The Gatekeepers by Dror Moreh

Author:Dror Moreh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Submarines, Second Strike, To Be or Not to Be

“The chief of general staff’s wife launched a new submarine.”

The launching ceremony was conducted in northern Germany. The submarine “Liviatan” [whale] is the second of three submarines which Germany promised Israel after the Gulf War.

(Eran Tiefenbrunn, Yediot Ahronot, May 28, 1997)

Ami Ayalon: When I started my role as Navy commander, in the summer of ’92, the situation was exactly opposite to what it had been when I started commanding Shayetet 13. In my personal, subjective view, the Navy was in a deep crisis, but the Navy didn’t feel it was in a state of crisis. How can you create change in an organization that doesn’t feel it’s in crisis? How do you get a very broad group of people on board, people who were a part of all the previous action, and come and tell them, “Gentlemen, we’re wrong, let’s change things. . . .”?

The major dilemma at the time was the balance between surface vessels and submarines. The Navy in those years granted an unequivocal preference to surface vessels. I thought that in the twenty-first century, in a reality where all kinds of countries are developing weapons of mass destruction, the State of Israel must have submarines. But we got the German submarines after the State of Israel, in a decision by Defense Minister Moshe Arens, gave up on submarines, and I, as deputy commander of the Navy, see us giving up something that as far as I was concerned was “to be or not to be.” If it weren’t for the Gulf War—then we encountered a situation where Germany was pleading to help us, based on the feelings of guilt which have accompanied it since World War II and the Holocaust, and up to the aid they provided the Iraqis in the whole complex of Iraq’s chemical and unconventional warfare—it’s possible that the Navy still wouldn’t have had submarines.

Based on foreign publications, those submarines enable Israel’s second strike capability.

I’m not getting into that discussion. I think that’s not a discussion that should take place in the media. I think the perception of Israeli security should be part of a public discussion in the State of Israel, but the whole topic of second strike should not be part of that discussion. On that matter, we have no choice.

Ultimately, the State of Israel received two submarines, and my dilemma as Navy commander was, do we need a third one? Now, you need a third submarine so that the submarines can begin to enable an era where they give the Israeli people what the Israeli people need. You need an active submarine at all times. Ehud Barak was chief of general staff and I was Navy commander. We had a very serious disagreement on this matter, and eventually we approached Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Rabin. It was the only topic over which I was willing to resign. After countless debates and two letters of resignation which I ultimately still have in the safe, Rabin agrees that the State of Israel, the Navy, will have submarines.

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