The 2006 Second Lebanon War lasted for thirty-four days. The conflict ended in what some military observers regarded as a stubborn stalemate. The Israeli public’s shock wore off and quickly turned to anger and frustration. An Israeli government commission would look into the unpreparedness and sluggish command that allowed Hezbollah to surprise the IDF so decisively. There were other shortcomings, such as IDF reservist units that were ill-equipped and fallout shelters that had been stripped bare of their basic elements; some Arab communities in Israel’s north that were also hit by Hezbollah rockets had no air raid shelters at all.
During the thirty-four-day war, 114 Israeli servicemen were killed;16 hundreds more were injured. Forty-four Israeli civilians were also killed in the Hezbollah bombardments. More than one thousand were wounded by the shrapnel and destruction. The Israeli combat fatalities did not, as of yet, include the two reservists kidnapped at the launch of the war and whose fate was still unknown.* With the end of the Second Lebanon War, Israelis were growing tired of the relentless stream of terrorist attacks directed at them from all quarters. During the six years of what seemed to be an endless barrage of suicide bombings inside Israel’s cities, the focus of Israel’s military, law enforcement, and intelligence services was to end the bloodshed of the Palestinian intifada. Israeli forces waged a determined and relentless fight in the West Bank and Gaza, and once again Israel’s cities were spared the horror and the grief of buses and cafés being blown up. But the 2006 Second Lebanon War was a stark reminder to Israel’s generals, commissioners, and spymasters that there would be no respite from the threat and the incessant conflict.
It is believed that more than one thousand Lebanese civilians living in the villages from which Hezbollah garrisoned its fighters, stored its weapons, and launched its missiles were killed in the war. Hezbollah had used an entire population as hapless human shields.
According to some IDF estimates, the IDF killed more than seven hundred Hezbollah fighters.17 Hezbollah, as was its custom, swore that no more than two hundred of its frontline combatants were killed.
But Hezbollah was in many ways very different from the homegrown Palestinian terrorists of Hamas, the PLO, and the PIJ that Israel was now familiar with. The organization posed an immediate and existential threat against the State of Israel. Hezbollah was an authentic army, complete with antitank brigades and more short-, medium-, and long-range surface-to-surface missiles that could hit much of Israel. It had global capabilities—twice in the 1990s Hezbollah bombed Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hezbollah was financed by Iran and by an international network of criminal consortiums, dealing in everything from cocaine and heroin to stolen cars and, in the United States, the sale of tax-free cigarettes.
Vanquishing Hezbollah on the battlefields of southern Lebanon had proven difficult—especially as the Israeli military took extraordinary precautions to minimize civilian casualties. But Hezbollah had various weaknesses and failings that were of great interest to the men and women of Harpoon. Hezbollah had one primary Achilles’ heel, and that was money. The organization was built around Shiite empowerment, but its leaders—in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and in the slums of Beirut—were absolutely corrupt and obsessed with greed.
Dagan had, as a commando and as a spymaster, spent most of his career exploiting people’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Hezbollah had thrown down the gauntlet against Israel. It was time for a suitable Israeli response. Dagan was eager to lead Israel’s charge to once and for all dilute the organization’s ability to wage war and to bankrupt the Party of God in ways that would diminish its capabilities and resolve for years to come.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Greed
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
—John Lennon
Terrorist wars have been fought for a myriad of reasons. Some terrorist groups fought for national liberation. Some fought for political ideology: communism, Maoism, neo-Nazism. Other terrorist armies mustered for ideologies on the left and the right. Some terrorist armies, the ones that have become the most potent in recent years, fight for religious salvation and conquest. Terrorist wars are fought differently in different locations and by men and women of endless beliefs and strange languages. But the one element that unites all of them is cost: the cost of executing attacks against governments and civilians and the cost that governments spend to defend against the carnage.
Uzi Arad is a former Mossad officer and advisor to several Israeli prime ministers and a founding director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. During a discussion of the short-term and long-term ramifications of the terrorism wars, he was once asked about the cost that bloodshed exacted on governments and societies. Forever the professor, Arad asked, “Has anyone ever thought to quantify the ramifications of one terrorist attack, like a 9/11? One series of hijackings that could have been prevented resulted in massive government spending at airports around the world. Has anyone ever measured the cost for the creation of something like the American TSA? Has there ever been a forensic accounting of cost of the salaries, the technological tools, and everything else that was implemented to prevent future aircraft hijackings or bombings? The amount must be astronomical and, when weighed against the risk, would cause many people to scratch their heads and think.”1
There was, though, a way for the State of Israel to quantify the destruction it absorbed during the Hezbollah-initiated Second Lebanon War. There were the dead and the wounded, of course. There were the basic financial costs as well. Economists have estimated direct war damage at $3.5 billion, including losses in Gross Domestic Product; the Israeli Ministry of Tourism calculated a 37 percent drop-off in summer travel, during the peak season. Businesses closed because of the Israeli reservists who were called up and had to take leave from their civilian jobs. A quarter of the businesses in northern Israel faced the possibility of bankruptcy because of losing revenue for more than a month. The Israeli Chamber of Commerce said their lost revenues totaled about $1.4 billion. More than two thousand homes and apartment buildings were destroyed; nine thousand were damaged by the rocket and missile barrages. More than three thousand acres of forest were set ablaze by the incoming missiles setting fires to the dry bush.2 In an area of the world where each tree is treated as a precious national treasure, this was no small matter.
The 2006 War was also costly to Lebanon, of course. The estimated casualties were 1,400 dead and thousands more wounded. Nearly a million were displaced, and the impact on the Lebanese economy was estimated at $2.8 billion in destruction, and nearly the same amount in lost income.3 But Hezbollah soon fixed its cash flow problems. The Iranian government made sure that Hezbollah’s coffers were overflowing with the profits of the oil industry. Hezbollah’s commanders were presented with generous bonuses for their courage in launching the war, as well as for their steadfast directing of the forces in the field. The residents of south Beirut, and the villagers of the south, whose homes were destroyed by Israeli air strikes, soon had new homes built or rebuilt—all with the generosity of the Party of God. The new homes were fitted with the finest marble floors and the most lavish new appliances. New, imported German sedans were rushed from the port of Beirut straight to those who were deemed to merit receiving new vehicles as compensation.
Hassan Nasrallah publicly pledged that every home damaged or destroyed in the 2006 fighting would be rebuilt or repaired by 2010. The Hezbollah reconstruction program was called the Wa’ad, or “promise.”4 There was no official calculation of the costs involved, but estimates were at well over a billion dollars. Hezbollah’s benevolence bought it support that it badly needed following the rubble and misery the war left behind. The money also temporarily silenced many of the accusations by Lebanese politicians and parties against the terrorist group that condemned it for recklessly sparking off the conflict with the Israelis and unilaterally bringing such destruction down on the country. The vow to spend the money guaranteed Nasralla
h some temporary loyalty.
Even though Hezbollah’s war against Israel achieved little and the suffering and loss of life were all unnecessary, the yellow-and-green flags of the Shiite Party of God flew proudly from the areas that bore the brunt of the combat. “The terrorist groups were like a blue chip stock, or the next and most innovative product from a start-up gone public offered on the Dow Jones,” a former military intelligence officer summoned to work with Harpoon explained. “When the market was good and the dividends and the cash flowed, everyone loved it, but when the terrorist actions resulted in losses, large losses, landscape-altering losses, everyone turns on them and turns on them fast.”5
Dagan wanted to short the Hezbollah stock. He wanted to undermine the net value of the Hezbollah corporate brand and do it in a way that would have long-term implications. The Mossad director wanted to teach Hezbollah’s leadership a lesson, and make Party of God’s most faithful supporters remove those yellow-and-green flags from the windowsills of the newly rebuilt homes.
The Mossad had, in its employ, men and women who were among the world’s finest in turning a devious imagination into an operational plan. Harpoon also had Uri L. Dagan and his assistant discussed options, and they read the headlines in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It was 2007. A financial crisis was enveloping the United States, and there were all sorts of stories coming out of Wall Street talking about hucksters and swindlers.
Like many Harpoon operations, the one that was gaining force inside Dagan’s head began as an idea and then the fodder for discussion with Uri in the director’s office over a cup of tea and the draw of his pipe. Both Dagan and Uri smiled at one another when the two openly exchanged the possibilities of the operation. The best way to get back at someone who had lots of money, Dagan realized, was to make him lose a chunk of it. The ideas coming in were brilliant and thought provoking. Israel’s spymasters were known to be imaginative geniuses in the most devious sort of ways. That imagination, according to a veteran Israeli special operations and intelligence officer, was the force multiplier that allowed Israel to survive while surrounded and outnumbered.6
The target was Hezbollah.
It was just after New Year’s Day 2007, and Salah Ezzedine was living what could be called a Horatio Alger tale penned amid the bombed-out chaos of the Lebanese landscape. The forty-six-year-old Ezzedine came from Maaroub, a small south Lebanese village some thirteen miles north of the Israeli frontier where the most a youngster could aspire to become was a farmer, a herder, or someone involved in the underground economy of smuggling or worse. Some of Ezzedine’s contemporaries traveled overseas in search of their fortunes; there were large Shiite communities in South America and in the United States. Others headed for the slums of south Beirut for work. Some of the men joined the ranks of Hezbollah and were commanders of men in the field in the war against Israel. For many young men in the south, just making it to their forty-sixth birthday would have been achievement enough. Some of the boys Ezzedine had grown up with were buried in the village martyrs’ cemetery.
Ezzedine was a stocky figure with a square face accentuated by an anvil-shaped jaw. He had a full head of hair that had, here and there, specks of silver gray. The hair was always immaculately shaped, as if he had it styled every morning at a barbershop; his moustache was close-cropped, and he always walked around with a couple days’ worth of stubble that was neatly sculptured. Ezzedine wore a uniform of a button-down shirt, usually white or light blue with a subtle design, and a blazer: The fashion statement was wealthy and carefree but not overdone—a testament to his humble upbringing. A gold pinky ring on his left hand reminded him of the success he had achieved.
Salah Ezzedine’s home is worthy of a Rockefeller, or a drug cartel kingpin. The grounds were protected by a wall of chiseled sandstones and steel. An electronic gate of black steel was controlled by a security guard from inside a command post that was bigger than many homes in the nearby village. The drive from the gate to the main house went uphill and took several minutes. Ezzedine’s house was built to look like a Roman palace. There were fountains and enough green grass to accommodate an army of soccer players. Armed guards patrolled the grounds. Many of the guests at the lavish banquets he frequently hosted felt as if they were at the presidential palace rather than at a private citizen’s home so near to the Israeli frontier. At night, guests nibbled on olives and sipped mint-infused lemonade while looking at the bright lights coming from the Israeli side of the border.
The people who knew him and did business with him referred to Salah Ezzedine as Sheikh Salah, a reverence reserved for people who were older and had earned the measure of respect that experience and accomplishments had bestowed upon them. Few were wiser. Ezzedine had made an unholy fortune in real estate and other industries. His investments produced a steady and seemingly endless revenue stream. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold.
The vernacular of Lebanon’s south demanded that someone who achieved great success praised Allah for their fortune in life. Ezzedine was a very religious man. His piety was subtle yet absolute. But beyond his Shiite faith, Ezzedine was an unconditional supporter of Hezbollah. By American standards, Ezzedine would be called a buff—someone who was fascinated by the men in arms, the weapons they carried, and the battles they fought. Ezzedine was close friends with many of Hezbollah’s top leaders, including Sheikh Nasrallah. Many of Ezzedine’s businesses were Hezbollah-centric. He ran a travel agency that coordinated pilgrimages to Mecca and the holy Shiite sites in Iraq and Iran for Hezbollah commanders and their families. The religious trips were renowned for their luxury and opulence. “Ezzedine’s style was everything had to be the newest, the best,” a resident of Maaroub stated. “For transportation, he’d have a brand-new bus, with zero mileage.”7
Ezzedine also owned a children’s publishing house that produced books for Hezbollah-run schools throughout the country; the Party of God indoctrinated future warriors and widows at a young age, and Ezzedine’s schoolbooks were colorful products of propaganda. The publishing house, as well as a popular radio station that Ezzedine owned, were named after Hadi Nasrallah, the eldest son of Hezbollah’s general secretary.8 Hadi Nasrallah was killed in September 1997 fighting Israeli forces; his body, held by the Israelis, was eventually returned years later in a prisoner exchange that included the negotiated return of the corpses of those combatants killed in action. Following Hadi’s death, Nasrallah said, “Israel should not feel satisfaction at my son’s death, for he died on the battlefield, facing the conquerors as he wished, with a gun in his hand.”9
Naming his business endeavors in the memory of Hadi scored Ezzedine an instant form of acceptance as a semiofficial member of the armed wing of the organization. He became personal friends to many of Hezbollah’s top religious, political, and military chiefs. Before embarking on a venture, the businessman often sought the blessing of Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Fadlallah.
Ezzedine was also close to the notorious Imad Mughniyeh, the military and special operations commander of all Hezbollah terrorist activities inside Lebanon and around the world.10 Mughniyeh had engineered the term suicide bombings into the international terrorist lexicon and was responsible for blowing up two American embassies in Beirut, the U.S. Marines and French paratroopers in Beirut, and a slew of kidnappings and freelance murders. Mughniyeh was also behind the two suicide vehicle bombings perpetrated by Hezbollah in Argentina—one that destroyed the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the other that destroyed a Jewish cultural center; more than one hundred total people were killed in those attacks. Mughniyeh was behind much of Hezbollah’s war against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. In fact, he was also the moving force behind the abduction of the two Israeli reservists that precipitated the Second Lebanon War. For his crimes against the United States, Israel, France, Argentina, and a dozen other countries around the world, Imad Mughniyeh was one of the most hunted terrorists in the world.* His very identity was a H
ezbollah state secret of the highest order. If Salah Ezzedine was allowed to know where Mughniyeh was, then it certainly meant that the businessman had achieved the status of an inside player.
Ezzedine’s psychological need to be accepted by the terrorist group’s leadership compelled him to make generous charitable donations to the organization in official ceremonies and events that were covered by Hezbollah’s media apparatus around the country. He received countless awards from the Hezbollah-affiliated charities he supported and the military units he embraced. Everyone wanted to be Ezzedine’s friend, and if you were a Hezbollah official above a certain rank and influence, Ezzedine made the effort to be yours.
The money that Hezbollah paid to the residents of south Beirut and south Lebanon following the 2006 Second Lebanon War was called “clean money” by the locals.11 The money was clean because it was brand-new. The money, fresh off flights from Tehran to Damascus or Beirut, came in enormous plastic-wrapped bundles in containers that held hundreds of thousands of dollars. Heavily armed Hezbollah teams guarded the transfer of cash. The money flowed generously, too generously. Some of the money, in turn, was given to Ezzedine to invest and to hold for safekeeping.
Ezzedine traveled to the Persian Gulf following the war in search of investment opportunities for his Hezbollah comrades. The Gulf could be a magical place for a wealthy Lebanese investor who grew up dirt-poor in a village that hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. From Kuwait City to Doha, from Manama to Abu Dhabi, the opulence was mesmerizing. The sand was clean and endless. The robes worn by the sheikhs were pristine and snow white, the uniform of men who never had to work a day in their lives. Everything was polished to an exuberant shine. What wasn’t gold-plated was made to look like gold. Plush carpeting, often ruby red, made every hotel lobby or private home appear to be a palace.
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