The Gatekeepers Page #4

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You don't know

what's around you.

You can hear, but you

don't know what's there.

And shaking?

Shaking is used to

establish presence.

It's threatening.

It doesn't hurt.

What it does is

intimidate you.

An interrogator picks you up and shakes you.

You feel threatened.

What happened was that

someone named Harizat,

from Hamas, was a small

man and he was shaken.

It was a case of

shaken baby syndrome.

His brain hit his skull

and he died as a result.

This resulted in

bitter arguments

between me as head of Shin Bet and

Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair,

who thought it was

immoral and unethical.

In response, I said

that if we don't use it,

if we prevent 90 percent

of suicide attacks now,

we'll prevent 70

percent instead,

which means dead Israelis.

Prime Minister Rabin

had to decide.

He once got out of

his chair furiously

and shouted at Ben-Yaw,

"You keep telling

me what I can't do!

"Tell me once what I can do!"

It was a very

contentious issue.

Rabin was a security

man in every bone in his body,

not someone we have to

explain to when we said,

"We don't have the tools

to provide security. "

He understood it perfectly.

You saw that he

was torn up over it,

but he made a

decision that said,

"We will fight terror as if

there is no peace process

"and continue the peace process

as if there is no terror. "

As the

attacks increased,

the Right, and not

just the extremists,

took to the streets

against the Oslo Accords.

It was exactly what Hamas

wanted, and they succeeded.

With blood and

fire, we'll throw Rabin out!

You promised us peace

and you gave us war!

You promised us life

and you gave us death!

You promised us tranquility

and you gave us terror!

Most opposition to the peace

process was from the religious camp.

Their leaders targeted

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The incitement

was focused on him.

As a young army

recruit in 1974, they took us

to stop the first Jewish

settlers in the West Bank.

We stood there, rows of soldiers

gripping each other's arms.

The settlers started

hitting us in anger.

I remember that I really

didn't like that.

The illegal settlements

were built despite

or in opposition to,

government decisions,

but there was no

Israeli government

that didn't accept them,

or come to accept them.

The fact that most

Israeli governments

did nothing gave the settlers

the sense that they're

slowly becoming the masters,

that they're gaining

the freedom to act

because the government

looks away.

If they do that with

an illegal settlement,

it can extend into

illegal activity.

In 1980, a Fatah cell

attacked worshippers leaving

the synagogue in Hebron.

A revenge attack

occurred 30 days later.

They attacked Palestinian mayors

Bassam Shaka 'a in Nab/us

and Karim Halaf in Ramallah.

Another bomb blinded

someone from the bomb squad

in the home of Ibrahim

Tawil, mayor of al-Bireh.

We knew Jews did it.

We didn't think it was some

rival Palestinian group.

You check the Jewish

files and find no clues.

At some point you realize

that you have a problem,

that it's an

intelligence failure.

We put our entire Operations

Unit into action.

Operations put in

tens of thousands of hours,

until, 6 months later, we

were in the right direction.

We knew who did it.

They were a very ideological

group, really top quality.

Moreover, some of

them were even leaders

of the communities

in which they lived.

That gave them access

to the Prime Minister.

They had access

to the Knesset.

They had access

to ministries.

They were friends

with ministers.

They're part of

the Israeli establishment,

the respectable establishment

of the State of Israel.

We said, "if we don't catch them in

the act, we'll never catch them. "

The decision came when

they planned to put bombs

in Palestinian buses in a

parking lot in Jerusalem.

The attack they planned

on the buses was insane.

They intended to kill

250 Arabs all at once.

PERY. We followed

them all night.

I commanded the

operation in Jerusalem.

It was another night

I'll never forget.

We arrested them at 4:30 a.m.,

putting bombs on the buses.

We got out of our cars and

said, "Come, join us.

"If you don't want anything

to happen to our bomb squad,

"dismantle the bombs. "

We did our first wave of

arrests, of 17 members.

Then we investigated and

found out that since 1978-9,

they were planning an

attack on the Temple Mount

to blow up the

Dome of the Rock.

At first, the idea

was based on the belief that

as long as the "abomination" stood

over the site of the Jewish Temple,

there will be no Redemption

and therefore, they have

to get rid of that Dome.

They prepared the bombs.

They used a very sensitive

type of explosive, Semtex.

It was planned

by Menachem Livni,

who was a demolitions genius.

The charges would be placed so that

the entire force of the explosion

would be directed at

the support structure.

This would result in

the collapse of the Dome.

The consequence of blowing up the

Dome of the Rock, even today,

is that it could lead to total

war by all the Islamic states,

not just the Arab states,

not just Iran, Indonesia, too,

against the State of Israel.

I'm not talking about the risk to the

Jewish minority around the world.

These people decided to do it

out of some mystical belief

that this would be

the War of Armageddon

that would usher in the

Messiah and a Jewish kingdom.

After we exposed

the Jewish Underground,

Prime Minister Shamir called my

unit the "diamond in the crown. "

We received compliments

and support from everywhere.

Then the lobbying on

their behalf began.

They were put on trial. Three

of them got life in prison,

different sentences. They all

got out of prison very quickly.

They went home as

if nothing happened.

They went back to

their previous positions,

some to even higher positions.

The main question is how

history will judge us

in the annals of

the Jewish People.

I am sure that

the Dome of the Rock

will not remain

on the Temple Mount

and the Temple Mount

will return to us,

just as I am sure that

those same murderers,

whose legs I took

part in removing,

deserved their fate.

The entire Underground was

released by the Knesset.

The Clemency Law for the Jewish

Underground is signed by

Yitzhak Shamir as

Prime Minister of Israel.

It wasn't just a few members

of the Opposition.

At first it was, "Oh, no!

They broke the law.

"They killed people. They wanted

to blow up the country," etc.

Later they said, "They are

our own flesh and blood. "

Then, the delegitimization process

was transferred to the Shin Bet.

The story of the Jewish

Underground is an episode

that really shook up the

Shin Bet intelligence-wise.

It established the intelligence

mechanism that, since then,

keeps an eye on those Jewish

suspects worth watching,

in our opinion,

in the West Bank.

You watch it closely.

You work hard

and up comes Yigal Amir, who was

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