Yolande Harmer

Yolande Harmer (full name: Yolande Gabbai and then Yolande de-Botton) (1913–1959) (Hebrew name Yolande Har-Mor) ( Hebrew: יולנדה הארמר‎‎) maiden name) was an Israeli intelligence officer who operated in Egypt in 1948. She was recruited due to her connections in elite and royal circles, she has been described as "Israel's Mata Hari". A town square in Jerusalem, 'Yolande Harmer Square', is named after her.

Yolande Gabai (later Harmer and Har-Mor) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Turkish-Jewish mother. She was married three times, the first at the age of 17. Her first husband was called Jacques de Botton. She divorced him after a few years of marriage - having had a son with him, Gilbert de Botton.

Harmer was recruited by Moshe Sharett, secretary of the Jewish Agency political department, when he visited Egypt in 1945 or 1946. They met at a cocktail party. At the time Harmer was working as a journalist and accepted in the highest circles of Egypt society. She was thus able to gather intelligence in King Farouk's court in Cairo. She made many other important contacts including senior editors of Al-Ahram, the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, Tak ed-Din as-Sulh, the chief assistant of Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, and Mahmoud Mahlouf, son of the Grand Mufti of Cairo.

When the Swedish envoy to Egypt, Widar Bagge, fell in love with her, she swayed him to sympathize with the Zionist struggle for self-determination and the freedom of the Jewish people. Eli Peleg, a Yishuv emissary in Cairo, reported Harmer's success with Bagge: "Several months ago he was indifferent to our cause, but today he is an enthusiastic Zionist." The assassination of Folke Bernadotte in September 1948, however, made Bagge's enthusiasm to cool again.

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