Mossad’s Former Chief Calls the War in Gaza ‘Useless’

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It's been 100 days since the attack by Hamas in southern Israel.

100 days of grief and protest.

Israel and Hamas have been at war for six months.

It's been exactly a year.

One year after the horror.

It's been nearly 600 days since Israel's war on Gaza began.

600 days since Hamas militants staged their murderous attack on October 7th.

600 days and they are still holding 58 Israeli hostages.

The war continues day after day, month after month.

Now over a year and a half old though, it feels like it's at a new breaking point.

In Gaza, concerns of famine grow, which is why chaos broke out at the opening of an aid distribution site in Gaza that's run by a U.S.-backed group.

Israel imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza on the 2nd of March.

This week, there's a temporary ceasefire proposal on the table.

The potential deal involves releasing 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 dead.

Hamas did not explicitly accept or reject the offer, but it said it was prepared to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 dead ones in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

Israel has already agreed to it, and Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Hamas that it must agree or, quote, be annihilated.

But Hamas leaders are so far hesitating.

The main sticking point is the same sticking point as always.

Hamas doesn't want a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day ceasefire.

They want a promise of an end to the war.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

This is Radio Atlantic.

And that's a question a lot of people have.

When will the war end?

What will it take?

And what happens to Gaza when it does?

I happened to be in Tel Aviv visiting a sick relative when news came out about this latest ceasefire proposal.

I haven't been here since October 7th, and when I arrived, I was struck by one obvious thing.

In the U.S.

papers, I read about what Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is or isn't doing, or what other officials in the Israeli government are saying about the war.

In Tel Aviv, what the government wants or says seems irrelevant, or at least totally drowned out by what the people want.

The gap between the government and the people seems enormous.

The country feels like it's choking on despair and frustration with its own government and the lack of an end to this war.

To be clear, what drives the protests here is different than in the U.S.

Protesters only rarely hold up pictures of, say, children killed in Gaza.

Mostly, they spotlight the hostages and the government's betrayal in leaving them there.

And I didn't have to go far to see this discontent.

My plane landed, and the flight attendant, in a smooth flight attendant voice, said, Takhsir Tam Abaita Achshav, bring them home now.

And then the plane burst into applause.

I went to an ATM machine at the airport, and as my money shuffled out, an automated voice said, bring them home safely.

I arrived at my aunt's apartment building, and a big sticker covered the entryway.

Netanyahu is dangerous.

Her street has been renamed by another sticker, Netanyahu Traitor Street.

I happened to arrive at the end of May on the 600th day of the war.

I was taking a bus that day, and the driver stopped in the middle of the road and said, sorry, can't move.

Everyone get off.

Because the streets were clogged with hundreds of protesters, most of them wearing shirts that in large block letters in English said N-O-W, now, as in bring back the hostages, now, but also end this war now.

600 days of darkness, he says.

600 days, and there is no light at the end of this war.

Enough of this war, someone shouts in the background.

How long will we live in a country that's at war?

Bring all of them back now!

Whoa!

So those are the streets.

And there's one more thing boiling over.

Something fairly new in Israeli society, which makes this anger at Netanyahu in the war seem wider than usual.

It's coming from the military itself.

Veterans of the Israeli Defense Force, pilots, medics, military leaders en masse from everywhere have been asking Netanyahu to stop the war.

In April, more than 250 veterans of the Mossad, which is Israel's equivalent of the CIA, signed an open letter asking Netanyahu to bring the hostages home, even if that means ending the war.

Spies don't usually sign open anything.

This letter included three former Mossad chiefs and while I was in Israel I sat down with one of them.

We are already 600 days after

October the 7th

and we have five divisions deployed in Gaza

and I don't see an end to that war.

It's useless.

It's accomplishing nothing.

Nothing.

I'm not talking about those people who are living or dying in Gaza.

I'm talking about Israel.

From an Israel point of view, it's a waste of time, what we're doing here.

Waste of lives.

Waste of money.

Wasting the future.

This is Tamir Pardot.

He's 72 and retired now, but he spent his life in the Mossad, which he ran between 2011 and 2016.

He was running the agency when it began placing booby-trapped walkie-talkies into Lebanon and reportedly planned a string of high-profile assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

In other words, he spent his life fighting against terrorism, exactly what Netanyahu's government claims to be doing in Gaza.

So in theory, he very much believes in the mission.

The responsibilities of Ghamosad is to avoid

our enemies to obtain nuclear weapons, whoever they are, wherever they are.

My responsibility was to stop any terrorist attempt against Israelis

that are outside the state of Israel

or from terrorists that are trying to hit us from abroad.

That description, vague as it is, cements a certain image of deterring terrorism, but not endless fighting.

One thing Pardot said to me over and over again is something he thinks Netanyahu has forgotten.

War is not the end game.

At the end of the day, when I'm thinking about my children, my grandchildren, I would like that they're going to live in a safe country, but in a peaceful country.

And in order to achieve peace, from time to time you have to use your sword.

But don't think that you can solve the problem with your sword.

What's happening here now in Israel?

It's insane.

The exact meaning of insanity changes depending on who you ask.

For many in the international community, even longtime allies of Israel, it's the situation on the ground in Gaza.

The killing of civilians, the failure to deliver aid, the widespread starvation of innocent people.

For many in Israel, it's the hostages.

A promise between Israeli citizens and their government has always been that they will keep them safe.

And if one of them should end up in danger, the government would rescue them.

600 days has crushed that promise.

For Pardot, it's practical.

War requires a goal.

And Pardot doesn't believe that Netanyahu's stated goal of destroying Hamas is a realistic one.

Certainly not if you also want to bring the hostages home.

So today is the 600th day that the hostages are held.

There's protests everywhere.

I was surprised when I got here in Tel Aviv, all the streets say

they've been renamed Net Tanyahu is a traitor street.

You know, there are posters.

It's not, it's a very

common position here to criticize Net Tanyahu.

Why aren't the hostages home, in your opinion?

Whose fault is that?

Our fault, Israel's fault.

On October the 8th,

it was 24 hours after October the 7th,

and I said

to my friends within the old boys club, I said,

bring the hostages home now.

Don't start a war.

Negotiate and bring the 251 hostages home now.

Then solve the problem.

That was the biggest mistake of the state of Israel because those hostages should have been released weeks after.

You cannot defeat the Hamas and bring the hostages back the same

and the same priority.

You have to choose.

And our government

preferred

to kill

than to bring the hostages.

Now, as someone whose job it was to fight terrorists, why is it so clear to you that the first priority shouldn't have been to fight the terrorists?

Because

those

people,

children, women, civilian,

and soldiers as well

were kidnapped because of our fault as a state.

The armed forces in every country

is responsible for the safety

of those civilians who are living in the country.

And this war,

the results of October the 7th

was because our armed forces

they failed to do it.

Now bring them back and then

punish

those who did it.

And I'm saying punishing is not revenge.

It's different.

What's the difference?

I don't believe in revenge.

You have to punish

and you have to find out

and kill

all those

who did what they did on October the 7th.

Okay, full stop.

You don't have to destroy Gaza because it's meaningless.

I think that

we are creating in the last 20 months

we are creating more problems that we are solving at the end of the day.

Okay, yes, okay, we killed 70, 90 percent of those, let's say, tourists that are living in Gaza, but we killed many more civilians.

And

the day after,

when we'll see that day after

starts,

we're going to have a very big problem there in Gaza.

Because I think that

when you're going to have 2.1 million people

that don't have no housing, no job, no water, no electricity, no healthcare system,

we will have to solve the problem.

No one else will have to solve it.

And then we are creating such a problem that I know how we'll be able to solve it.

I'm not expecting,

let's say, Americans to solve the problem.

I'm not expecting Egyptians to solve the problem.

We are there.

So we'll have to solve the problem.

And you created the problem.

And we created the problem.

So, recently, you signed an open letter saying end war in Gaza, as did hundreds of other Mossad, Shinbet generals.

Have you seen that level of open protest before?

I mean, does something feel different about that to you?

Yeah, that's the first time that it's happening in Israel.

First time that what?

What exactly?

Yet,

so many veterans

that with their experience are watching what's happening here in Israel

and there is an understanding that we are taking the wrong path.

We are creating a damage, a huge damage to the state of Israel, okay,

by what we're doing.

We are accomplishing nothing.

After the break, Pardot explains what he thinks is the real reason Netanyahu is staying in this war.

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in the street protests there's one particular chant that comes up over and over

until they're back we're all hostages

It's easy to understand why the family and friends of any individual hostage are raging in the streets at their government for failing to rescue the person they love.

But to understand why the average Israeli so deeply identifies with the hostages, why they are still out protesting 600 days later, you have to go back into Israeli history.

In the first decades of its existence, Israel was regularly at war.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Suez War, Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War.

And then in 1976, a terrorist event happened that in many ways still defines the relationship between Israelis and their government.

Palestinian hijackers are still holding more than 250 hostages and an Air France jet at NABI airport in Uganda.

A flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked.

The plane and its hostages were taken to Edi Amins, Uganda.

101 hostages released today were flown to Paris, but another 110 are still being held at the airport at Entebe, Uganda, about 85 of them Israeli nationals.

The Palestinian hijackers with some non-Arab accomplices now say they will execute the hostages on Sunday unless their demands are met.

In what was a rare approach for the time, but afterwards became a global counterterrorism model, IDF commandos raided the airport and rescued the hostages.

The daring Israeli raid into Uganda still leaves unanswered many questions.

Political leaders and editorialists over most of the Western world and some of Asia were delighted with Israel's bold and successful rescue of the civilian hostages in Uganda.

The details of the operation are extraordinary.

Huge planes flying low over the Red Sea, two land rovers and a Mercedes painted black to pose as Edi Amin's presidential convoy, and Israeli soldiers operating thousands of miles from home with no hope of backup.

The only member of the IDF team killed was Yonatan Netanyahu, leader of the raid and the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The story of his brother's death became a key point in Netanyahu's political rise.

It was also a key moment in Tamir Pardot's life.

When I was asking him how well he knew the prime minister, he said this.

I knew his oldest brother, Yonet Taniero, that he was my commander, unit that I served in 1976.

Unfortunately, he was killed less than one feet from me on Entebbe raid.

Inside Israel, the raid at Entebbe cemented a promise.

Yes, Israeli citizens are always vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but the government will always, always rescue them, no matter how hard they are to reach.

For many Israelis, October 7th broke that promise.

What happened in 1976?

People were kidnapped not because

we neglected something, we forgot something.

October 7th is because we broke our obligation towards our people.

The state of Israel betrayed the first thing that the IDF exists for

to defend our civil people.

What happened there was a disaster.

There were 2,000 people

that managed to break into Israel because we neglected our duty.

And that's the reason when you did it, you have to pay the price.

And the first price you have to pay is bring them home

and then find a way to solve the problem using the stick, but only after bringing them home.

Pardot has decades of calculating when and how to use lethal aggression and to what end.

And here's how he does the math on this war.

I remember before the war, and you can go and check the figures, IDF, Israel Defense Forces, estimated that there are between 20 and 25,000 people that can use weapons in Gaza.

Nine Nine months ago, the military spokesman

said that more than 17,000 Hamas terrorists were killed.

So think about how many were wounded.

Let's assume that

another 6,000 were wounded and we know that more than 3,000 were in prison in Israel.

We captured.

So actually

the job was finished.

We killed

all the

generals, the leaders there,

the commander of brigades, platoon, whatever.

So

those who are still there,

the vast, vast majority are those who were recruited after the war started.

And they don't have any experience.

But they can hold a Klashnikov, an AK-47,

and kill a soldier here and there, but

the main power,

90% of the power was finished more than nine months ago so enough

enough

at the end of the day the the Hamas

is

not only a military power terrorist power okay

it's a political power as well so thinking that you can

erase political power by a military attack that's wrong that's wrong.

And every civilian that is killed today,

his brother, his son, his father will hold the gun tomorrow.

And so why didn't it unfold that way?

Again, Pardot is blunt.

So I think that our Prime Minister today is trying to solve his personal problems.

Not our problems, his problems.

And that was

what he's doing from the first day that he was indicted.

From the first day of his trial.

He is not thinking about Israel as a state.

Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate but related cases.

The prime minister has denied any wrongdoing and says it's a witch hunt.

The trial is still ongoing and has distorted Israeli politics in so many ways.

One of them being the war in Gaza.

There's criticism that Netanyahu has an incentive to keep the war going, to distract from and delay his own problems, to keep lots of wars going.

In fact, Pardot is not sure that Netanyahu even has any post-war strategy anywhere.

What is your pass-war strategy in Lebanon?

What is your password strategy in Syria?

What is your strategy versus Iran?

Okay,

using the stick, using the stick,

thinking that by using the stick you're going to solve problem?

it's wrong.

You need to negotiate.

Exactly.

In order to solve problems, you need to negotiate.

Negotiate when you have a stick in your hand.

Use the stick if it's needed.

But understand that at the end of the day, you should negotiate for an agreement.

The point is that

our government believes in using the sticks.

Not one stick, sticks.

It is unusual for a Mossad veteran to be so outspokenly critical against the government, but maybe not in this case surprising.

Ehud Omert, who's a former prime minister of Israel, last week accused his country of committing war crimes.

Yair Golan, the main opposition leader, accused the government of killing babies for sport or as a hobby.

That one got the most attention outside and inside Israel, even as Golan tried to walk the statement back.

Yael Golan famously said,

killing babies for sport.

That was awful to say.

That was awful.

It was wrong.

That one went too far.

Why?

It's not too far.

It's wrong.

What do you mean?

No one.

Even small churches in Bengal are not killing babies for fun.

Okay?

I don't agree.

They're fascist.

They are the KKK in Israel.

They're fascist, but they are not killing, even fascists in Israel are not killing babies for fun.

Let me give you some clarity about who he's talking about here.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itemar Bengvir.

They are, as Atlantic contributor Gersham Gorenberg put it recently, quote, the leading extremists in Israel's most right-wing government in history.

They're both West Bank settlers, and they both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlements there, and to quote, encourage Palestinians to emigrate.

Do you believe these are war crimes?

Look, I hope not.

I hope not.

But

fighting in a place like Gaza,

364 square kilometers,

in this small place, they'll squeeze more than 2 million people.

Fighting using all

warfare capabilities,

many civilians are getting killed, unfortunately.

That's the reason in war, in such a place, it should be very, very short.

War.

Short.

Short.

Because

as time is passing, many, many more civilians getting killed, many more civilians are

losing their part of their families,

losing their homes, losing everything.

And to conduct a war for 20 months in such a small place,

bad things are happening.

It would be hard to avoid a war crime.

It's going to be very hard.

Okay, and that's what worries us,

should worry every Israeli.

I asked Pardot to sum up what he thinks should happen next.

Stop the war.

Stop the war.

Because it takes you to nowhere.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend and Rosie Hughes.

It was edited by Claudia Bade.

We had engineering support from Rob Smersiak and fact-checking by Michelle Soraka.

Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Listeners, if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to the Atlantic at theatlantic.com/slash listener.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

Talk to you next week.