I’ll tell you something that no Israeli will ever read or watch currently in their domestic media: the favored candidate to succeed Yoram Cohen as the next Shin Bet chief is former settler, Roni Alsheikh (trade nickname, “The Fox”). Officers and agents of Israeli intelligence agencies aren’t named publicly. This is the only media source which has named him (and a number of other previous directors-to-be as well). Alsheikh is Orthodox and from Mizrahi ethnic background. Those aren’t the usual origins of most former Shabak directors. Haaretz’s Sefi Rachlevsky said about him that he makes Col. Ofer Winter, the Butcher of Khuza’a, “look quite moderate.” He also called the Shabak official “messianic.”
Israeli intelligence bosses usually serve a single five-year term, which may be renewed for another year. I’m not certain why Cohen won’t be serving an extension. It could be because he hasn’t found favor in the eyes of Sara Netanyahu, who scuttled the candidacy of the leading candidate last time around, Yitzhak Ilan. That led to Cohen. Whatever the reason, it’s well-known in media circles that Alsheikh is favored to get the top job this time.
That hasn’t stopped agency insiders and former insiders from lobbying for their own candidates and interests. Yesterday, Walla! published a breathless “scoop” (Hebrew) claiming to detail the secret goings-on in Shabak’s fight against terror. In reality, it was an interview with former Shin Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, who is an MK from the center-right, Yesh Atid. Either he wanted to make known is distaste for Alsheikh; or to weigh in with his opinion that the next head of the Shin Bet should be a former field agent (as Peri and all previous directors have been) and not a former interrogator (as Alsheikh is). In the intelligence hierarchy (both the Mossad and Shin Bet) the glory goes to the field operatives: the ones recruiting and running agents in hostile environments, which offer the gravest dangers and risks. Naturally, those who’ve served in such capacity take umbrage when those they believe aren’t worthy get recognition and the top job.
But before getting to the real point of the interview, to lay down his markers in the fight over the next agency chief, he has to tell a few war stories about his covert ops. These are the stories guys tell of the fish that got away; or that they brag about if they caught it. Except in this case, they’re bragging about their skill at murdering Palestinian militants. This type of story is quite common and I’ve been reading them for years. Sometimes the interviewee is anonymous if he’s a current minister or official; and sometimes he’s identified, as is Peri in this story.
Readers should keep in mind, as with much reporting on Israeli national security matters, that they’re only hearing one side. They’re hearing Peri tell us about the multiple terror acts which his victims supposedly perpetrated. But the reporter asks for no proof, nor is he offered any. In Israel, the security forces are gods. They are always taken at their word. For example, you will almost never see the word “alleged” used in news reports about security arrests or targeted killings. The victims are always unqualified terrorists, their guilt presumed merely from the word of the Shabak.
Returning to Peri’s lobbying against Alsheikh, you’ll see it couched carefully in this passage:
Past Shabak field agents have tried to identify the common denominator for the role, from which arise many future agency chiefs: the field operative must be humble, possess a sensitive type of intelligence, be ethical, and able deal with great mental burdens, and act under pressure, but also be skeptical, and able to engage in quick analysis.
Former Shabak field agents speak consistently about the ethical aspect and professional integrity concerning human life–of both the Israeli civilians whom they protect and the spies they “run” in the field. The ethical dilemmas are quite complicated and unending. That’s why former Shabak chiefs claim the Shabak Law [which is supposed to govern how the agency operates and limits to its behavior], which details clear rules of conduct and detailed guidelines, is much more than a compass which points out the various powers which the field agent has at his disposal to stop terror attacks.
Even in extreme moments during which the agent much make critical decisions, not everything is permitted. Restraint of power is a concept heard a great deal during the training of field agents…
That Peri’s account is self-serving and flattering to himself and the agency is beyond question. Among other things, the reporter says that the field agent must never use violence against his spies, but rather his relationship must always be based on “personal connection.” The agent must also not only speak Arabic fluently and recite the Koran by heart, he must “see the beauty” in Islam. All this while planning to murder its adherents. Do you get the impression that these people must either harbor split personalities or be masters of duplicity or self-deception? But it’s one thing to lie to oneself; it’s quite another to lie to an entire nation and have its citizens take you at your word as a man of honor.
In a subsequent passage, Peri describes the coordinated effort the Shabak makes among professionals with varied skill sets all working together to combat terror. If you read carefully, there’s one prominent Shabak unit omitted:
Shabak rests on the broad shoulders of field agents, whose decisions and assessments hold great weight in combating terror. The agent is engaged in recruiting and running spies and composing a full picture built from many pieces. But the agent isn’t alone in the work of amassing intelligence. Alongside him toil the special operations officers and SIGINT, who can gather vital intelligence from telephone calls, text messages, photographs, chat messages, and e-mail. At headquarters there are also desk officers who centralize the information and aid in building the intelligence puzzle.
Yes, you guessed it. There are no interrogators in this world. No one does the dirty work of breaking down prisoners, tearing them limb from limb. Of course, the omission is deliberate and the insult intentional.
But there may be another point Peri is trying to make. Relatively speaking, field agents have “cleaner hands” than interrogators. By emphasizing the ethical component, and limitations on torture and cruelty, Peri may be implying that interrogators like Alsheikh have dirty hands which shouldn’t be running the ship.
According to a confidential Israeli security source, Alsheikh, who is currently deputy Shabak chief, and “Netzer,” who is the chief of interrogations, are livid at this article. They see it as part of a political campaign by Shabak insiders and ex-insiders, mostly Ashkenazi, secular and more liberal politically (though in today’s Israeli political climate, that term is relative), to derail Alsheikh’s candidacy.
As for me, I don’t know which is worse: having the guy who recruits Palestinian agents through threats or blackmail be the boss; or the guy who tears a suspect’s nails out and shakes him till his brain pan rattles in his skull.
Peri’s influence in the appointment process is questionable. He’s not a government minister and his party will likely not participate in the next governing coalition. But as part of the jockeying for influence among the political elites, this makes for interesting tea-leaf reading.
‘The guy who tears a suspect’s nails out’
Really? I challenge you to bring evidence of any Palestinian tortured this way. Pure wanton lie to make a point and is a slander.
You know that the methods are different and include mostly causing discomfort and/or psychological methods
@ Shmuel: No, you’re probably right. Shabak knows that disfiguring prisoners physically leaves physical scars which judges would see. They’re quite expert at use of torture that only leaves psychological, not physical marks. Yr claim that torture is mere “discomfort” is sheer disingenuousness. Let’s examine some of Major Netzer’s past “work product:”
The only thing Netzer feels sorry for is the chair, which likely broke amidst such thrusting back & forth.
UPDATE: I should’ve waited before writing the above since it appears that Shabak doesn’t exactly tear a suspect’s nails out, but if they’re young enough & impressionable enough it merely threatens to do it to scare the shit out of the poor victims. In this case, the threat of doing it is almost as disgusting & heinous as doing it. I expect an acknowledgement from you, as an officer of the court, that you too object to this tactic:
Next time, you might want to do 30 seconds of Google research before falsely accusing me of slander. And I remind you this is the first result I found after 10 seconds of searching. Imagine what might be found with a more thorough search. And hey, let’s not forget the time Amos Horev actually castrated a Palestinian suspect or Doron Zahavi raped another Lebanese suspect. Would you classify that as more or less heinous than tearing someone’s nails out? Horev was lauded in song and promoted to be an IDF general in his storied career. Yes, among the great heroes of Israeli Zionism: Amos the Castrator!!
Shmuel: “You know that the methods are different and include mostly causing discomfort and/or psychological methods”
Just “discomfort” eh- just “psychological methods” eh – tell your cat about that.
In a former thread I quoted Ari Shavit who seemed to have discovered qualities in Netanyahu that had remained hidden to most other commentators. His recent book “My Promised Land” has been judged, inter alia, “a conservative manifest that fits well into the current wave of Zionist romanticism that Israel is experiencing.” (Noam Sheizav)
But here is an earlier Shavit (New York Review of Books, July 18, 1991), one who hadn’t played footsie yet with the Ashkenaze political elite, reporting on his experiences as a reservist in the Israeli prison camp “Gaza Beach”- a camp that was horrific enough (but according to Shavit the other prison camps for Palestinians were even worse). Shavit says that this enterprise with watch towers bore an uncomfortable similarity to concentration camps, a comparison which he had always resisted and which he deemed to be incorrect – but, he says, which suggested itself because unfortunately there wasn’t enough” lack of similarity”. He then goes on to say:
“Maybe the Shin Bet is to blame for this; for the arrests it makes and for what it does to those arrested. For almost every night, after it has managed, in its interrogations, to “break” a certain number of young men, the Shin Bet delivers to the paratroopers in the city or to the border guard professionals a list with the names of the friends of the young men. And so I would see their cars go out almost every night to the city, which is under curfew, to arrest the people who are said to endanger the security of the state.
And I would see the soldiers come back with children of fifteen or sixteen. The children grit their teeth. Their eyes bulge from their sockets. In not a few cases they have already been beaten. Even S., who owns a plant in the occupied territories, can’t believe his eyes. Have we come to this? he asks. That the Shin Bet goes after kids like these? And soldiers crowd together in the “reception room” to look at them when they undress. To look at them in their underwear, to look at them as they tremble with fear. And sometimes they kick them; one kick more, before they put on their new prison clothes. Sometimes they just curse.
Or maybe the doctor is to blame. You wake him in the middle of the night to treat one of those just brought; a young man, barefoot, wounded, who looks as if he’s having an epileptic fit, who tells you that they beat him just now on the back and stomach and over the heart. There are ugly red marks all over his body. The doctor turns to the young man and shouts at him. In a loud, raging voice he says: May you die! And then he turns to me with a laugh: May they all die!
Or maybe the screams are to blame. At the end of the watch, on your way from the tent to the shower, you sometimes hear horrible screams. You walk in your shorts and clogs, a towel slung over your shoulder, toilet kit in hand, and from the other side of the galvanized tin fence of the interrogation section come hair-raising human screams. Literally hair-raising.
From the various human rights organizations you know that they have no “closets” for torture here in the Gaza facility. (Other detention centers have them in abundance.) So you ask yourself what is happening here five yards from you. Are they using the “banana tie”? Or just plain beating?[*]
You don’t know. But you know that from this moment on you won’t be able to rest. Because no more than fifty yards from the bed where you try to sleep, eighty yards from the mess hall where you try to eat, people scream. And they scream because other people, wearing uniforms like your own, do things to them that cause them to scream.”
You know things “causing discomfort”, mainly “ psychological methods”- and that in a camp that, according to Shavit, didn’t even have “closets” for torture whereas other centers had “them in abundance”. One wonders what effect the “psychological methods” had there.
@Arie Brand: 1991 was way back before Ari Shavit & his faux lib Zios were mugged by reality and the Second Intifada and decided they preferred the Zio villa in the (regional) jungle.
Richard, I haven’t got hold of Shavits’ book (My Promised Land) yet but I understand that the earlier NRB-piece I quoted from has been included in it. This suggests the question that, if he regarded the nakba as lamentable but necessary, he now also sees these prison camps in this light.
Without the involvement of the international community Israel would remain captive by a “security” elite which sees little merit in abiding by international law and protecting human rights. The identity of the next GSS head is merely a symptom of the dire state of Israel today.