The services have an unusually direct reporting relationship to the Prime Minister and are accountable through the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee rather than a dedicated intelligence committee. Israel's services have been credited with — and have publicly acknowledged — operations of a kind few other democratic services admit to, including targeted assassinations and sustained covert action against state-level adversary nuclear and missile programmes.
Israel Security Agency
Israel's domestic security service, responsible for counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, and the protection of Israeli officials and infrastructure inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.
Military Intelligence Directorate
Israel's military-intelligence directorate, the largest of the three principal Israeli intelligence services, with primary responsibility for military intelligence and for signals intelligence through Unit 8200.
Mossad
Israel's foreign intelligence service — formally the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations — reporting directly to the Prime Minister and responsible for foreign HUMINT, covert action, and counter-terrorism abroad.
How to read a country page
This is the institutional landscape of Israel's intelligence apparatus as it is documented in the public record. Each card above links through to a full agency profile — the service's founding date, statutory basis, jurisdiction, parent ministry, headquarters, official channels, and a structured account of role, history, and notable operations footnoted to primary sources. The agencies on this page may overlap institutionally (a foreign-intelligence service and a signals-intelligence service often share missions and personnel) and may operate against one another in counter-intelligence terms; the country page does not impose a hierarchy among them, only an inventory.
If a particular operation or scandal is what you are looking for rather than the institutional background, see the Dossiers — long-form pieces that cross agencies and countries. The methodology page documents how operations are categorised as confirmed, alleged, or disputed, and what the public record can and cannot tell us. The Lexicon defines the terms that recur across these pages — HUMINT, SIGINT, covert action, plausible deniability, station, asset, finding.
Coverage here grows as new declassifications expand what can responsibly be said about services that remain partly closed. Some agencies have full reference entries; others are stub entries pending the full treatment. Stubs are kept on the index so navigation between related services is preserved while the detailed text is written.