By Donald H. Harrison
LA JOLLA, California – Before a Friends of the Israel Defense Forces audience that included four members of the U.S. Congress, Israel’s former Mossad chief, retired Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, renewed his call Saturday evening, October 30, for joint military action by the U.S., Israel and Western allies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry.
Emphasizing that he was expressing a personal opinion and not representing the State of Israel, Yatom, who also served chief of staff to the Prime Minister when Ehud Barak held that office, said “in order to stop Iran, the civilized world will have to take action.”
He said there are over 100 sites across Iran that are involved in that country’s nuclear build up, and said if Iran should get nuclear weaponry, it will be “our nightmare” posing an existential threat to Israel and seriously threatening American strategic interests.
Yatom had made news in September when during a conference in Herzliya he publicly called for a military attack on Iran.
Scattered around the FIDF audience of 600, and making no comment on the retired general’s presentation, were four members of Congress from San Diego County, two of whom serve on the House Armed Services Committee: Democrat Susan Davis and Republican Duncan Hunter. The latter congressman is the son of the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Other members of Congress in attendance were Republicans Darrell Issa, who is of Lebanese ancestry but is considered a friend of Israel’s, and Brian Bilbray. Only Democrat Bob Filner from San Diego’s congressional delegation was not in attendance at the dinner, which fell only three nights before the Nov. 2 elections.
Besides threatening Israel’ existence with its nuclear buildup, Iran sponsors terrorism in the Middle
East and around the world—a role which Yatom said poses a serious threat to the daily lives of Israelis, Americans, Jews and Christians alike.
“We have to fight them,” Yatom said, adding that if the number of successful terrorist attacks have decreased in recent years, it is not because the terrorists have stopped trying. Rather, he said, it is because the world’s intelligence services have been vigilant, including just recently when two packages laden with explosives were intercepted before they reached the United States and their intended targets of two Jewish institutions in Chicago. He warned the audience that the terrorists will not stop trying to wreak havoc and injury on the United States.
At the Torrey Pines Hilton Hotel dinner, at which Charles and Randi Wax of San Diego were honored along with Elizabeth and Carl Allen Sr. and Gigi and Carl Allen Jr. of Dallas, Texas, for their philanthropy in behalf of the recreational needs of Israel’s soldiers, Yatom also shared some stories from his tenure as chief of Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service.
In 1997, he related, he was the director of the Mossad when Hamas had carried out two suicide bombings in Jerusalem. He was ordered to retaliate against Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader who then was domiciled in Amman, Jordan, and who now resides in Damascus. Mossad agents carried out an operation against Mashal with a poison that left him at death’s door. However, two Mossad agents were arrested in Amman, and Yatom said he knew that if Mashal died, the agents would be put to death. So he flew to Amman, briefed an angry King Hussein of Jordan on the situation, and offered to supply an antidote for the poison. At first King Hussein refused, believing the Israelis’ true purpose was to finish the job. However, U.S. President Bill Clinton communicated with King Hussein, saying the Israelis would be true to the world, and the man Israel had tried to kill in the morning was revived by Israel in the afternoon, according to Yatom’s account.
Twenty-five years earlier in his career, Yatom was part of an operation that stormed a Palestinian-hijacked Sabena Airliner after it landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, and freed about 100 hostages with the loss of only one civilian life. He said that Ehud Barak was the commanding officer of the operation, in which elite Israeli troops, posing as airplane maintenance workers, gained access to the plane, and within 90 seconds killed two gunmen and disarmed two bomb-carrying female accomplices.
If there was a sub-theme to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces dinner, it was the importance of the armored corps—tanks, in other words – in modern warfare. Charles Wax, owner of Waxie Sanitary Supply, recalled that his own father, Morris, had served as an officer in the armored corps during World War II under General George Patton, and had participated in the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp.
After becoming involved with Friends of IDF, and touring various facilities, Charles and Randi Wax decided to build a recreational center and meeting room complex for members of the Israel’s 188th Tank Battalion in the Golan Heights –the same unit in which Gilad Shalit had served before he was kidnapped at the Gaza border by Hamas, which still holds him prisoner.
Allen, chairman and CEO of Heritage Bag and Heritage Plastics, similarly has built club houses at IDF facilities at Mt. Ora in Jerusalem, in Yarkon, and at the headquarters of the 8800 Signal Intelligence unit near Glilot, about which he quipped that he hopes this top secret spy group “will finally tell me who shot Kennedy and if we have UFO’s or not.”
A Christian Zionist, Allen won cheers when he said, “I’m hooked on Israel. I love the people, I love the country.”
Following Yatom’s keynote presentation, Asher Bar-on, who immigrated to Israel from South Africa, told the story of his son Yaniv, a member of the tank corps who lost his life in the opening hours of the 2nd Lebanon War. Yaniv was a member of a unit that had won glory during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence because it was staffed primarily by Holocaust survivors who had only recently immigrated to Jewish Palestine. In their son’s name, the Bar-On family has established a scholarship which is awarded to soldiers at the armored corps headquarters at Latrun, located on the mountain road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The program went on for more than two hours as guests partook of fish, chicken or vegetarian dinners. Two FIDF programs in particular were highlighted during the proceedings. One was the “Impact” program which provides scholarships for soldiers similar to that created by the Bar-On family in their son’s memory. The other was the “Legacy” program which offers recreational programs, such as camping and special trips, for families whose children have been killed in the line of duty.
The armed forces of two nations participated in the evening, with a U.S. Marine Corps color guard presenting the colors for the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner” and a unit of the Israel Defense Forces leading in the singing of “HaTikvah,” Israel’s National Anthem.
U.S. Navy Capt. Irving A. Elson, the chaplain for the 11 Marine Aircraft Wing, gave the HaMotzi blessing before the meal, and two active-duty Israeli generals, Brigadier General Nadav of the 8200 Signal Intelligence Unit, and the Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz, deputy chief of the IDF general staff, were introduced for brief remarks.
Co-emceed by Julian E. Josephson and Norman Smith, the dinner also paid tribute to Bob Shillman, chairman of Cognex and a donor of scholarships to IDF soldiers from financially needy families. One former Israeli soldier named Andre told of his immigration at age 17 to Israel from the former Soviet Union, as a “lone soldier,” with his service in the IDF including duty inside the Gaza Strip. Under terms of a scholarship which Shillman provided, Andre provided 130 hours of community service, mostly at a senior center serving Holocaust survivors. The scholarship enabled Andre to attend college and eventually get a job at Intel, which has 7,000 employees in Israel. Today he has a wife, daughter and his own home, and “I owe it to one man, ” Dr. Robert Shillman,” he said.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World