Israel: The Worried Citizen

Isser Harel is one of the most respected men in Israel. For 15 years he directed Shin Bet, the nation’s secret intelligence organization, which ranks as one of the world’s finest. When the peppery little superspy retired in 1963, it was only natural that the government should invite him to continue to make his talents available on an advisory basis. And so it did. Last year Harel became personal adviser to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol on matters of state security.

Harel’s nameless successor at Shin Bet sharply opposed anyone’s meddling in security and twice threatened to resign. Forced to choose between the two, Eshkol typically compromised: he kept Harel at a desk but gave him nothing to do. After ten months of inactivity, Harel last month angrily turned in his badge.

He also decided to speak his mind about the boss. In a round of speeches, Harel explained that he was “a worried citizen” concerned about Eshkol’s “in decisive leadership.” To an audience of students at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he hinted, “Things are really much more serious than I can explain.”

He gave away no vital secrets, but in a newspaper interview Harel did reveal that he personally was on the spot in Argentina in 1960 to supervise the snatching of Adolf Eichmann.

Behind Harel’s attacks, Mapai Party spokesmen thought they saw the hand of his old boss, David Ben-Gurion, who last year broke with Eshkol and formed the opposition Rafi Party. Gleeful Rafi men expected to pick up some support from disenchanted Mapai members and hoped eventually to unseat Eshkol. Last week they were spreading rumors that Mapai intended to replace Eshkol with either Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir or former Foreign Minister Golda Meir.

Reprisal Raid. Coming in the midst of an economic recession and growing unemployment, the rumor mongering did not help Eshkol’s image. Then last week he was given a chance to show that he still had muscle. For a week Arab bands operating out of Syria had been attacking Israeli border settlements, leaving behind dead and wounded. In reprisal, Eshkol sent supersonic fighters zipping eight miles into Syria near the Sea of Galilee. They destroyed earth-moving equipment used by the Arabs on a project to divert the sources of the Jordan River away from Israel. In an ensuing dogfight, Israel’s air force bagged a Syrian MIG-21, the first ever to be shot down by a French-made Mirage.

Israel fired off a note to the Security Council, and U.N. observers rushed to the scene. In Tel Aviv, Mapai leaders happily expected that the renewed border violence would divert the heat from Eshkol on the home front, were optimistic that Harel’s campaign would finally fizzle. Not so Harel. He was still accepting all speaking engagements that came his way. Said he: “This is not my privilege but my duty.”