Ibrahim Shaheen and Inshirah Moussa

Ibrahim Shaheen (Shahin) was a Palestinian born in Jerusalem.[1] When Israel was established in 1948, his family was among the many Palestinians who fled to Egypt, where Ibrahim eventually built a new life.[1] It was in Egypt that he met Inshirah Moussa, an Egyptian native, and the two married.[1] By the time of the 1967 Six-Day War, the couple was living and working in el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, while their three sons — Nabil, Muhammad, and Adel — remained in Cairo.[1]

When Israel captured el-Arish during the Six-Day War, Micah Kobi — an intelligence officer serving with IDF Intelligence Branch Unit 504 — arrived in the occupied city to seek potential agents among the Egyptians who had remained.[1] After interviewing Ibrahim, Kobi recruited him; Ibrahim reportedly declared, "I will help you with anything you want, I love Israel."[1]

Ibrahim and Inshirah subsequently brought their three sons from Cairo, and all five family members underwent training in a secret apartment in Givatayim, near Tel Aviv, before returning to Egypt.[1] The network was assigned the codename "The Sinyori Network," and its handler — identified in the documentary only as "Abu Yaakov" — later acknowledged that involving the children had been a significant security error.[1] Kobi stated that he had personally opposed their inclusion. Abu Yaakov summarized the concern bluntly: "Children are children. They chatter, they speak, they do things, they tell friends."[1]

Over roughly seven years, the family cultivated connections with senior Egyptian officials, including security figures, and supplied Israel with a range of intelligence.[1] Their reporting covered military training exercises, air-force and navy drills, photographs of military sites, and communications transmitted in Morse code or written in invisible ink.[1] Kobi also credited the network with reporting the departure of Russian families from Egypt — a signal he linked to the departure of Soviet diplomats before the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.[1] Much of the intelligence the family provided remains classified.[1]

Egyptian authorities uncovered the network in 1974. Their son Nabil (later known as Yossi) recalled sitting on the family's porch in Cairo when a group of men seized his father and forced him into a car.[1] Acting quickly, Yossi disposed of the spy materials kept at home.[1] He later recounted being held in a completely dark room and beaten during his time in prison.[1]

Ibrahim and Inshirah were tried and sentenced to death.[1] Their three sons each received five-year prison sentences.[1]

Following the Camp David Accords, Inshirah received a presidential amnesty, but Ibrahim was executed by hanging.[1] Inshirah then fled to Israel with her three sons, and the family settled in Bat Yam.[1]

Inshirah and her three sons converted to Judaism and adopted the surname Ben-David.[1] Inshirah took the Hebrew name Dina, Nabil became Yossi, and the other two sons became Haim and Rafi.[1] The case was cleared for publication in Israel in 1989, after the family had settled there.[1] Inshirah, known by then as Dina, died in 2021; Haim and Rafi had also died by the time the report was published.[1] Yossi Ben-David, formerly Nabil, was described as the only surviving member of the original family, and said he had avoided speaking about the story for most of his life.[1]

The family's story reached a wider audience through a documentary that also featured their grandson Daniel Ben-David, who grew up in what he described as a Jewish Israeli family and learned only as an adult that his family's background was Palestinian-Egyptian.[1] He stated: "I am Israeli and Jewish and nothing will change that."[1]

The available account of the Shaheen-Moussa network rests primarily on a single news report about a documentary that includes interviews with family members and former intelligence personnel.[1] Because much of the intelligence the family supplied remains classified, and because the espionage, arrest, sentencing, and execution touch on sensitive aspects of Egypt-Israel relations, independent verification of many details is limited.[1] The family surname also appears in two forms — "Shaheen" and "Shahin" — though both refer to the same family.[1]