Ex-security officials lambaste Netanyahu

In a widening offensive against the six-year rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a group of former security commanders criticize him for allegedly ruining the bi-lateral ties with the United States, mishandling the summer’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and bungling the country’s approach to the international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

“You and only you turned the United States from an ally to an enemy,” former Mossad head Shabtai Shavit says of Netanyahu at a Tel Aviv press conference organized by Commanders for Israel’s Security.

He further asserts that Israel’s position regarding the international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program has been “one big mistake,” which has already “caused damage to the State of Israel and I’m sure it will cause difficulties and damage in the future.”

Calling the case “so simple,” he adds that there is a common enemy – Iran – that has brought the world powers together “and we, the smallest superpower among those other powers, we find ourselves outside the game,” which means that rather than “joining forces together to represent the interests of the state from within the coalition that fights the bad guys, we find ourselves fighting against our greatest allies.”

Pushed to widen his critique to recent events, Shavit adds that the killing of Jihad Mughniyeh on the Syrian Golan in January was “stupidity” and that as someone who was well acquainted with Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military commander and father of Jihad, who was assassinated in 2008, “I know the difference between the two of them.”

The father, he says, was “head and shoulders above the rest,” an enemy that had to be taken into account at every turn; “and the son — no.”

The strike that killed Jihad Mughniyeh and an Iranian brigadier-general was reportedly carried out by Israel on January 18 and led to a Hezbollah response that killed two Israeli soldiers 10 days later and could have led to a wider, unwanted conflagration, he said.

Finally, addressing the charge that was voiced against the former commanders that they are no longer in the loop and therefore do not have the information necessary to make informed judgement, Shavit says that “those who say we don’t know are either vicious persons or jerks.”

The former Mossad head is joined onstage by a former senior Shin Bet commander and several former general-rank officers in the IDF.

Brig. Gen. (res) Giora Inbar says “Mr. Netanyahu, speeches without action do not provide security.”

Brig. Gen. Asher Levy, who served in the War of Independence as one of Ariel Sharon’s commanders, says that “the central problem with Netanyahu is that he does not initiate. He is always reacting.”

He charges that this was the case throughout the 50-day war in the summer in Gaza and says “a prime minister must initiate…he does not do that because he is unable to make decisions and that is the problem.”

— Mitch Ginsburg