Capturing Eichmann by Rafi Eitan

Author:Rafi Eitan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Military
Publisher: Greenhill Books
Published: 2022-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

A New Boss and a New Role

The End of an Era: Isser Harel’s Retirement

The failure of the assassination attempt against Kleinwachter in Lorrach and the arrest of the two agents in Basel (detailed in Chapter 13) were laid at Harel’s door. He exacerbated the situation with an act that was untypical for him. On his return from Europe in early March 1963 and his efforts there to stem German missile aid to Egypt, he convened the editors’ committee of the daily press, and briefed them on what had happened in Germany and Switzerland. Then, without the prime minister’s knowledge, he provided three senior journalists with documents and secret information about German scientists involved in Egypt and encouraged them to travel to Germany to investigate the matter as journalists and to publish their findings. The results were sensational headlines about the German-aided missile programme in Egypt. I believe this riled Ben-Gurion and led to Harel’s resignation.

When one of the three journalists, Yeshayahu (Shaikeh) Ben-Porat, a journalist for the leading Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper returned to Israel, Yitzhak Navon, Ben-Gurion’s political secretary, approached him and learned that Ben-Porat had been fed information by Harel to get his investigation going. Navon was shocked and reported this to Ben-Gurion. Two or three days later, Harel’s resignation was announced.

The incident was the culmination of a growing confrontation between Ben-Gurion and Harel over the Egyptian missile project. Its origins lay in the difference in the assessments of Harel, based on the information he had, and that of Meir Amit, the head of military intelligence. While Harel considered the Egyptian missile programme an imminent threat to Israel, Amit, based on some of the same information but analysed by his people, had concluded that it would be at least five years before the Egyptian missiles could pose a realistic threat and that it was possible that the Germans were promising much more than they could deliver, essentially extorting money from the Egyptians. A military intelligence report to this effect landed on Ben-Gurion’s desk, just as Harel was en route back to Israel from Europe.

Amit’s views were strengthened by Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres, who convinced Ben-Gurion that West German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Strauss, with whom he had close ties, would quietly and discreetly thwart the missile project in Egypt so that assassinations were unnecessary and would only tarnish Israel’s image and complicate its relations with friendly governments.

Ben-Gurion attached great importance to Peres’s assessment, holding him in high esteem for his deft negotiations with France to obtain a nuclear reactor for Israel, and for having initiated and overseen the launch of the Shavit 2 missile in 1961, which although only partially successful was considered an important achievement. Furthermore, it is probable that Ben-Gurion also did not want to jeopardise the security ties between Israel and West Germany, which became increasingly significant during that period.

Harel, feeling under pressure to gain support for his view, turned to his friend Golda Meir, then foreign minister. She was a bitter political rival of

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