Rise and Kill First

by Ronen Bergman

  “We didn’t want to give Fatah credit” Interview with Shlomo Gazit, September 12, 2016.

  In early 1967, the situation worsened rapidly “Operation Tophet,” Maarakhot, April 1984, 18–32. Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 211–12.

  Many Arabs believed that at last the time had come for the liquidation of the State of Israel A large part of the deterioration in the situation between Israel and the Arab states stemmed from the malevolent interference of Soviet intelligence. Ronen Bergman, “How the KGB Started the War That Changed the Middle East,” New York Times, June 7, 2017. Interviews with Shimon Shamir, April 6, 2017, Michael Oren, April 6, 2017, and Ami Gluska, April 6, 2017.

  gave a speech…that only made things worse Eshkol was very hesitant about going to war without American approval, and he was even more hesitant when, at a meeting between Mossad chief Amit and the CIA station head in Israel, John Hadden, the latter threatened, “If you attack, the United States will land forces on Egypt’s side to defend it.” Amit responded: “I do not believe [what I am hearing].” Mossad, report on the meeting with John Hadden, May 25, 1967 (author’s archive, received from Amit). Interviews with John Hadden, June 2006, Navot, April 6, 2017, and Yeshayahu Gavish, April 6, 2017.

  were sure of their own capabilities Mossad Chief Amir to PM Eshkol, “Report on U.S. Visit 31.5–2.6.1967,” June 4, 1966 (author’s archive, received from Amit).

  “flashing green light” Interview with Amit, April 2006. Central Intelligence Agency, “Office of the Director, Richard Helms, to the President,” with the attachment of “Views of General Meir Amit, Head of the Israeli Intelligence Service, on the Crisis in the Middle East,” June 2, 1967 (author’s archive, received from Amit).

  Gazit composed a special top-secret paper AMAN Research Division, Israel and the Arabs: A New Situation, June 8, 1967 (author’s archive, received from Gazit). Interview with Gazit, September 12, 2016.

  “What’s happening now is a disappointment” Personal diary of Meir Amit, July 1967 (author’s archive, received from Amit).

  Fatah would continue its struggle Yaari, Fatah, 92–94 (Hebrew).

  “Israel must strike at the heart of the terror organizations” Arbel’s Diary is quoted in Perry, Strike First, 42 (Hebrew).

  “Short, 155–160 cm; dark-skinned” Shin Bet, Wanted poster for Yasser Arafat, June 1967 (author’s archive, courtesy of Shlomo Nakdimon).

  Israeli forces tried to kill Arafat a few times Interview with Sutton, May 9, 2012. Bechor, PLO Lexicon, 266 (Hebrew). Rubinstein, The Mystery of Arafat, 98 (Hebrew).

  urged Eshkol to approve a massive military operation “Meeting of the IDF General Staff 38-341,” April 1968, 17–18 (author’s archive, received from “Sheeran”).

  The Mossad was frustrated Interview with Zvi Aharoni, July 1998.

  The plan they came up with in January 1968 Klein, The Master of Operation: The Story of Mike Harari, 100–101 (Hebrew). Interviews with Harari, March 29, 2014, and Klein, October 6, 2014.

  Eshkol gave in to the pressure Supreme Command Secretariat, Bureau of the Chief of the General Staff, General Staff debriefings on Operations Tophet and Assuta, MODA, 236/72. Interviews with Hadar, March 25, 2013, Immanuel Shaked, May 14, 2013, and Sutton, May 9, 2012.

  This showed who the real victors were Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, 244–46 (Hebrew).

  Transcripts of general staff meetings For example, see the protocol of meeting, number 341-5, the first General Staff meeting with the newly appointed PM Golda Meir in March 1969, reviewing all the threats Israel faced at the time (author’s archive, received from “Sheeran”).

  they were even willing to adopt a particularly bizarre plan Interviews with Sutton, May 9, 2012, “Steve,” March 2013, and Zvi Aharoni, July 1998.

  he could brainwash and hypnotize him into becoming a programmed killer At that time, other espionage agencies, including those of the United States and the Soviet Union, were also experimenting with using hypnosis and drugs to create highly trained and fearless operatives. One of these plans, which apparently examined the various effects of psychosis-inducing drugs and the possibility of using them in order to create the perfect soldier or to extract information in interrogations, was a CIA project called MKULTRA. Frank Olson, one of the staffers on the project, either committed suicide or was murdered. Interview with Eric Olson, September 2000. Ronen Bergman, “Vertigo,” Yedioth Ahronoth, October 6, 2000.

  went several times to observe Shalit’s work Interview with Aharon Levran, May 31, 2011.

  Fatkhi waved goodbye to his operators Interviews with Sutton, May 9, 2012, and “Steve,” January 2013.

  Fatkhi had been handed over to the organization Thirty years later, when Rafi Sutton was on a visit to Jordan in the 1990s—after that country signed a peace treaty with Israel—he was approached by a man who identified himself as Fatkhi. “I’m the Fatah prisoner that an Israeli officer tried to hypnotize and sent to kill Arafat,” he said. He expressed his gratitude to Sutton for treating him well and respectfully, and to his driver for saving his life in the river. He smiled and said, “Inshallah [God willing] that there be peace and no more need for hypnosis.” Interviews with Sutton, May 9, 2012, and Zvi Aharoni, July 1998. Sutton, The Orchid Salesman, 162–65 (Hebrew).

  CHAPTER 8: MEIR DAGAN AND HIS EXPERTISE

  countering Palestinian terrorism became the principal objective Melman and Raviv, Imperfect Spies, 154–58 (Hebrew).

  The peak came in 1970 IDF, History Department, Security, Summer of 1969–1970, September 1970 (author’s archive, received from “Sheeran”).

  The intelligence for these activities Interview with Yaakov Peri, May 21, 2011.

  “Saber-rattling and killing for the sake of killing” Interview with Yitzhak Pundak, June 6, 2017. Some of what was said was also included in Pundak’s book Five Missions, 322–54 (Hebrew).

  Sharon’s mind immediately turned to Meir Dagan Interview with Ariel Sharon, May 2003. I interviewed Dagan several times in 2013 and 2014 in his home in one of Tel Aviv’s new upscale apartment towers, after his retirement as the director of the Mossad, a post he held for nine years. By the time I spoke with him, Dagan was something of a medical miracle. A year before, he had been diagnosed with liver cancer. Only a transplant could save his life, but at the age of sixty-seven he was too old to qualify under Israeli regulations. With the Mossad’s support, friends and colleagues all over the world rallied to assist him. In the end, Alexander Lukashenko, the autocrat of Belarus who knew Dagan from his Mossad days, ordered his doctors to find a liver for Dagan. “I’m afraid that I had to disappoint everyone who was looking forward to my imminent demise,” Dagan told me. He was still heavily guarded by the Shin Bet, because of warnings that someone—the Syrian or Iranian secret services, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the list goes on—would target him to avenge assassinations of their top personnel. “Nothing to do about it,” he said, smiling. “This is what happens when you get into scraps against everyone.” The cancer returned in late 2015 and Dagan succumbed to it in March 2016. He was buried with all the honors of a national symbol, at a funeral attended by thousands.

  “My parents never spoke of that period” Interview with Dagan, May 26, 2013.

  “Let’s admit the truth” Interview with Dagan, May 29, 2013.

  “behaved as if he was born to be a soldier” Anat Talshir and Igal Sarna, “I Love to Put On a Costume and Go Act in Enemy Territory,” Yedioth Ahronoth, October 24, 1997.

  That was what he remembered: the fruit in his hand Interview with Dagan, July 20, 2013.

  Yatom remembered being alarmed Yatom, The Confidant, 83 (Hebrew).

  Yatom made the cut, but Dagan didn’t Interview with Dagan, May 26, 2013.

  Dagan would emerge, bare-chested, from his bedroom Interview with “the Cube,” March 2004.

  Dagan began to de
velop his battle doctrine Interview with Dagan, January 8, 2011.

  a file of wanted men in the Gaza Strip Interview with Avigdor (Azulay) Eldan, April 20, 2016.

  “Red” targets, on the other hand The Shin Bet’s Wanted list (author’s archive, received from “Jedi”).

  “we didn’t know what they were training us for” Moshe Rubin from Sayeret Matkal was brought in to teach the techniques and methods used by that unit deep inside enemy territory. Along with firearms practice and orientation, the training also included a technique known as “dancing,” aimed at reducing the size of one’s silhouette when entering a house so as to minimize the danger of being hit by gunfire from inside. Trainees also practiced operational driving in various vehicles, including those widely used by the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, and walking around alone, disguised as Arabs, all over the Strip, “simply in order to raise our confidence that we would not be identified,” said Meir Teichner, one of the first “Chameleons.” Interviews with Eldan, Moshe Rubin, and Meir Teichner, April 20, 2016.

  The Chameleons There are a number of competing stories about the founding of Chameleon/Rimon Rangers. It is certain, however, that at a certain stage the unit was placed under Dagan’s command with the backing of Arik Sharon. Interviews with Dagan, May 29, 2013, and Rubin, Teichner, Eldan, and Dani Perl, April 20, 2016.

  “We exploited the main weak point of these terror cells” Interview with Dagan, May 29, 2013.

  “They were scared of us” Interviews with “Neta,” July 2013, and “the Cube,” March 2004.

  In a staged operation to establish credibility Interviews with Rubin, Teichner, and Eldan, April 20, 2016.

  After a day, the terrorists showed up Interview with Dagan, June 19, 2013.

  they were stopped at a makeshift roadblock “Suddenly There Was an Explosion in the Car,” Yedioth Ahronoth, January 3, 1972.

  “We decided that things could not go on this way” Interview with Dagan, June 19, 2013.

  “There is no other way to describe this act than ethnic cleansing” Interview with Gazit, September 12, 2016.

  Dagan pretended to be a corpse Interview with Dagan, June 19, 2013.

  A month after the Aroyo killings Interviews with Dagan, June 19, 2013, and Sharon, May 2003. Certificate of award of Medal of Valor to Capt. Meir Huberman (Dagan’s original last name) by the chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. David Elazar, April 1973.

  the effectiveness of Dagan’s chosen methods Gazit, Trapped Fools, 61–63. Interviews with Dagan and Peri. Letter from David Ronen to Haaretz, October 2002. Archival material summarizing operations of Grenade Rangers shown to the author by “Emilia.”

  Pundak took this story to Southern Command chief Sharon Interview with Pundak, June 6, 2017. After Pundak’s death in August 2017 and the publication of what he had told me about the document, Sharon’s son Gilad responded on behalf of the family: “This is a collection of lies and fantasies from a man whose salient achievement was the great old age that he reached” (WhatsApp message from Gilad Sharon, August 30, 2017).

  they shot people after they surrendered On August 12, 1997, Daniel Okev, who’d been one of Dagan’s fighters, picked up two young British hitchhikers, Jeffery Max Hunter and Charlotte Gibb, while driving through the Negev on his way to the casino in Taba, just over the Egyptian border in Sinai. On the way he took his 9 mm gun and shot them. Hunter was killed immediately. Gibb was wounded and played dead. On trial Okev claimed that he did it because “I heard a foreign language and suddenly I felt as if I was in a Mercedes [the cars the Grenade Rangers used], in Gaza, disguised as an Arab.” He was sentenced to twenty years. The court rejected the prosecution demand for a life sentence, recognizing that at the time of the killings Okev was “in a state of deep mental derangement.” He was paroled after thirteen years in prison. Another Grenade Ranger, Jean Elraz, confirmed accounts of the unit’s killings. “I personally killed more than twenty people,” he wrote from prison, where he’s locked up for murdering a kibbutz armory guard in March 2001, stealing the weapons, and selling them to terrorists. Anat Talshir and Igal Sarna, “I Love to Put On a Costume,” Yedioth Ahronoth, October 24, 1997. Interview with Jean-Pierre Elraz, January 1993. Letters from jailed Elraz, August 2002. Ronen Bergman and four other reporters, “Killer,” Yedioth Ahronoth, September 6, 2002.

  Dagan confirms this but says it was justified Interview with Dagan, June 19, 2013.

  “And what exactly would you want me to do?” Interview with Shmuel Paz, March 31, 2017.

  CHAPTER 9: THE PLO GOES INTERNATIONAL

  At 11:07, the control tower in Rome received a message Announcement by transportation minister on the hijacking of the El Al plane, the Knesset, session 312, July 23, 1968.

  The seizure of Flight 426 Interview with Eitan Haber, June 21, 2009. Bergman, By Any Means Necessary: Israel’s Covert War for Its POW and MIAs, 28–29 (Hebrew).

  the world offered a much bigger stage Yaari, Strike Terror, 242. Merari and Elad, The International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism, 29–41 (Hebrew).

  TWA Flight 840 took off from Los Angeles for Tel Aviv “No Response from El Al Flights: The Hijack of an Airplane to Algeria,” Israeli Air Force website.

  saying it was her birthplace Leila Khaled: Hijacker, a 2006 documentary on Leila Khaled, directed by Lina Makboul.

  fatally wounding the copilot Yoram Peres was a pilot in training with El Al. He was very badly injured in the attack and taken to a hospital, where he died six weeks later. Letter from Tami Inbar, Peres’s sister, to the author, December 5, 2008.

  Khaled, meanwhile, became a symbol of the era Guardian, January 26, 2001. Merari and Elad, International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism, 95 (Hebrew).

  put the plane into a sudden dive Interview with Uri Bar-Lev, June 19, 2017.

  hijacking Pan Am, Swissair, and TWA planes that day Even before the spectacular operation, Habash admitted openly that the goal of his actions was to implicate the Arab states. “That is exactly what we want. These actions are meant to limit the prospects for a peaceful solution that we are not ready to accept.” Jerusalem Post, June 10, 1969, as quoted in Merari and Elad, International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism, 28 (Hebrew).

  launch a brutal attack against Arafat’s people Syria sent forces to aid the Palestinians, but Israel, at America’s request, moved forces to the border and declared that if Damascus did not withdraw its armored column, it would find itself under attack. The Syrians retreated, and Hussein regained full control of Jordan. A detailed account of the events of Black September is to be found in Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 261–81. Interview with Shlomo Gazit, November 29, 2016.

  Black September was another of the ever-evolving Fatah factions “Protocol of a meeting between PM Meir and Mossad Director Zamir,” January 5, 1972 (presented to the author by “Paul”). Abu Iyad admitted years later in his memoirs that Black September was indeed part of the PLO. Abu Iyad, as quoted in Merari and Elad, International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism, 33 (Hebrew).

  Khalaf redefined the enemies of the Palestinian people Abu Iyad interview to Jeune Afrique, October 19, 1971. Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 309.

  Meir Dagan and members of the Chameleon unit suggested Interview with Dagan, May 29, 2013.

  the Palestinians’ main strategic aim was achieved Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 308, note 207.

  Many of those revolutionaries soon rallied to the Palestinian cause Ibid., 309, note 210.

  three members of the Japanese Red Army The Red Army leader, Fusako Shigenobu, who sent her husband on the suicide mission, said, “Because of my organizational responsibilities, and because I was his wife, I was the last person to meet the commandos before they boarded the plane which took them to Lod.” Farrell, Blood and Rage, 138.

  The three Japanese men pulled AK-47s New York Times, June 1, 1972. Interview with Eilam, an eyewitness to th
e events at the airport, December 2, 2009.

  The sounds of ambulances filled the streets One of the Japanese, Kozo Okamoto, survived, to his regret. He refused to talk under interrogation and, unlike Arab terror suspects, he was not tortured. He agreed to open up only after an Israeli general offered to give him a pistol with one bullet so he could commit suicide if he cooperated. The general, Rehavam Zeevi, did not fulfill his part of the deal. Steinhoff, unpublished manuscript, 55, as referred to in Blood and Rage, 141.

  defended the massacre of the pilgrims New York Times, June 4, 1972.

  Levi Eshkol ordered a punitive operation Operation Gift (Tshura) on the Israeli Air Force website, http://iaf.org.il/​4694-32941-HE/​IAF.aspx.

  de Gaulle tightened his country’s weapons embargo Henry Tanner, “France Pledges to Aid Lebanon If Her Existence Is Threatened,” New York Times, January 15, 1969.

  Further failures would follow Interviews with Harari, March 23, 2014, Klein, May 28, 2014, and “Black,” November 2015.

  “Haddad behaved like the lord of the manor” Interviews with Zvi Aharoni, July 1998, Amram Aharoni, May 14, 2016, and “Darren,” September 2014.

  “But what can you do” Interview with Harari, March 10, 2014.

  an Israeli agent in Lebanon located George Habash’s villa Interview with Clovis Francis, February 2005.

  Operation White Desert Interview with Harari, March 23, 2014.

  Everything was ready to go Harari received Zamir’s okay for a rehearsal operation in real time during the ceremony to get to the apartment from which the shots were supposed to be fired, to simulate the shooting, and to get away—all to show the prime minister what Caesarea was capable of. Everything worked perfectly, except that the Mossad operative designated to “kill” Arafat in the rehearsal was not carrying a gun, and so could do nothing more than point his finger at Arafat’s head.