The mounting public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by past and present members of the Zionist state’s defense and intelligence establishments triggered the recall of a comment made to me by one of its former Directors of Military Intelligence. The comment was: “If we had a government consisting of only former DMI’s, we’d have had peace with the Palestinians long ago.” 

 

I must confess (and do so cheerfully) that I can’t remember which of two former Israeli DMI’s said that to me. It was either General Chaim Herzog, one of the founding fathers of Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence who went on to become the Zionist state’s ambassador to the UN and then its president, or General Shlomo Gazit, the best and the brightest of them all. In private conversations with me both men were refreshingly honest.

Herzog, for example, said the following to me on the second day of the June 1967 war: “If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext for war, we would have created one in a year to 18 months.”

But it was Gazit who hit the nail of truth most squarely and firmly on the head in one of our conversations.