A red thread links three protagonists of the new season that has just opened in Israel with the blessing of the United States of Joe Biden .
One and Naftali Bennett , the new conservative prime minister, who ousted Benjamin Netanyahu , who he had even been called the dolphin, after 12 years in seamless government. Another is David Barnea , who at the beginning of June took over from Yossi Cohen , defined by many as a loyal observer of the former prime minister, who heads the Mossad, the intelligence agency that reports exclusively to the prime minister. The last is Omer Bar-Lev, Labor MP who became Minister of Public Security in the new executive.
All of them did their military service in Sayeret Matkal, the elite special operations unit of the Israeli army. And the commando that led Operation Entebbe in 1976 in which Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu , brother of the former prime minister, another member of the unit, was killed.
To highlight this red thread is Ronen Bergman, signed by Yedioth Ahronoth and the New York Times, one of the leading intelligence experts, speaking with Formiche.net. And the author of “Rise and kill first” (published in Italy by Mondadori with the title “Kill first”), a volume of almost 800 pages, in which he reconstructs, with exclusive interviews with statesmen and intelligence agents , the so-called “targeted killings” conducted by Israel against Palestinian terrorism and anti-Israeli terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah or the Movement for Islamic Jihad in Palestine.
Bergman traces the career of Barnea, “a longtime field operative” who became a banker after his military service. Then, in the mid-1990s, he joined the Mossad. “One of the reasons behind his enlistment and the assassination of the prime ministerYitzhak Rabin in 1995, ”he says.
That of Barnea, therefore, seems to be a real mission. After enrollment, he became a case officer. Then, apart from two years as number two of Keshet, the division that is in charge of monitoring the objectives, he spent his entire career in the agency at Tzomet, the department responsible for the identification and recruitment of agents. Finally, he became deputy director of Mossad in 2019, “under the leadership” of Cohen and in “accord” with him, Bergman says, before he even indicated him as his successor.
“Israel is a small place,” continues Bergman. And here the red thread returns. “In the eighties, Barnea was a young soldier of Sayeret Matkal, when the head of the unit was Bar-Lev, now minister of the Bennett government.” Elements that the analyst brings to support his belief that the change of government, and the probable end of the Netanyahu season, will not cause “tension” between the executive and the Mossad, led today by an agent who grew up under Cohen’s wing and chosen by Netanyahu. And perhaps it is no coincidence that in the weeks when Bennett and centrist leader Yair Lapid sought the votes in the Knesset to give life to the so-called “government of change”, Joe Biden ‘s United States strengthened diplomatic channels with outgoing President Reuven . Rivlin(expected in the White House in the coming weeks) and with the Mossad, which has always been the true fulcrum of Israeli foreign policy.
Bergman then tells Formiche.net a story to explain Barnea’s activity in the Mossad before he became its director. “If a Mossad agent presents himself as an Israeli citizen in Syria, for example, he has little chance of being successful in recruiting. The situation changes if he presents himself, I don’t know … as an Italian businessman, at the head of a company interested in investing in water pumping systems, offering to help a specific person and putting a lot of money on the plate and asking in return information. When the subject realizes that he does not work for the Italian company but for Israel most of the time it is too late “.
It is no coincidence that Bergman talks about Syria, a state on which Tehran’s influences are strong. In fact, Iran, with its nuclear efforts and its support for jihadism in the Middle East, “will remain the number one priority of the Mossad”, even with a more staid director than the previous one.
And it will also remain so as regards the collaboration with other intelligence agencies, including European ones. An example
“The recent case of Assadollah Assadi “, Bergman replies, citing the episode of the Iranian diplomat sentenced in February by the Antwerp Court to 20 years in prison (the maximum sentence) on charges of terrorism in relation to the attack ( foiled) against an Iranian Resistance demonstration in Paris on June 30, 2018.
The event was attended by several leading exponents of international politics, including the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani , a loyalist of the former US president Donald Trump . It was the Mossad that warned the authorities of Belgium and France of the activities of that diplomat who toured Europe, including Italy, to prepare the attack.
Photo: David Barnea, left, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (Haim Tzach / GPO)
