Netanyahu continues to tune out voice of retired Israeli brass

Ever since he left the Mossad in January, Tamir Pardo had kept his mouth closed. He succeeded the legendary Meir Dagan and headed the Israeli espionage organization over five fateful years. In contrast to his predecessor, Pardo tried to keep the tensions and disputes between him and his commander, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under wraps. Very few people are aware of the height of the flames that scorched the two men in clashes over Israeli policy on the Iranian nuclear efforts. On Aug. 30, in the course of an event commemorating Druze war casualties, Pardo found himself in front of the cameras and agreed to say a few words. Netanyahu was not pleased by what he heard.

When asked if Israel faces an external existential threat, Pardo joined the ranks with other heads of Israeli security branches when he said, “Today, the internal threat must worry us more than the external threat.” He argued that the most palpable danger faced by the state today is an internal rupture that could lead to civil war. Afterward he was asked about Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's comparison between the nuclear agreement with Iran and the 1938 Munich agreement. “We must not compare apples and oranges,” Pardo stressed. “What happened at the end of the 1930s differs from what is transpiring today. History does not repeat itself, and attempts to compare [today’s events with] events that took place in the past within the parameters of a certain time period is incorrect, to put it mildly.”