ISRAEL'S HIGHEST LAW IS STILL NATIONAL SECURITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120012-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: July 6, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120012-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
NEW YORK TIMES
6 July 1986
Israel's Highest Law
Is Still National Security
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
JERUSALEM
0 N the surface, there seems to be little
similarity between the two notorious
affairs involving the Israeli security-in-
telligence establishment ? the Shin
Beth case here and the Pollard case in Washing-
ton. But in fact both affairs reflect some very
basic Israeli attitudes toward decision-making.
the conflict between maintaining security and
the law and how the establishment takes care of
its own.
Both affairs began when Yitzhak Shamir was
Prime Minister. In the case of Israel's domestic
security service, the Shin Beth, its chief, Avra-
ham Shalom, has stated that all his actions ? he
has been accused of ordering the murder of two
captured Palestinian bus hijackers in April 1984
and a subsequent cover-up? were taken with the
approval of the political leadership at the time.
Specifically, Mr. Shalom has been quoted as say-
ing the authorization came from Mr. Shamir.
Mr. Shamir, who is now Foreign Minister,
denies this. The Israeli espionage ring in Wash-
ington was conducted with the help of Navy ana-
lyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, but Mr. Shamir says
he had no knowledge of the spy operation. This
appeared to raise serious questions about his
Government's control over its defense establish-
ment.
While both cases began on Mr. Shamir's watch,
they were exposed later ? after Shimon Peres
became Prime Minister. Critics charge that Mr.
Peres did not deal decisively with either affair
when it first arose, and as a result they festered
and became more complicated. When Mr.
Shalom's top deputy, Reuven Hazak, went to Mr.
Peres in October and told him that the head of the
Shin Beth had engaged in serious misdeeds, Mr.
Peres decided that Mr. Shalom was innocent and
chose not to dismiss him or his aides. Instead,
Mr. Peres allowed Mr. Shalom to fire his accus-
er, Mr. Hazak. Nor did the Prime Minister ever
Inform the attorney general that some very seri-
ous crimes may have been committed by Mr.
Shalom and some of his aides. The attorney gen-
eral found out three months later on his own and
set in motion a legal process that was could only
be stopped by the President, Chaim Herzog, who
did stop it by granting, what some Israeli lawyers
believe to be a highly questionable pardon to Mr.
Shalom. Last week, Israel's Supreme Court or-
dered the Government to explain why the Shin
Beth should not be investigated.
When the Pollard affair was exposed in
November, Mr. Peres and his colleagues said
they investigated what happened and informed
the Americans that it was a "rogue" operation.
However, according to government sources, it
appears that the Israeli leaders did not investi-
gate the affair fully and were themselves sur-
prised to find that the head of the allegedly rogue
operation, Rafael Eitan, had not told them of sev-
eral key details, particularly the extent of in-
volvement of an air force officer, Col. Aviem
Sella. The Justice Department said in Washing-
ton last week that it might indict him. By not get-
ting to the bottom of the affair from the start, Is-
rael seems to have embarrassed itself with
Washington and left some doubts about its origi-
nal explanations.
Another similarity between the two scandals is
how the men responsible were punished for their
misdeeds: Mr. Eitan by being made chairman of
one of Israel's largest state-owned concerns, Is-
rael Chemicals, and Mr. Shalom by being given a
presidential pardon. In both cases the political
establishment justified the silky treatment by
saying that the two men had served the state's se-
curity for so long that they could hardly be pun-
ished. Both Mr. Eitan and Mr. Shalom were part
of the Israeli defense establishment, which has .
essentially been running the country for the last
30 years. Said one Israeli writer: "The elite tribe
gathered together to protect its own. Personal ac-
countability gave way to personal loyalties."
The manner in which the two men were treated
also reflected the fact that Israel in many ways is
still a very informal, young, frontier democracy
where there is a tendency to cut corners in the
rush to get things done. This can be a real asset in
state-building. But the common Israeli expres-
sion, "al tidag, yehiyeh beseder" ? don't worry,
it will be okay ? also has tended to become an
all-purpose justification for bending all kinds of
rules, and this, say officials, has encourged slop-
piness and occasional accumulations of power
without checks and balances.
"Building institutions that operate by strict
rules, like in America, takes time," said Israeli
political theorist Shlomo Avineri. "Jews have not
exercised power for 2,000 years. In fact, they sur-
vived for all that time by learning how to escape
the effect of the power of others. Now they are
beginning to set the rules of the game through a
process of trial and error."
Finally, in both affairs, the apparent mistakes
of decision-makers were justified on security
grounds, as was their insistence in both cases
that the public had no right to know all the facts.
When law and security clash, argued Mr.
Shamir, security must carry the day. Israeli civil
liberties groups agree that Israel has very legiti-
mate security problems. But, they add, if the
leadership justifies every action on security
grounds ? even mistaken ones ? it will under-
mine the values of the society it is trying to pro-
tect and invite future abuses of power.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120012-4