Rise and Kill First
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“believed in taking the war against the PLO to the enemy’s rear” Interview with Galant, September 4, 2014.
was to pardon two convicted IDF criminals Military Court file no. 313/78, IDF Prosecutor v. First Lt. Daniel Pinto, judgment (in camera) of February 9, 1979 (author’s archive, received from “Snow”). Eitan, A Soldier’s Story: The Life and Times of an Israeli War Hero, 163–65 (Hebrew).
“You, Flotilla 13, are like a priest’s balls” Interview with Shiek, April 11, 2013.
Flotilla 13 carried out twenty-three raids Facts courtesy of Mike Eldar. Eldar, Flotilla 13, 572–83 (Hebrew).
“He didn’t even try to justify his order” Interviews with Ami Ayalon, January 21, 2013, Galant, September 4, 2014, and Eldar, September 18, 2011. Eldar, Flotilla 13, 583 (Hebrew).
no one went to the port for coffee Zrair remained one of the top activists in PLO activities against Israel and also played a role in the fighting after Israel’s June 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon. During that year, Unit 504 recruited one Ibrahim Firan, a senior official at Tyre port who was close to Zrair. The two shared an attraction to young boys. Unit 504 paid Firan a tidy sum, some of which was used to finance their partying. In exchange, Firan came up with the location of Zrair’s hideout—a villa on the beach between the mouths of the Zahrani and Litani rivers, north of Tyre. On August 5, 1982, a force from the Israel Police’s YAMAM special counterterrorism squad raided the house, supported by troops from Division 91. The raiders reported that Zrair had gone for his pistol and they shot him dead. Fatah intelligence suspected Firan of informing on Zrair and liquidated him two weeks later, near the café that Flotilla 13 assassins had in their sights just over two years before. Zvika Bandori of the Shin Bet says that Zrair was not armed and did not resist, and that he was killed in line with a Shin Bet execution procedure known as “Krenk” (“sickness” in Yiddish). The hunger to avenge him on the part of his comrades led to their joining up with elements in Hezbollah, which had just been formed, to blow up the Israeli HQ in Tyre not long afterward, according to Bandori. Interviews with Ravid, January 17, 2013, Yitzhak Mordechai, March 22, 2015, and Zvika Bandori, September 11, 2017.
“made no difference which Palestinians we killed” Interview with Shiek, April 11, 2013.
“asked him how we were supposed to identify the terrorists” Interview with “Olive,” May 2013.
“unanimously sentenced him to death, without the right of appeal” Interview with Ravid, January 17, 2013.
Israeli intelligence was establishing a permanent presence Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 50–75 (Hebrew).
The Phalangists were exceptionally brutal Interview with Uzi Dayan, April 18, 2013.
an Israeli-trained Maronite militant named Robert Hatem Hatem has been living in Paris under the aegis of the French security services since the mid-1990s. This is where I conducted a series of interviews with him in February 2005. Ronen Bergman, “The Cobra,” Yedioth Ahronoth, March 4, 2005.
“At the outset of our relationship with them” Interview with Merhav, October 5, 2011.
“Begin saw himself as the savior of the oppressed” Interview with Mordechai Tzipori, March 11, 2015.
“we must not be the Phalangists’ patrons” Ronen Bergman, “Dismissal in the Mossad Leadership,” Haaretz, January 3, 1997.
“So I kept my hand over her mouth” Smadar Haran Kaiser, “The World Should Know What He Did to My Family,” Washington Post, May 18, 2003.
The horrendous murder in Nahariya Interview with Avigdor Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
“We had a lot of disagreements” Eitan, Soldier’s Story, 182.
With Eitan’s blessing, Ben-Gal appointed the man Interviews with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013, and Dagan, May 26, 2013.
“I gave his secret operations complete freedom” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
“the aim…was to cause chaos” Interview with David Agmon, October 28, 2015.
“Raful and I used to okay missions with a wink” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
ordered by Eitan to cooperate without knowing what the purpose was The conscience of one member of this unit was troubled by its activities, calling them “not less than war crimes.” He left the army and emigrated to the United States, cutting off most of his ties with Israel. Interviews with “Rupert,” March 2016, Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013, Dagan, May 29, 2013, Agmon, May 8, 2016, and Gadi Aviran, April 16, 2012.
“We’d come there at night” Interviews with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013, and Aql al-Hashem, December 1999. Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 513–21.
“Ben-Gal even tried to bar me” Interview with Yehoshua Saguy, November 20, 2015.
“There was a constant struggle with the Northern Command” Interview with Gilboa, March 18, 2015.
“realized that something irregular was going on” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
Ben-Gal had an encrypted connection set up Interview with Ephraim Sneh, October 20, 2015.
AMAN had apparently managed to tap his encrypted phone Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
“They tell me about the explosions in Lebanon” Interview with Tzipori, March 11, 2015.
“Raful had not submitted it upstairs” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
Ben-Gal was summoned to the defense minister’s bureau Account of the meeting taken from interviews with Tzipori, March 11, 2015, and Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013. Aside from a few minor differences, their accounts are identical.
“ ‘Let the young men arise and play before us’ ” Interview with Gilboa, December 30, 2013.
“the activities took place in a gray area” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
Sharon thought, correctly, that every day that went by peacefully Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 125–26.
“The aim…was to sow such chaos” Interview with Sneh, October 26, 2015.
car bombs were exploding regularly Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 513–21. Al-Hurriyya, July 9, 1981. List of incidents involving the FLLF on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD): http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?perpetrator=2991.
“With Sharon’s backing…terrible things were done” Interview with “Sally,” February 2015.
“I saw from a distance one of the cars blowing up” Interview with “Eldy,” January 2015.
“The targets were always military targets” Interview with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
“You can give him explosives” Interview with Dagan, May 26, 2013.
Sharon had Arafat returned to the wanted list Interviews with Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013, Dagan, May 26, 2013, Agmon, October 28, 2015, Sneh, October 20, 2015, and Azriel Nevo, January 5, 2016.
The death and destruction Zvika Bandori, who was acting head of the Arab division of the Shin Bet at the time, says that Rafi Eitan, the prime minister’s adviser on terrorism, and Meir Dagan presented him with the plan and rejected his opposition, which was based on the presence of large numbers of civilians. They argued that there would not be many civilians there. At Eitan’s request, Bandori says, he arranged a meeting between Eitan and Shin Bet director Avraham Shalom, who also expressed his strong opposition to the operation. Interviews with Bandori, September 11, 2017, and “Henry,” October 2015.
This was written not in fear Interview with Sneh, October 20, 2015.
someone leaked the plan to Saguy Interviews with Saguy, November 20, 2015, and Dagan, May 26, 2013.
“It was a very rainy day” “I hadn’t been so scared in a long time as on that flight to Jerusalem,” Dagan recalls. Eitan had a military pilot’s license and took a practice flight every now and again when he visited Air Force bases. Regular airmen tried to avoid accompanying him. “It was really a danger to life and limb,” one of them recalls. Sometimes Eitan would pre
pare bags of salt and drop them on couples making out on the beach. Ben-Gal remembers these flights with horror. Once, he relates, Eitan saw a ship out at sea “and he shouted ‘there’s a terrorists’ boat, let’s buzz it.’ ” He swung the Cessna away from the coastline and headed for the vessel, which turned out to be a destroyer from the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Eitan, in his playful mood, kept up the joke, as if it were a terrorists’ boat, although Ben-Gal yelled at him, “Look at the cannons and the flag!” But the CoS enjoyed Ben-Gal’s nervousness and he began flying passes over the destroyer at mast height until its crew got teed off and sprayed the Cessna with foam. Interviews with Dagan, May 29, 2013, Ravid, November 13, 2012, and Ben-Gal, November 6, 2013.
“If something happens to him” Interview with Saguy, November 20, 2015.
“there was no Soviet ambassador” Interview with Dagan, May 26, 2013.
Everything went well until dawn Interviews with Dagan, May 26, 2013, and “Sally,” February 2015.
CHAPTER 15: “ABU NIDAL, ABU SHMIDAL”
Argov shook hands with the press mogul Robert Maxwell Interview with Yoav Biran (Argov’s number 2 at the embassy at the time, who was also at the Dorchester that night), April 22, 1999.
waiting, watching the front door of the Dorchester Telephone interviews with Hussein Said, April-May 1999.
Carrying a Polish-made WZ-63 miniature submachine gun Hussein Said to the author, April 20, 1999 (author’s archive). Telephone interviews with Hussein Said, April-May 1999.
Said’s companions were caught The incident led to serious friction between British and Israeli intelligence, with Mossad officials alleging that the British could have done more to prevent the assassination attempt. Five years later, Israel was running a double agent inside an operational Fatah cell in London, without the knowledge of the British. Cell members assassinated Naji al-Ali, a Palestinian caricaturist with British citizenship, who had ridiculed Arafat in his cartoons. Arafat had ordered him liquidated. The British authorities claimed that Israel could have averted the slaying and that it had not done so as revenge for the attack on the ambassador or simply because it didn’t care about the killing of an Arab. The British expelled most of the members of the Mossad station in London. Interviews with Ravid, January 17, 2013, and “Gelato,” February 1999. Sharon Sade and Ronen Bergman, “I Shot Shlomo Argov,” Haaretz, June 11, 1999.
Shortly after the assassination attempt, Israeli intelligence learned Interview with Simon, July 29, 2012.
hoped that the assassination would bring about a large-scale military clash Saddam also wanted to take revenge on Israel for its attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor Tamuz Osirak a year earlier. Amatzia Baram and Pesach Malovany, “The Revenge of Saddam Hussein,” Yedioth Ahronoth, June 14, 2012.
“Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal. We’ve got to whack the PLO” Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 12 (Hebrew).
Arafat could not let this pass without reacting Ibid., 16.
he didn’t believe his shot had started the Israeli war Letter from Hussein Said to the author, April 20, 1999 (author’s archive). Telephone interviews with Said, April-May 1999.
It would be a limited incursion, Sharon told the cabinet Minister of Defense at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Knesset, June 7, 1982, 1 (author’s archive, received from “Dorris”).
The only minister who opposed the plan was Mordechai Zippori Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 146.
This was indeed only the beginning of Sharon’s actual plan Landau, Arik, 140–41, 196–98 (Hebrew). Interview with Nevo, January 14, 2016.
“I knew that they had not given up their ambition” Begin Center, interview with Hofi, January 11, 2002. Author’s interview with Saguy, November 20, 2015.
The beginning was promising Bergman, Authority Granted, 170–80 (Hebrew).
The militiamen performed even worse than AMAN had predicted Description of the invasion in Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 163–82 (Hebrew), and Sayigh, Armed Struggle, 508–31.
took advantage of the opportunity to settle the score The combat arena between Israel and Syria became the first testing ground for the most advanced weaponry developed in the United States and Israel against the front line of the Red Army laboratories. The outcome was clear-cut. On June 9, the biggest aerial battle of the jet age took place over Lebanon. In Operation Mole Cricket (Arzsav) 19, the Israeli Air Force knocked out almost all of Syria’s Russian-made surface-to-air missile batteries in Lebanon. On the same day, in aerial combat, the Israelis shot down 26 Syrian Russian-made front-line fighters. In all, a total of 82 Syrian warplanes were destroyed in 46 hours, for the loss of one Israeli plane. Interviews with Sella, July 10, 2013, David Ivri, April 18, 2013, Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, June 5, 2011, and “Amit,” April 2013. Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 183–222 (Hebrew).
“the forty-kilometer plan was melting away” Interview with Nevo, January 5, 2016.
“The Mossad…was absolutely wrong” Interview with Nevo, January 14, 2016.
In a meeting with chief of staff Eitan Mossad, “Notes on Meeting Between Johni Abdu, Bashir Gemayel and the CoS,” June 16, 1982 (author’s archive, received from “Dorris”).
in a combined operation code-named the Spark “Summary of Course of Events in West Beirut,” document submitted to Inquiry Commission on behalf of Defense Minister Sharon (author’s archive, received from “Dorris”).
During a meeting at Sharon’s home Defense Minister’s Bureau, “Meeting Between Bashir Gemayel, Johni Abdu, and the Minister of Defense,” August 1, 1982 (author’s archive, received from “Dorris”).
“there is no intention to enter Beirut” “Meeting of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee,” June 13, 1982, 10, and “Statement of Defense Minister at Cabinet Meeting,” July 7, 1982 (author’s archive, received from “Dorris”).
“to destroy whatever can be destroyed” Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 259–60 (Hebrew).
“You are causing a holocaust in Beirut” Interview with Nevo, January 14, 2016.
by leaking to the London Observer documents Yedioth Ahronoth, July 18, 1982. Interview with “Miguel,” July 2012. “Arrow,” January 1999.
were being made without the approval of the cabinet Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 116 (Hebrew).
Sharon would sue a journalist who wrote Sharon sued the journalist Uzi Benziman, who later recounted the story of the trial in a book titled I Told the Truth (Hebrew). An extensive, gripping, sometimes amusing, and of course very subjective account of the trial appears in the book by Dov Weissglass (who was also the lead counsel for Sharon in the lawsuit against Time magazine), Ariel Sharon: A Prime Minister, 38–75 (Hebrew).
the plan to do away with Yasser Arafat In a long interview Begin gave to Israel TV in late June 1982, he flatly denied that one of the aims of the campaign was to kill Arafat, but only to put an end to his command and the two “Abu somethings,” a contemptuous reference to Arafat’s two deputies. He declared that “the IDF is not only a humane army, but also a democratic army. It’s wonderful to see [the IDF’s commanders] doing their job.” An indication of the highly sensitive nature of the matter can be found in research into the Lebanon War carried out by the IDF’s History Department, which includes extensive references to Operation Salt Fish. But the project was abruptly shut down when it seemed as though the researcher, Prof. Motti Golani, was displaying too much independence. The work, which includes highly sensitive material, was never completed, and all of Golani’s material was confiscated. Interview with Golani, January 15, 2013.
In a letter to Reagan on August 2 Yedioth Ahronoth, August 3, 1982. Schiff and Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 274 (Hebrew).
In a speech in the Knesset the same week Yedioth Ahronoth, June 30, 1982.
“But without causing too much collateral damage” Interview with Da
yan, June 4, 2012.
was summoned to Beirut in June Interview with “Vivaldi,” August 2011.
the Salt Fish teams had an abundance of information The Salt Fish team wanted to add Abu Jihad to the hit list. The Mossad knew where to find his wife, Intisar, and the team planned to poison her, making her very ill. Abu Jihad, a devoted family man, would come to see her, and the assassins would be waiting. “But Begin heard about the plan and he thought it was too diabolical and ruled it out,” said a senior member of the Salt Fish team. Interview with Dayan, April 18, 2013, and “Yoav,” December 2016.
Once they even heard Arafat himself on the phone Interview with Dayan, June 4, 2012.
He scattered disinformation around among his aides A Mossad document from July 1, 1982, shown to the author by “Matias,” said, “Salt Fish is taking extreme safety precautions and according to Junction sources, he gives his own people disinformation out of fear that some of them may be serving us.”
“Arafat kept on breaking his routine” Interview with Moshe Yaalon, August 16, 2011. “He changes places all the time….From command post to command post, with all their communications systems, and their international communications…” Sharon report to cabinet, July 18, 1982. Arafat himself claimed to have counted thirteen Israeli attempts to kill him during the siege. Rubin and Colp-Rubin, Yasir Arafat, 98–99, 102.
“My goal was to begin paving a path” Interview with Avnery, July 19, 2013.
decided to take advantage of the opportunity Interview with Yaalon, August 16, 2011.
Among the Salt Fish team members, a discussion took place Interview with Avner Azulay, July 6, 2015.
“I thought that it was messy” Interview with Ivri, May 30, 2011.