Aharon Cohen and Israel Beer were sentenced to terms of imprisonment for passing information to Soviet diplomats in Israel. Both had been members of Mapam, the Marxist–Zionist pro-Soviet political party. Cohen, who was the party’s Arab affairs expert, often met Soviet diplomats outside the gates of his kibbutz, Sha’ar Ha’amikim. He was accused of ‘unauthorised contacts with foreign agents’ rather than spying and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.