Meir Dagan
צילום: בן קלמר
Dagan was right to speak
Op-ed: Former Mossad chief did right thing, showed courage by voicing his views in public
Some years ago, I met with a very senior official in our military industries that made some harsh charges against one of the industry’s top officials. Members of the industry later told me that the man spoke to me because he was fired; what’s what it’s all about, they said. This may be true, I replied, but I don’t really care.
The rule of thumb back then, as it is today, is that the real question has to do with the substance, not with the motives. Noble motives cannot come instead of facts, just like lowly motives do not render the facts wrong.
The public debate on the question of what is the motive for the media assaults by defense establishment retirees may be interesting, and possibly very interesting in the gossip aspect, but it cannot replace the required public discourse in the wake of such words.
In other words, even if former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan asked for another year in office and was rejected – as certain ministers claim – this does not annul the substance of the words he uttered, and more than that ,does not annul the need to say those things.
It is true that there is a price for the exposure of security dilemmas or the flawed performance of decision makers. Yet this exposure – including the price we shall pay for it – is better than blindly following those responsible for our wellbeing and security.
Silence is cowardice
It’s important for us to know that behind the scenes too there is a great debate about existential questions, and that among decision makers too – and not only on the Israeli street – there are fundamental disagreements in respect to the possible solutions.
There is no doubt that had some of the decision makers in the Second Lebanon War – IDF generals as well as government ministers – told the public what they truly think about the moves led by the Olmert-Perez-Halutz trio, instead of sharing it with the Winograd Committee a year later, much blood and great sorrow would have been spared.
When President Shimon Peres testified before that same committee, responding to the question of why he did not loudly say that the war was unnecessary if he thought so, Peres replied that his silence stemmed from collegiality. Yet silence is not a synonym for collegiality.
If anything, and regrettably so, silence at this time is almost a synonym for cowardice. And that’s something that we cannot attribute to Meir Dagan; not in the dozens of years where he played various roles in our defense establishment, and not today.
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