26 thoughts on “Shin Bet Ex-Chief Diskin Eviscerates Netanyahu, Barak – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. I doubt this interview with the-man-with-the-blood-on-his-hands will prove be the eye-opener-to-Israelis it’s meant to be. It adds but some colourful details to what most Israelis have already gathered about the characters leading them. An eye-opener is no use for those who choose blindness.

    It might serve, though, as an eye opener to some Americans. American Jews in particular.

    “The Americans too, sadly, do not exert their influence in the region to make the parties move forward and that is how we are where we are. … “if the Americans want it badly enough, the president will use his leverage and Bibi will fold.”

    Enough said.

  2. ” “They [not Bibi] didn’t always make the right decision, but you knew where they were coming from – Israel’s interests trumped anything else,” he said.” Well, gosh. (Why didn’t these guys should Bibi down while they were in office? You know, while in office, people are supposed to act as employees, not as ardent individualists. Think of USA’s generals commenting, while in office, on America’s wars.)

    Might the USA learn from this about the various pro-Israel hawks hewing to AIPAC’s line (for their own purposes, such as re-election, rather than in the USA’s interests)? Keep tuned as the Chuck Hagel battle helps us sort out this important question.

  3. This issue reminds me with what Miko Peled said about his father and the rest of the Generals who were pushing so hard for the 1967 war to satisfy their own egos…so what is new here? The book by Miko is called “The General’s Son”……

    I think that one time you end up losing everything when you keep following your ego!

  4. Phil Weiss saw the film in NY back in october, and wrote an article about it. He says:
    “The men [the six former Shin Bet directors] say that Palestinians committed acts of terror due to political causes israeli leaders refuse to address, that the Israeli methods of attacking the symptoms are themselves a form of terrorism, and Israel should talk to Hamas”.

    “In the takeaway moment of the film Avraham Shalom, a ruthless former official, now old and reflective tells filmmaker Dror Moreh that the Israelis are really no different from the Nazis in their occupations of Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia”
    http://mondoweiss.net/2012/10/israeli-film-the-gatekeepers-brings-truths-about-occupation-that-palestinians-are-vilified-for-saying.html

  5. ” Israelis are really no different from the Nazis in their occupations of Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia”

    The occupations are quite difference. Days after the occupation of the West Bank, Israel tried to give the West Bank back to the local Arabs in the form of a Statelet or autonomy. Germany didn’t make any such offer.

    By a 1940 treaty, Germany never occupied all of France. The southern half of France was ‘Free France’.

    The West Bank was occupied only after Jordan attacked Israel. The King of Jordan hand received numerous warnings not to attack.

        1. I don’t know about making things up, but you’re claims are right twice a day like a broken watch.

          Just reading the first sentence of the source you offered indicates that Israel considered an offer of autonomy but abandoned it. So why would you put this forward as a claim of something Israel offered seriously? Besides in 1967 which Palestinian could speak on behalf of all native Palestinians other than the PLO, who Israel naturally would’ve wanted to ignore?

          1. Richard. I will summarize Reuben Pedatzur’s findings.
            Immediately after the Six Day War, an initiative came from the highest offices in Israel to find ‘peacemakers’ amongst the West Bank Arabs, i.e. the Palestinian Option. This effort was made because Israel didn’t want to keep the West Bank and because most of Israel’s government no longer wished to deal with the King of Jordan.
            Some members of Eshkol’s government supported the Palestinian Option, others did not. Nonetheless, an earnest effort was made to find peacemakers among the effendi class as well from among the fellahin.
            Israel was prepared to offer cooperating West Bank Arabs a ‘Statelet’ or some kind of Autonomy. One Cabinet member who supported the Palestinian Option wanted to allow the Palestinian ‘Statelet’ a quay at Haifa harbor!

            Bottom line. No takers. Israel could not find a suitable number of peacemakers from among the West Bank locals.

          2. THere is a difference between a half-baked scheme that a few ministers are deluded enough to believe could work if they can only find the right Palestinian patsy to take up the offer; and a plan worked out carefully that skilled individuals believe will work because it is realistic & reasonable and might find a response from the other side. This plan was unfortunately the former, not the latter.

            The problem with Israel since 1967 & before is that it always wants to control the outcome, to work an angle. Instead it should for once try to think of what will work, what will allow the other side to respond favorably. Keeping the West Bank was a monumental tragedy. I sensed it at the time, though of course there was much nationalist, messianic euphoria that had swept over Israel and the Diaspora. We all were taken in to one extent or another. Well not all, perhaps the Matzpenists & the like weren’t. But most of the rest of us were.

            Joel, you pleasantly surprise me. You read Reuven Pedatzur. Good for you. Sorry if that sounds condescending. I didn’t mean it to. Israeli nationalists are not usually fans of his.

          3. ” Why would anyone in their right mind do that unless they detested Jordan more than they distrusted the Israelis.”

            The Palestinians detested the King of Jordan enough to try and overthrow him in 1970. The King proceeded to slaughter thousands of Palestinians in Jordan during ‘Black September’.

            I’ve read Pedaztur, Milstein and Zeev Maoz. I own all of Finkelstein’s I/P books and Norm and I had years of vociferous email exchanges before I chanced to find Tikkun Olam.

          4. You’re confusing two different issues. Palestinians living in the West Bank had no reason to hate the king. Palestinians living in Jordan and the PLO of course hated the king because they sought to overthrow him.

          5. Palestinians living in the West Bank assassinated King Hussein’s grandfather, Abdullah I, largely because of Abdullah’s rapprochement with the young State of Israel.

            West Bank Palestinians hated King Hussein when he tried to restrain Fatah’s attacks on Israel from Jordanian soil.

          1. From the Haaretz article I linked:

            ‘ [Yigal] Alon claimed that the only logical solution that could be an answer to Israel’s security needs in the eastern sector was the establishment of a Palestinian state. “I am taking the maximum possibility. Not a canton, not an autonomous region, but an independent Arab state agreed on between us and them in an enclave surrounded by Israeli territory – independent even in its foreign policy.”‘

            Prime Minister of Israel Levi Eshkol personally offered the local Arabs their State, or an Autonomy.

            ‘At the beginning of February 1968, Eshkol decided to hold a series of clandestine talks with leaders from the territories. These talks went on until September. He tried to clarify with his interlocutors the possibility of leading the process in the direction of setting up an autonomy in the West Bank. However, when Eshkol mentioned in a conversation with Hikmet al-Masri and Walid Shak’a from Nablus the idea of bringing about an agreement between Israel and the residents of the West Bank, al-Masri told him the problem would have to be solved with the entire Arab world. “If you claim that you can’t act as Palestinians, then we have reached deadlock,” Eshkol responded.

            David Kimche was only an an Army Lieutenant when these negotiations occurred.
            ‘Reasonable government figures’ included the than Prime Minister of Israel and General Alon, the most politically powerful man in Israel at the time.

            The fault lie with the local Arabs, not with Israel.

          2. Nonsense. Now you’re back to your same old bull. No Palestinian, who had been governed by Jordan since 1948, would arrogate to himself the power to declare himself well rid of Jordan only to take on Israel as his new master. Why would anyone in their right mind do that unless they detested Jordan more than they distrusted the Israelis.

            What Israel was trying to do was the same old British divide & conquer routine. You don’t trust Jordan, so you try to create a little bantustan, or “statelet” as you aptly put it, that would act as a buffer between you and Jordan. Israel tried the same thing in southern Lebanon with the SLA. It hoped Hamas would serve as a buttress against Fatah and welcomed the creation of the Islamist group, until it became a Frankenstein monster that went outside Israeli control.

  6. There was a view in some quarters that Netanyahu was deeply influenced by his father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu. This rightist historian protested vociferously against the UN Resolution of 1947 dividing Palestine. His views were allegedly even too extreme for the forerunner of Likud. Netanyahu, so this theory held, would not dare to “sacrifice” part of Eretz Yisrael as long as the old man was alive. But he died more than 8 months ago (at the age of 102) and has it made much difference?

    1. But he did “sacrifice” part of Eretz Yisrael when the old man was alive – Hebron, 1996.
      Sorry for debunking your post,
      Nimrod, from the alternate Israeli universe, where half truths are considered as lies.

  7. Joel, Richard is right. If there was any offer it was soon abandoned (and before “the three noes of Khartoum”). By mid August 1967 the Israeli cabinet had adopted far reaching plans for settlement of the West Bank. I have written extensively about this here: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/805&page=3
    (last posts of that particular thread on p.4 of the comments).

    1. As per the Haaretz article I linked, direct and secret negotiations between the Prime Minister’s Office and local West Bank Arabs continued through September 1948. The Khartoum Conference was in late 1967.

      1. I think you mean “September 1967,” not 1948.

        Are you really claiming these discussions were with the “Prime Minister’s Office” when you’ve said they involved a few IDF officers who were lieutenants? I think it gives them more credence & weight than they deserve.

        1. The Haaretz article says that Prime Minister Eshkol himself had numerous discussions with West Bank notables through Sept. 1948.

          Lt. Kimche began ‘fieldwork’ in mid-1947 to try and find peacemakers.

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