According to an old Israeli anecdote, Charles de Gaulle once complained to David Ben-Gurion, over a glass of (kosher) cognac: ‘Although I am Monsieur le Président, I have to deal with the Prime Minister, and he’s such a potz! You are sooo lucky, Davíd: your Président is just a figurehead; as the Prime Minister, you have all the power…’ ‘Oh, you have no idea!’ said Ben-Gurion with much chagrin. ‘You see, I have to deal with Jews in Israel. That’s currently two and a half million aspiring Prime Ministers and each thinks he can do a better job than I do…’
There are now almost 7 million aspiring Prime Ministers in Israel and about the same number in the Diaspora. And while every Jew thinks s/he can be Prime Minister, some act as if they already are.
Those who closely follow Israeli politics should be familiar with the phenomenon of high-level retired security and military personnel (sometimes even still-serving high-level security/military personnel!) making controversial public statements on political issues. Such statements, often quoted out of context and sometimes creatively ‘interpreted’, invariably cause embarrassment to the country’s political leadership.
The case of the so-called ‘Gatekeepers’ (former chiefs of the ‘Shin-Bet’ Internal Security Service who went public with their own analyses of the situation – mostly critical of Israel’s political leaders) is very well-known – not in the least because they are often cited, both by Israel’s sworn enemies and by various ‘concerned friends’.
What contributes to this situation is the fact that, in Israel, retired security and military ‘celebrities’ very often aspire to (and quite often achieve) top political positions. Out of the six ‘Gatekeepers’, four have been involved in politics after retirement; a fifth (Yuval Diskin) flirted with politics for a couple of years, before deciding to remain just a commentator – at least for the time being; the sixth ‘Gatekeeper’ (Avraham Shalom) is the only one who could never enter politics: hehad to resign from the Service, after allegedly ordering the summary execution of two captured Palestinian terrorists – and thus becoming a political ‘hot potato’.
Given Israel’s fully proportional election system, anyone aspiring to climb the ladder in politics must achieve national (rather than local) recognition. This is particularly important for security chiefs who – until not so long ago – operated mostly in the shadows, away from the public eye. And the sure-fire way to quickly achieve national (and also international) recognition is… to make controversial statements, of the kind that garner media attention and stir the interest of an already jaded public, one that is bombarded with ‘news’ umpteen times a day. Combine that with the Israeli/Jewish penchant for wild exaggeration and bombastic communication (traits that anyone familiar with the country and its people is well aware of) and you’ve got an explosive mixture – at least from a media point of view; a perpetual generator of cheap journalistic ‘scoops’.
The latest such scoop concerns one Tamir Pardo, former head of the Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations). His potential political ambitions are, for the moment at least, unclear. But it’s very early in the day: Mr. Pardo retired from the Institute only in June 2016.
A public speech Pardo made a few days ago contained some controversial remarks. Controversial enough, it seems, to attract the attention of Israeli media and – as always – of various interested parties outside Israel.
The Iranian Press-TV, for instance, stated with some glee:
“Israel heads toward civil war: Ex-spy boss”
The ‘forever-worried-over-Israeli-policies’ US Jewish organisation J-Street lamented:
“Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said that the biggest threat to Israel’s security is the conflict with the Palestinians and not Iran’s nuclear program.”
So what did Tamir Pardo actually say?
