Several months ago, I posted here news from an Israeli source of the designation of Yitzhak Ilan, 54, to be the next Shabak chief. Israel’s media cannot report his name as it is under gag (the rules state that no one under the rank of agency director can be named publicly, even if they’re long dead). But his identity is known to most of Israel’s reporters. Amir Oren profiled Ilan in today’s Haaretz, showering him with praise from current and former directors. The headline of the story, Who Laughs Last in Shabak, alludes to Ilan’s first name, Yitzhak, deriving from the Hebrew root meaning “to laugh.” The profile appears to be part of a carefully wrought coming-out party to the Israeli public for the director-to-be. Part of burnishing his reputation in the mind of the body politic.
Ilan, currently living in Ashdod, is an immigrant from the Republic of Georgia, who came to Israel in 1973. Oren somewhat ominously notes that Ilan will be the most powerful Georgian ever to have run an intelligence agency since Lavrenti Beria headed the NKVD in Stalin’s (another Georgian native) time.
Ilan joined the Shabak in 1982, recruited for his obvious skills in targeting Soviet spies. After some time, he apparently surprised his bosses by informing them he wished to change his assignment to the Arab sector, considered more “central” to the function of the spy agency. His superiors were reluctant to “waste” his native talents with such a move, but Ilan insisted. He learned Arabic, which became his fifth language after Hebrew, Georgian, Russian and English. He was assigned to investigations, but his then-boss, Avi Dichter, moved him to field work.
Among the accolades showered on Ilan by his former bosses are: sophisticated, creative and master of trickery. Dichter raves:
His character, astonishing. Talented as the devil. Learned in the sciences. A wonderful family.
Among the projects in which he ‘distinguished’ himself in his field work in the southern command were the assassinations of Yihyeh “the Engineer” Ayash in 1996, and the 2002 killing of Raad Carmi. A massive series of retaliatory terror attacks followed Carmi’s murder, but Ilan refuses to see them as that. Instead, he sees the terror attacks as the work of Carmi himself, being planned by him before his death and executed by his lieutenants. I must note here that Israel’s intelligence operatives never concede that their violence makes matters worse and Ilan is no different in his blindness.
More recently, Ilan was the head of the Jewish sector of Shabak and as such responsible for sweeping Jack Teitel‘s crimes under the rug in the usual way Jewish terrorists are treated: he received a designation from a psychiatrist that he is unfit to stand trial. Shabak, ever a creature of routine, follows similar scenarios in investigating and prosecuting both Jews and Arabs. The former are usually found too crazy to face justice, while the latter are always tortured during interrogation which invariably induces a “confession,” which a judge always allows to be admitted into evidence.
Ilan, however, wasn’t so lucky in his interrogation of Chaim Pearlman, also suspected of murdering Palestinians in cold blood. Pearlman walked and has never faced trial. I wonder why Oren’s profile didn’t note any of Ilan’s failures?
Upon his promotion, which awaits the approval of Bibi Netanyahu, Ilan will become the first Georgian to head the agency. He will also have risen to his position in an unorthodox way given that most Shabak chiefs come from the ranks of the IDF’s élite units.
The tragedy of latter-day Israel is that its Yitzhak Ilans are looked up to as heroes. Where skills of torture and murder are what qualifies a man to be the head of the nation’s domestic intelligence service. When peace eventually comes, it is the Ilans of Israel (and their Palestinian counterparts as well) who will be summoned by either a Reconciliation Commission or court to account for their crimes.
I know that the most well know oxymoron is “Army Intelligence”, and that the army really isn’t an Intelligence Agency (in more ways than one). However, how could we forget John Shalikashvili (link to en.wikipedia.org) when bringing up powerful Georgians?
Yes, off topic I know, but the chances of the Shabak promoting anyone who will actually make a difference to the good are slim to none, so we might as well resort to some humour on the subject.
As the saying goes, military intelligence is to intelligence as military music is to music and as military justice is to justice.
Please help fill in the gap in my education but I still don’t understand the rules “Progressives” live by. You made several snide remarks about Ilan being of Georgian origin, so apparently it is permitted for “Progressives” to make racial generalizations about Georgians and Russians or at least about Georgian Jews.
However I am sure if I were to say something like “these Arab revolutions will never amount to anything because Arabs are primitive and do not understand democracy” I would be excoriated for making such a “racist” comment. I recall you even apologized to Shirin for saying that there was something called “Arab folk music” which she thought was offensive. Please clarify.
I made NO snide comments about his Georgian origin. The comparison to Beria & Stalin is fr Amir Oren’s original article. So your quarrel is with him.
following the cell phone hit on “the Engineer” there was also a wave of suicide bombers, that helped bibi closed the gap in the 96 elections.
Richard – I couldn’t find a link to the article from Haaretz, and couldn’t find it by google – could you oblige?
I’ll post a jpg of it. As of yesterday it was only available in print.
UPDATE: Here’s the link to the article.
Yes. People don’t realize just how political the nature of Israeli intelligence is. It’s not just about security. It’s about ideology & partisan politics too.