Israel, Iran, US, NATO, Russia - Nuclear War? Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

[Magda Hassan]

LETTER FROM TEL AVIV

THE VEGETARIAN

A notorious spymaster becomes a dissident.

BY DAVID REMNICKSEPTEMBER 3, 2012

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM TEL AVIV about former Mossad chief Meir Dagan's opposition to a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran. Earlier this month, the liberal Israeli novelist David Grossman published an op-ed in Haaretz decrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fevered declarations that he might soon order a unilateral strike on Iran and its nuclear facilities. Since early last year, Israelis have witnessed a dissidence of a variety almost unknown since the founding of the state. Even as Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, routinely speak of an imminent "existential threat" from Teheran, comparable to that of the Nazis in 1939, a growing number of leading intelligence and military officials, active and retired, have made plain their opposition to a unilateral Israeli strike. They include the Army Chief of Staff, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, the heads of the two main intelligence agencies, the Mossad (Israel's C.I.A.) and Shin Bet (its F.B.I.), President Shimon Peres, and members of Netanyahu's cabinet. Apart from Peres, these men are anything but liberals. Recently, the writer met with Meir Dagan, who was the director of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operationsthe Mossadfrom 2002 until January, 2011. Dagan is known as a ruthless agent; his career is said to have included operations of all kindscar bombings, poisonings, cyberwar. He was also the earliest and is arguably the most authoritative of the dissident security chiefs. Dagan was born in 1945, on the floor of a train, as his family was being deported from the Soviet Union to a Nazi detention camp in Poland. In 1950, his family sailed for Israel aboard a cattle boat, and they eventually settled in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. As a soldier, Dagan won the admiration of Ariel Sharon. In 1970, Sharon ordered him to create a special "elimination" unit, dedicated to hunting down suspected terrorists in Gaza. Dagan worked in various military and security jobs until 2002, when Sharon, then Prime Minister, appointed Dagan the director of the Mossad. Under his leadership, the Mossad was credited with a string of high-stakes operations. The singular focus of Dagan's work was Iran's nuclear program. Under Dagan's direction, and in coöperation with Western intelligence agencies, the Mossad is believed to have been involved in all the main efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear progress. Just days before stepping down as director of the Mossad, Dagan began what amounted to an extended public denunciation of Netanyahu's Iran policy. In the months that followed, he became increasingly frank in his opposition to an attack. This was astonishing. "An Israeli bombing," Dagan said, "would lead to a regional war and solve the internal problems of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue. And it would justify Iran in rebuilding its nuclear project and saying, Look, see, we were attacked by the Zionist enemy and we clearly need to have it.'" Dagan's view that a unilateral Israeli strike would intensify, not diminish, the danger posed by Iran is now the general view of the dissident politicians and security chiefs. Dagan believes that the West and Israel should do all they can to foment regime change in Iran by supporting the Iranian opposition. Discusses the fraught relationship between Netanyahu and the Obama Administration. Mentions Moshe Ya'alon.






David Remnick, Letter from Tel Aviv, "The Vegetarian," The New Yorker, September 3, 2012, p. 22
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/...z25gg6f3yo

And not directly related to Dagan's position re Iran but very interesting historical note.

What covert ops did former Mossad chief lead in Lebanon prior to 1982 invasion?

A well known method which Israeli reporters use to bypass the military censorship is to take the story to the foreign press, (at the price of losing exclusivity, but sometimes journalists just want to get the stuff out). In the New Yorker profile of formar Mossad head Meir Dagan, this paragraph appears:

Far from everything is known about Dagan's career. Two reporters for Yediot Ahronot, Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir, once investigated a story that, before Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which was aimed at rooting out Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Dagan led a secret unit across the border whose mission was to instigate terrorist events that would justify an incursion. Military censor killed the story, Sarna told me. Dagan acknowledges the censorship but denies the thrust of the story.

I posted this paragraph in Hebrew on my Facebook wall. Sarna commented:
Indeed, the censorship [on these stories] has been on for years. Horrifying things were done there, not just planned. http://972mag.com/what-covert-ops-did-fo...ion/55211/