For the last 13 Saturday nights, 63-year-old A.—we cannot legally disclose his name—has driven with his wife 20 miles to Kaplan Street in central Tel Aviv to join growing protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government coalition.
He intended to be there again this Saturday, but with Israel on alert for more clashes with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon in this violent week, A. decided to give it a miss. Like other protesters, he expects the movement to regain its momentum next week.
A. is part of an astonishing phenomenon in Israel, where the Jewish state’s unity has been torn to shreds just three weeks before celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence. In a nation of fewer than 10 million people, hundreds of thousands have been motivated to pour into the streets—with flags and signs rejecting Netanyahu’s attempts to strip Israel’s Supreme Court of its power and to pass laws to please religious Cabinet ministers. Many protest organizers blame right-wing politicians for the ugly scenes inside Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, where Palestinians were beaten by police—an incident that prompted their brethren to fire rockets into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon.
Israelis tend to unite when faced with outside threats, but the anger toward their own government has not subsided. Last weekend, nearly 500,000 took part in protests: 5 percent of the country’s population. While Netanyahu recently blinked and announced that he would postpone implementation of his radical “reform,” some of his right-wing coalition’s bills were already passed by the Knesset, and his partners insist they will press ahead after the Passover and Independence Day holidays are over, at the end of April.
A. is no ordinary citizen. This man amid the flag-waving masses recently retired after a 30-year, clandestine career in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-espionage agency, where he reached the equivalent rank of general by managing one of the Mossad’s top three directorates. “I am very concerned that Netanyahu is trying to establish an authoritarian regime,” he tells us. “He is a disaster, but for national unity’s sake I don’t plan to be out there this weekend.”
According to Israeli law, present and former Mossad operatives are not allowed to reveal their names or be photographed. But they are allowed by the Mossad chief, David “Dadi” Barnea, to participate in the protests. And many of them do. Nearly 1,000 Israelis who recently worked as spies and analysts—identifying themselves as Mossad veterans but clinging to anonymity—jointly composed angry letters that have been leaked to the media, urging Netanyahu to stop what the prime minister calls “judicial reform” and what protesters call “an attempt at regime change.”
A. is no ordinary citizen. This man amid the flag-waving masses recently retired after a 30-year, clandestine career in the Mossad.
Many of them—in what is essentially a rebellion by secret warriors who never dabble in politics and are loyal to whomever is Israel’s elected leader—were in ultra-secretive operational units that carried out almost legendary sabotage and assassination missions aimed against the nuclear program in Iran and enemies of Israel in Lebanon, Syria, and all around the globe.
“Mr. Prime Minister, you are among the few who know us well,” they wrote in one of the letters. “We served secretly under your command for many years in the most complex and dangerous operations.... In our clandestine operations, we acted loyally and with complete trust toward the heads of Mossad, military commanders, the security cabinet, and the various prime ministers who sent us on missions. We succeeded in the most dangerous places because of our complete faith in the chain of command, as well as in the just cause. Our actions derived from Israeli social cohesion, mutual trust, and the knowledge that our commanders in Israel are capable of making wise decisions....
“Mr. Prime Minister, these fundamentals are disintegrating in front of our eyes in the face of the moves that you and your coalition colleagues are conducting. It seems that you neither control your ministers nor lead them … and we are on the verge of a complete crisis of confidence and a civil war, all on your watch.”
This is essentially a rebellion by secret warriors who never dabble in politics and are loyal to whomever is Israel’s elected leader.
Alluding to men and women still serving in the Mossad, they outlined what they fear is about to happen: “Critical operations will not be carried out, and the building of the force will weaken, as we will have difficulty recruiting new employees. Our friends carrying the burden will begin to doubt the righteousness of the cause and of the tasks assigned to them.
“Only you can stop the escalation. This is a critical hour for the future of the democratic country that we have served in the past and our friends are serving today. It’s not too late. Please act immediately and stop the deterioration toward the abyss.”
Former prime minister Ehud Barak added a new level of alarm on Tuesday by tweeting: “It sounds hallucinatory to us. But in conversations between Israelis and Western diplomatic elements, they raise deep concern about the possibility that if the coup d’état in Israel succeeds, then in the heart of the Middle East a Messianic dictatorship will arise, possessing nuclear weaponry and aspiring for a confrontation with Islam centered on the Temple Mount [in Jerusalem].”
Barak—who somewhat encouragingly added, “It’s not going to happen”—was a decorated commando soldier, served as defense minister in a prior Netanyahu coalition, and knows him well.
Former officials—including senior Mossad personnel—who worked closely with Netanyahu say that the prime minister is acting strangely, selfishly, and irresponsibly. Using his nickname, they speak of “a different Bibi” with a persecution complex triggered by his ongoing prosecution on fraud and bribery charges.
They feel he is egged on by his highly opinionated wife, Sara, herself convicted of misusing state funds, and by their son Yair, who maniacally attacks liberals on Twitter.
Current and former Mossad spies, such as A., are far from alone. Thousands of air-force pilots, naval commandos, submariners, special-forces soldiers, and other army reservists have declared that they won’t report for duty, saying they are not going to risk their lives if the orders come from a prime minister who himself has turned his back on democracy.
Using his nickname, they speak of “a different Bibi” with a persecution complex triggered by his ongoing prosecution on fraud and bribery charges.
And in Israel, there is no strict division between the active military and reservists. The backbone of the Israel Defense Forces, totaling nearly 700,000, is the reserve force, which can be activated within hours. The same is true at the Mossad, and A. reveals that he recently directed several sabotage operations aimed at Iranian nuclear sites.
Many Israelis in the military and security agencies say they face an ethical dilemma: whether to press ahead in Israel’s various clandestine wars when their top boss is a man who has completely lost their respect. One woman, currently in the Mossad and often sent abroad under a false identity, told us: “I don’t do it for Bibi Netanyahu. I do it for my kids and their future in this country.”
She is intensely bothered that the government seems to want dictatorial power without guaranteed protections for minorities: gay people, Jewish worshippers who aren’t Orthodox, women demanding equal rights, Arab-Israeli citizens, and non-Jewish immigrants applying for asylum.
If you are familiar with the Mossad’s global reputation for norm-breaking international operations and ruthless efficiency—as though it were a murder-for-hire organization, even though assassinations are only a small part of what they do—you may be surprised that Israel’s spies are keenly aware of ethical issues.
But in fact they do see themselves as fighting to protect a democracy with checks and balances and not a prime minister who bullheadedly insists on making all decisions himself.
If you are familiar with the Mossad’s global reputation for norm-breaking international operations and ruthless efficiency, you may be surprised that Israel’s spies are keenly aware of ethical issues.
The Mossad academy, where trainees strive to be accepted into the secret ranks of the espionage service, features a course on “ethical dilemmas.” Instructors, who typically have extensive experience in the field, introduce tough decisions, such as whether to shoot, or “push the button” to detonate a bomb, if there are innocent people near a terrorist target.
There are even lessons centered on why the Mossad, in 1962, recruited a notorious Nazi who had been one of Hitler’s favorite SS officers—Otto Skorzeny—to intimidate German scientists working on a rocket project in Egypt. Even with the current, unprecedented crisis within Israeli society, the security chiefs, known as “the gatekeepers,” have been able to work with Netanyahu, so far. It helped that he has pulled back from firing his defense minister, sacked after he recommended shelving the judicial-system changes.
Israel’s air force bombed its targets this week, raids against Palestinian militants continue, and there is little doubt that missions in Iran have not stopped. It’s worth noting that Mossad commanders, while loyal to each and every prime minister of Israel, have also consistently shown the ability to slow-roll or kill proposed missions while they argue with the political echelon.
There are even lessons centered on why the Mossad, in 1962, recruited a notorious Nazi who had been one of Hitler’s favorite SS officers—Otto Skorzeny.
Yet, often speaking through recently retired Israelis such as A., they feel that they are close to dilemmas over obeying or rejecting a government that lost their respect. Do they follow orders, their own interpretation of law, or, above all, their conscience? The intelligence and military reservists who have joined the nationwide protests—which began in relatively liberal Tel Aviv but have spread to more than 140 locations—say they want a credible and just Supreme Court with the power to overrule decisions made by the prime minister, his Cabinet, or the Knesset.
Netanyahu’s blisteringly controversial changes would allow the Knesset to override court decisions, and it would give the governing coalition the power to install judges from its own political camp. He denies that among his chief goals is to disrupt his own trial, which proceeds in fits and starts.
Israelis working at security agencies are especially alarmed by the decision to establish a national guard, which appears to be a militia to be recruited by one of the most extreme ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, which grew from the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s racist movement. Ben-Gvir, now the national-security minister, was convicted in 2007 of inciting racism and supporting an anti-Arab terrorist organization.
Admirers of Israel around the world have long endured the ethical dilemma of whether to support the country, even with doubts over how it treats and clashes with its stateless Palestinian neighbors. Yet even more damaging to Israel is the sense of ethical distress felt by many of the country’s citizens, who are called upon to sacrifice everything: the spies and soldiers who until now willingly did so to protect the dream and reality of a Jewish-led democracy.
Yossi Melman, a defense-and-intelligence analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and Dan Raviv, a retired CBS News correspondent, are the co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon and other books on Israeli espionage and Israel-U.S. relations. Melman is based in Tel Aviv; Raviv, in Washington
