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Haaretz has just published a story that will certainly disappear due to gag order. In it, Anshel Pfeffer writes that Gabi Ashkenazi prepared a video celebrating his achievements as chief of staff, which was screened at a party marking his final day on the job. What is extraordinary about the video is that among the successes of his time in office it credits the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor and the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has never publicly acknowledged responsibility for either.

So either Ashkenazi has a monumental need to amplify himself and his heroic accomplishments before he faces the glare of police klieg lights; or he’s violated elemental secrecy rules regarding these two events (or both). It’s possible he got approval from the censor to include this material in his video, but it seems highly unlikely. To me it seems like a monumental screw-up. But maybe Israel has finally decided to ‘fess up.

Attendees at the party included former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan who also appeared in the video congratulating Ashkenazi for doin’ a helluva job. I wonder what Dagan thought of these revelations…

Rotter, one of Israel’s major online forums, where some of my work is posted and linked (and heckled) has allowed the image to the left to be published in their Scoops section, but removed two attempts to link to this post. What are they afraid of? I guess Rabbi Rotter is still a little sore at what I wrote about his son, Meir, who harrasses Sheikh Jarrah protesters regularly as a police officer in East Jerusalem.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong as Haaretz has posted the story online. Which goes to show that when you’re the chief of staff, even a corrupt one, you can get away with a helluva lot more than when you’re Anat Kamm.