How Israeli Intelligence Fabricated a Frequently-Repeated Myth to Justify Tel Aviv's Aggression

[DogPoundPup]

All of the suffering in Gaza -- indeed, all of the suffering endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation for the last eight years -- could have been avoided if Israel negotiated a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat when it had the chance, in 2001.

What chance? The official Israeli position is that there was no chance, "no partner for peace." That’s what Israeli leaders heard from their Military Intelligence (MI) service in 2000 after the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David. Arafat scuttled those talks, MI told the leaders, because he was planning to set off a new round of violence, a second intifada.

Now former top officials of MI say the whole story, painting Arafat as a terrorist out to destroy Israel, was an intentional fiction. That’s the most explosive finding in an investigative report just published in Israel’s top newspaper, Ha’aretz, by one of its finest journalists, Akiva Eldar.

Tale of Two Tales

Much like our own CIA, Eldar’s sources say, Israeli military intelligence has two versions of every story. MI analysts give their findings to government policymakers in oral reports that simply tell the political leaders what they want to hear. Meanwhile, the analysts keep the truth secret, filed away in written documents, waiting to be pulled out to cover MI’s posterior if the government’s policies turned out to be failures.

Much of the information in the Ha’aretz report comes from Ephraim Lavie, an honors graduate of Israel’s National Security College who rose through the ranks in MI's research section and eventually became head of MI's Palestinian research unit during the era of the Camp David talks. "Defining Arafat and the PA as 'terrorist elements' was the directive of the political echelon," said Lavie. "The unit's written analyses were presenting completely different assessments, based on reliable intelligence material."

The idea that "there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about," simply because Arafat rejected the Israeli offer at Camp David, just wasn't true. But it was what the politicians wanted to hear.

Continue reading...
http://www.alternet.org/audits/119488/how_israel_used_deception_to_justify_its_gaza_aggression_/?page=entire

[EFerrari]

1. And this lie was repeated over and over and over. Unbelievable.

Dr. Shlaim mentioned something about this the other day but I thought I'd misheard him.

[azurnoir]

2. This part should be of note

Tragically, as the events of the past two weeks have shown, the level of force just goes on escalating. Hamas, like any political party, has both moderate and intransigent wings. Israel’s policies have consistently undermined the moderates, who would want to pursue negotiations if they saw any chance. Israel has denied them that chance, leaving violence or surrender as the only options.

from what we hear in the M$M and even other sources Hamas all of Hamas is militant the fact that there is a more moderate wing almost never mentioned, why one must wonder was this wing not bolstered after Hamas won in the parlimentary elections in 2006

[pelsar]

3. because the moderate wing

was busy with shooting missiles into israel......while the militant wing would shoot at the border crossings when they opened

[azurnoir]

4. I would laugh if the situation were not so serious

so are you saying that all Hamas members are involved with shooting rockets?

[EFerrari]

5. I still book stand up comedy. If you have a tape of your ten minutes,

I'll be happy to check it out. :)

[DogPoundPup]

6. Isn't that just so similar to the 'Islamofascist' propaganda slogan the neo-cons

had going not so long ago?

so many similarities in this Israeli 'war' and bush's iraqmire.

[redqueen]

7. So does this mean Hamas *isn't* a terrorist organization?

Well... imagine that.

[Malikshah]

8. Great piece. One hopes folks will read it and stop parroting

the talking points.

Dennis Ross and Bill Clinton need to be called to the carpet on this as well.