Former head of the Mossad spy agency Tamir Pardo on Monday branded the ongoing settler terror attacks against Palestinians an “existential threat” to the State of Israel, and said that necessary action to curb it could spark a civil war. Pardo made the comments to Channel 13 while touring some of the Palestinian villages that have come under settler attack in recent months.
“My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century,” Pardo said, reported The Times of Israel. “What I saw today made me feel ashamed to be Jewish.” Pardo toured areas with former IDF deputy commander Matan Vilnai, and Amram Mitzna, former commander of the IDF central command.
“To my great regret, what we are seeing today” in the West Bank, he said, “is the next October 7. It will be in a different format, much more painful, because the region is much more complicated. The state has chosen to sow the seeds for the next October 7.” Pardo said he thinks law enforcement authorities are aware of what is going on “but chose to ignore it.”
Pardo said fixing the issue would come at a high cost. “What I saw today is the existential threat to the State of Israel,” he said, due to the difficulty and potential violent backlash if authorities were to crack down on extremist settlers.
He said pushing back on the violent settlers—many of them armed by the state—could spark a civil war, given how well-connected many of the extremists are in the halls of power—an apparent reference to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the police, and fellow far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who holds a second portfolio as a minister in the Defense Ministry.
“If we want, we can correct this, but the price will be very high,” Pardo said. “It can drag the entire country to a place” like the situation in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the civil and political strife in that country.
“It is very much worth our while not to get there,” he said.
Pardo ran the Mossad from 2011 to 2016, during which time his primary mission was the sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program. “Since departing the Mossad, he has indeed become an outspoken critic of the prime minister he served, particularly when it comes to the Palestinian issue, repeatedly warning in public interviews that Israel’s greatest existential threat lies not in Tehran, but in its failure to resolve the Palestinian issue,” reported Haaretz in a commentary.
“The man who had dedicated his career to fighting what he believed at the time posed the greatest danger to his country is now warning about what truly endangers its existence,” Haaretz concludes. “Perhaps if more Israelis took the sobering tour available to Pardo and other high-level generals, they, like him, would be convinced that Israel’s biggest “existential threat” lies not in Tehran, but in the violent gangs in their own backyard—and, in the next election, vote to take the power away from their enablers in the highest echelons of the current government.”
