One day they found the two men sitting in front of their home with a sister. The terrorists tried to resist, so the operatives shot them. The Yamas medics tried to resuscitate one of the men, but the sister was screaming and pulling out the tubes they were putting in him, so one of the operatives, a Druze officer, slapped her. Well, months later, that woman, Hanadi Jaradat, blew up the Maxim Cafe in Haifa right before Yom Kippur, killing over 20 people. It was something the unit felt sickened over – they didn’t feel responsible, but they were up close and personal with her and she turned out to be a mass murderer.
You write that one of the reasons the Second Intifada ended is because the Palestinians were essentially worn down by Yamas. Is that true?
The Yamas become incredibly effective in striking terror inside the hearts of very cold-blooded terrorist leaders because they were able to get through territories that the terrorists thought were their own safe havens. The war of attrition the undercover units and other special operation units waged against them was relentless. It was without stop and it was very, very successful.
How long has Israel had undercover units like Yamas?
Israelis have been masquerading as Arabs ever since the first settlers arrived. The Palmach, which was the strike companies of the Haganah, created an Arab platoon, which was mainly made up of Syrian-born Israelis who gathered intelligence in places like Beirut and Damascus. Moshe Dayan was part of that platoon, and he lost his eye in one of those operations, fighting the Vichy French in Lebanon in 1941.
How were you allowed to publish this book? Isn’t much of the information classified?
The book went through a security process in Israel. What was published was approved. The Palestinians certainly know the undercovers exist because they’re terrified of them. Also, many techniques – in terms of roads taken and sources and methods used – were not included in the book.
You have stated that the Second Intifada was “actually a declaration of total war by Palestinian terrorist groups, and the Palestinian Authority, against the State of Israel.” If so, why didn’t Israel bomb the enemy into submission from the air rather risk the lives of its special operatives in these stealth operations?
It wouldn’t have served any long-term interests. There’s also the political reality that Israel is always judged differently than other rations and has to operate differently because of that double standard. Clearly if Israel was another Arab country in the Middle East, the Intifada would have been handled very differently. I think it’s an enormous statement of the humanity of the state of Israel that it risks the lives of its own so that it doesn’t carpet bomb from the air.
Is it really humane to risk the lives of your own during war for the sake of those of your enemy?
The way you can look at it is that there were approximately 1,000 Israelis killed during the Intifada. Most of the fatalities were civilian. There were over 4,000 Palestinians killed during the Intifada. Most of the fatalities were combatants. I think, on many levels, that speaks volumes of the moral compass of the state of Israel.
You recently co-authored a book about the attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. With the presidential election on the horizon, what is your take on Hillary Clinton’s responsibility for America’s response, or non-response, to that attack?
There had been attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities before. There were two embassies destroyed in Beirut and two embassies destroyed in East Africa. In the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983, 63 people were killed – 17 were Americans – and most of the CIA staff present were killed. But there wasn’t the political uproar following those tragedies that existed with Benghazi.