Israel Matzav

A great quote from Prime Minister Netanyahu

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Golda Meir, Hamas rockets, human shields, Operation Protective Edge

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:45 AM 0 comments

Video: When Israel said no

Labels: David Ben Gurion, Dimona nuclear reactor, Golda Meir, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Levi Eshkol, Menachem Begin, Osirak, settlement freeze, Six Day War, White House

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:29 PM 1 comments

Defense establishment kept Golda Meir in the dark in the lead-up to Yom Kippur War

"At the time that this telegram was sent by you, did the intelligence services or anyone else bother you with anything urgent? Any other information? The problem here is that they [in the report] claim that it is only an exercise."

"...I would like to read to you what the Military Intelligence Directorate received that day: 'We learned that Syria has evacuated Soviet experts, and that planes have begun taking them from Damascus to Moscow. The same sources informed us that even the families of the Soviet diplomats have begun arriving in Moscow from Damascus. The sources added that the Syrians explained the evacuation by saying that Egypt and Syria were planning to wage a war against Israel. For your information."

Meir: "I don't know."

Yadin: "The IDF chief of staff and the defense minister told us that on Friday evening they had not received such a telegram. Did you not get one?"

Meir: "No."

Later in that meeting, the commission discusses certain intelligence information that was not handed over to the Prime Minister's Office.

Meir: "It may be that the Military Intelligence Directorate did not feel obligated to share information with us, but it is very hard for me to understand how it wasn't shared with the chief of staff."

...

"...Until the very last minute we were still trying to follow Military Intelligence's conception, that everything that was happening on the northern and southern fronts was a result of their fear of an attack by us. To try at the last minute through the Americans to tell the Russians, and have the Russians tell the Egyptians that we have no such intention. ... We thought that at the last minute maybe we could still save. ... For some reason based on what Keating told us [Kenneth Keating, who was, for a time, the U.S. ambassador to Israel], it would be at 6 p.m. At one point I said, maybe it was a misprint? Maybe he meant that it would be at 16:00 [4 p.m.]. ... We thought that they would still have time to get the message to the Russians and subsequently to the Egyptians and Syrians, that we are not planning to attack."

...

Agranat: "I am just trying to understand the frame of mind. ... I understand that one consideration, maybe the main one, was that they were afraid of us and therefore we wanted to communicate the message: know that we have no intention of launching an attack. But shouldn't the other consideration have been not that they are afraid of us, but that they want to attack us and they want to take us by surprise? Or was the assessment that there was a 'low likelihood' as Military Intelligence calls it, meaning that it wouldn't happen?"

Meir: "No, because though the Military Intelligence assessment was as it was -- the conception. I am wary of speaking in front of two former chiefs of staff, but I think that the conception was that if the conscription army was on full alert, that means the air force, and additional units were called up and are there to assist -- that is enough force to stave off ..." 

"On the day of October 5, the chief of staff said, and I quote: 'We have taken all the preparatory measures. Over this holiday, the IDF has declared a state of high alert; all vacations have been cancelled on the lines.' ... That means that the conception was that blocking [the enemy] is a conscription army on high alert."

The week prior to the war was critical. On October 1, a Monday, the Egyptian army began the "Tahrir 41" exercise, concealing their preparations for an actual attack. According to Bar Joseph, the Military Intelligence echelon directly subordinate to Zeira, including the head of research Brig. Gen. Aryeh Shalev, collection department director Col. Menachem Digli and Unit 848 commander Ben Porat, demanded that the devices be activated and made operational. But Zeira refused "both because he was afraid of what would happen to them (the listening devices) and because he was convinced that no war would break out."

For example, upon discovering that the Soviet Union was evacuating nationals on the day before the war, Zeira confessed that "in my view, the Soviet thing is the most problematic and serious." But he still concluded by saying "I don't see the Egyptians and the Syrians attacking us."

Col. (res.) Yossi Langotsky, who served as the commander of the Military Intelligence Directorate's operational technology unit (in charge of operating the listening devices) confirms Bar Joseph's sentiments. "I can personally attest to the fact that during the week prior to the war Digli and Ben Porat approached Zeira several times and asked for his authorization to activate the devices, but to no avail. To assuage Zeira's concerns over the safety of the devices, Digli told him that 'after all, it is for emergency situations and times of uncertainty like this that these devices were designed.' There are no words to describe the height of Zeira's arrogance. Despite the terrible implications of a possible surprise attack, he stuck to his misguided conception and avoided activating the devices that were designed precisely to protect against such a surprise," Langotsky says angrily.

On the other hand, the officials to whom Zeira was himself subordinate -- the IDF chief of staff and the defense minister -- were convinced that the assessment indicating a low likelihood of war relied entirely on intelligence collected by the special devices.

"Hanoch Bartov, Elazar's biographer, said that the IDF chief of staff was convinced, up until the start of the war, and even shortly afterward, that Zeira had activated the special means of collection," says Adam Raz, a doctoral student in the Political Science Department of Tel Aviv University, who researched the topic. "Ben Porat recounted a conversation he had with Elazar, in which he said that between October 1 and 6 he had asked the Military Intelligence chief twice if all the sources were being utilized, and the answer was affirmative. Digli has also said in the past that Elazar had told him after the war that 'when I asked Eli (Zeira) if, when he says that there is a low likelihood, he is relying on those sources (the listening devices) as well, and his answer was affirmative.'"

Later, Elazar explained to Ben Porat: "the false information that I received about the activation of the means confused me even more, because I knew what they were capable of. If there was no intelligence of impending war coming from them (the devices), that means that everything is okay. It is now very clear to me that I was not told the truth."

When facing the Agranat commission, Elazar testified that "the incident (failure to activate the listening devices) was not decided by me nor was it brought to my knowledge… I learned only after the war that the […] was not turned on in those days. That is precisely what it was made for -- to give us warning. That was its sole function, and in essence I did not know that it was turned off."

...

Zeira was asked by the Agranat commission why he had decided on his own accord not to use the devices rather than consulting with the chief of staff, while "his superiors were led to mistakenly believe that the topic had been incorporated into his assessments." Zeira's reply was that "it is not my nature to delegate authority upward…I don't bring things that are under my authority to my superiors, usually, and I don't tell them 'I know it is my responsibility, but I am handing off the responsibility to you. You decide.'"

Bar Joseph argues that the decision makers' faith that the devices were operational but providing no indication that a war was imminent carried fateful weight in the decisions that were made. It is the reason they did not rush to deploy the army along the Sinai and Golan Heights fronts and why they did not recruit the necessary reserves units. That faith also painted the rest of the intelligence that came in from the region in a different light. 

"During the week before the war broke out, the decision makers are confident that the listening devices are fully operational. They don't ask if the devices are working but rather what information they are yielding. They say so in their Agranat commission testimonies very clearly, and explain that their confidence that they would receive notice 48 hours in advance relied on them. Zeira knows that they think the devices are working, and for reasons known only to him he does not correct them. That is the most terrible part of this story. In my opinion, it was not a mistake. It was calculated," Bar Joseph says. 

According to Langotsky, "Zeira first gave the green light to activate the devices only on Thursday afternoon, and only for a technical check. The check began overnight between Thursday October 4 and Friday October 5. His instructions were to complete the test and report the findings to him personally at his house no later than 6 a.m. Friday morning, Yom Kippur eve." In other words, when Zeira says to Dayan that it is "totally quiet" in the "chatter on the Egyptian lines" it is, according to Langotsky, at least three hours after the devices were shut off, following a mere technical check. Bar Joseph claims that due to a malfunction, one of the devices continued to work for several hours more, but since it was just a technical check and not full operational eavesdropping, it did not really help.

For many years I have refrained from using the word "failure" in regard to the army's lack of preparedness for that war and the way the country's leaders made decisions during those days. Immediately after I was released from a long hospital stay, where I was treated for a serious war injury, I told the late Menachem Begin what I had seen in battle. He asked me never to use the word "failure" because mothers had lost their children in the war, and we mustn't compound their pain with the term "failure." When I read Meir's Agranat commission testimony, it became clear to me that it was not a failure at all -- it was in fact a true crime.

The writing was on the wall, written in huge red letters, and the irresponsible and shortsighted leaders simply refused to read. The writing is now written in small black letters on gravestones in various military cemeteries.

Meir was never fit to serve as prime minister in the first place. She didn't understand the first thing about the most fundamental, existential issues facing the State of Israel. She was a representative of the Mapai establishment that ruled the country for generations, and refused to step aside. Meir lacked the ability to stand up to the heads of the defense establishment. Her opinion did not matter to them, and when it came to classified information, they didn't even bother informing her. Then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's well-publicized heroism and then-Military Intelligence Director Eli Zeira's arrogance and overconfidence turned Meir into a marginal character in the mechanism that made fateful decisions.

After the war, efforts were made to be lenient with her, in many ways due to pity or other external considerations. I feel suspicion mixed with contempt toward all the embarrassing arguments that we must give her credit for her conduct in the days after the initial surprise of the war. Unfortunately, as someone who was seriously wounded in that war, giving her credit feels to me as artificial, worthless and dishonest.

Labels: Amir Peretz, Anwar Sadat, Ehud K. Olmert, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yom Kippur War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:32 PM 0 comments

An early warning ignored

But a particularly interesting meeting took place on Sept. 25, 1973 -- about two weeks before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. The venue: an intelligence facility in central Israel.

Because the meeting was hastily arranged and held well inside Israel, it was considered an extraordinary encounter. Hussein was the one who asked for the meeting. He wanted to sound the alarm about the looming danger on Israel's borders. The Syrians and Egyptians were planning an attack on Israel, he warned. Their decision stemmed from the unraveling of the Rogers Plan, a desire to undo Israel's hubris and a need to compensate for their humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War. Hussein said Egypt and Syria wanted to reclaim the territory they had lost six years earlier.

Hussein confided with Meir that two weeks prior to the meeting he had met with Syrian President Hafez Assad and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They told him that they were running out of patience and that they would like to initiate a flare-up with Israel on two fronts. Assad and Sadat asked Hussein if he would be willing to open a third, eastern front, but he refused.

Hussein told Meir about Syria's preparations and the military maneuvers it was planning. He also shared information on the deployment of its armored units and the locations of its aircraft. He expressed concern how things might unfold and inquired whether Israel was duly prepared.

Meir said she would look into the matter. Hussein also said that he had promised Syria that he would send two armored brigades to the frontline to show Arab solidarity.

The details that emerged from those meetings were shared among American, Israeli and Jordanian policymakers, with both Israel and Jordan updating the Americans about the events leading up to the meetings and their aftermath, as well as on what transpired behind closed doors. The conversation that was held just prior to the war did not frighten Meir, but she couldn't stop thinking about what she had been told.

Labels: Golda Meir, Jordan's King Hussein, Marwan Ashraf, Moshe Dayan, Yom Kippur War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:54 AM 0 comments

Who knows how to kill?

In a 2007 research, Gunnar Heinsohn from the University of Bremen and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, found out that some 11 million Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, (0.3 percent) died during the six years of Arab war against Israel, or one out of every 315 fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

According to Mssrs. Heinsohn and Pipes, the grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts all over the world since 1950 numbering around 85 million. Of that, the Muslim Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict were at 46,000 including 11,000 during Israel’s war of independence. That makes 0.05 percent of all deaths in all conflicts, or 0.4 percent of all Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In another calculation ignoring “small” massacres like the one that goes on in Syria and other deaths during the Arab Spring, only Saddam’s Iraq, Jordan, the elder al-Assad’s Syria, Iran-Iraq war, the bin Laden campaign in Iraq, the Iranian Islamic revolution and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict caused 1.65 million Muslim deaths by Muslims compared to less than 50,000 deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950, including fatalities during and after Operation Cast Lead which came after the Heinsohn-Pipes study. For those who don’t have a calculator ready at their desks, allow me to tell: 50,000 is three percent of 1.65 million.

Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel, or rather the “Mother of Israel,” had a perfectly realistic point when she said that peace in the Middle East would only be possible “when Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”

Labels: Golda Meir, Muslim on Muslim violence, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Shimon Peres

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:49 PM 2 comments

Netanyahu won't be the first

Unfortunately, Netanyahu joins a long list of backpedaling Israeli leaders whose talk doesn’t match up with their walk. In “Surrender to Washington” (The Jerusalem Post, May 20, 1983), Shmuel Katz gives a rundown of the more prominent examples of Israeli collapse in the face of American pressure.

In 1973, in spite of the disastrous opening of the Yom Kippur War, Israel was on the brink of overwhelming victory and, as then foreign minister Abba Eban asserted, the government was not even thinking of a cease-fire but only of victory. It nevertheless accepted a cease-fire resolution dictated – via Moscow – by U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Then it abandoned its proposal (generously put forward in spite of Israel’s tremendous advantage in the field) to restore the status quo ante, and agreed to withdraw both from the large enclave it held inside Egypt and from the canal – all for good relations with the U.S., which was seeking Egyptian favours.

Several months later, it repeated the performance on the Syrian front. After weeks of resistance to Kissinger’s demands, the Golda Meir government caved in, returned to Syria the captured enclave and, for good measure, a slice of the Golan Heights captured in 1967.

Here was manifestly – in both cases – acceptance of the posture of defeat in the field – where Israel had lost 3,000 dead – all for those good relations.

A further price was yet to be paid – in 1975 – by further withdrawal in Sinai. The Rabin government at first refused to hear of surrender of the vital Mitla and Gidi passes and the Abu Rudeis oilfields – but in the end it capitulated, demonstratively as a favour to Washington.

Now came the turn of the Likud. The allegedly formidable, intransigent Mr. Begin turned out to be formidable and intransigent only temporarily. Throughout the negotiations on the “peace plan,” he finally accepted nearly every American formulation – which he had declared in the process unacceptable, jettisoning cherished and long proclaimed principles.

At the Camp David conference, which came after nine months of preparatory negotiations with Washington, only an emasculated remnant remained of his original autonomy peace plan. Nor did the agreement contain a hint of Zionist purpose, of the Jewish relationship and right to the Land of Israel; on the contrary, it quashed (if it were to be consummated) any hope of future Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

In the negotiations for the subsequent peace treaty, President Anwar Sadat at the last moment demanded the nullification of the clause which would prohibit Egypt from going to war with Israel in fulfillment of previous pacts with the other Arab States. Begin – correctly – proclaimed this would make the treaty a “sham treaty.”

President Jimmy Carter, however, anxious for a foreign policy success, pressed Begin, and an annex satisfying Sadat was introduced into the text.

Big words followed by little deeds is a hallmark of Jewish leadership extending to pre-state days. Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shmuel’s mentor and hero, remarked on the phenomenon in a satirical feuilleton he wrote in May 1939, under the pen name Echad Rosho (the Bad One). Jabotinsky avoided ad hominem attacks and denied that the title of the piece “Mr. Ben Bouillon” referred to Mr. David Ben-Gurion. (Similarly, any resemblance to Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu is purely coincidental.)

Labels: Abba Eban, Binyamin Netanyahu, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Shmuel Katz, Yitzchak Rabin

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:27 PM 2 comments