Ex-Shin Bet head backs Bennett for obtaining info on tunnels
Yuval Diskin says that if economy minister took it upon himself to go out to the field and get informed, he did the right thing
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Even if Economy Minister Naftali Bennett did skirt official channels to get information about the threat of Hamas’s Gaza-Israel terror tunnels, he did the right thing, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said Wednesday.
Diskin’s statement came a day after Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon lashed out at ministers for second-guessing the government’s management of the conflict this summer with Hamas, detailing that he had disciplined a former officer who leaked information to Bennett about the network of cross-border tunnels that allowed Hamas gunmen to infiltrate Israel.
“The fact that cabinet minister Bennett decided not to rely on existing information transmission structures, took the initiative, went down to the field, studied the data, came prepared for the cabinet session and even challenged the prime minister and defense minister — to me, it is praiseworthy, especially if this was the main reason that the tunnel threat was discussed seriously, which resulted in the destruction of many of them,” Diskin wrote on Facebook.
Israel initially balked at waging a ground war in Gaza, only sending in troops after some lawmakers insisted that infantry troops were needed to destroy the tunnel network.
Diskin further asserted that based on the fact that the tunnel threat was never brought to the attention of the public or the security cabinet during Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, “it can be assessed that in all likelihood, Bennett acted correctly because without his efforts the matter would not have come up for discussion, as the prime minister and defense minister were trying to steer the discussion toward a ceasefire without a ground operation to destroy the tunnels.”
Bennett, a member of the inner security cabinet who heads the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home party, was an outspoken critic of how Ya’alon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conducted the Gaza war.
Speaking to Channel 2 news Tuesday, Bennett stopped short of accusing Netanyahu and Ya’alon of withholding information from the cabinet, calling the slow trickle of information a “natural” part of the process.
“In the cabinet, because of the [short] amount of time there is, we don’t get all the information; this is natural,” he said.
However, he also insisted that as a member of the key security cabinet, he has the right and obligation to seek information from other sources besides what is presented in the cabinet sessions.
“I’m a veteran of the Second Lebanon War, and I left there with the heavy impression that the political echelon does not get the true picture,” Bennett, a former commando in the IDF, said. “I will never let that happen again.”
Without pointing fingers, he criticized the fact that the operation against Hamas — prior to the order for ground troops to enter Gaza — was seemingly based on the assumption that “Hamas does not want to use the tunnels; Hamas does not intend to use the tunnels.”
Bennett’s statements in cabinet meetings about the IDF’s findings in Gaza reportedly raised suspicions that led Ya’alon to order Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to investigate whether Bennett was receiving information from IDF sources that did not come through regular Defense Ministry channels.
Defense officials accused Bennett of opening “a private, unapproved channel” to gain information about IDF findings and deployments.
Bennett was “using military information for political ends,” Ya’alon charged at the time.
Senior defense officials are charging that former IDF chief rabbi Avichai Rontzki put on his reservist’s uniform, including brigadier-general insignia — despite not having been called up — and wandered among IDF units in the south during the fighting, then passed information he heard from soldiers and commanders to Bennett.
Both Rontzki and Bennett have denied the allegations, with Bennett insisting that he only spoke with Rontzki once, about the morale of the soldiers in the field.
In addition to praising Bennett, Diskin also lashed out at the prime minister and defense minister for their tight control of information and insisted that the public must demand to know whether they “sought a ceasefire even though they knew the severity of the offensive tunnel threat and didn’t bring it to the attention of the cabinet.”
However, he also condemned any leaks of unauthorized information by soldiers or officers and called for harsh punishments should allegations be proven true.
The Times of Israel Community.