How the IDF Intelligence Community Uses the Media To Manipulate Israeli Public Opinion Against Iran

By Victor Ostrovsky

According to “Israeli intelligence sources,” Iran has become the main threat to the revived peace process. These sources have been working diligently since the election in Israel to get that message across both to the international media and the Israeli public.

Regarding themselves as a major international power, members of the Israeli intelligence community who, though far from unified among themselves, nevertheless try to function collectively as a kind of state within the state, see every event within the region as having global significance. To ensure that they have the ability to carry out their agenda, they must therefore put forth to Israel’s elected political leaders their perceptions of: a) What constitutes a threat; and b) How that threat should be dealt with.

To simplify matters, Israeli intelligence operatives also choose their targets carefully, with a wary eye on their acceptance as enemies by the public at large. Iran plays a key role in their plan.

Even though Israel deals, unofficially, with Iran regarding arms sales and general trade, officially Israel prefers to regard Iran as an imminent threat, especially since the United States is willing to endorse and financially underwrite such a concept.

However, Israel’s newly elected Prime Minister Ehud Barak, no stranger to regional strategies in general and regional military strategies in particular, has refused up until now to endorse an all-out disinformation and propaganda campaign against Iran. Barak stood his ground despite pressure from Gen. Amos Malcha, head of Aman, Israel’s military intelligence service, to designate Tehran as the main strategic threat to the stability of the region. According to Malcha, the visit to Tehran of the heads of the Hezbollah, including one leader he described as “head of the international terrorist arm” of that organization, has confirmed Iran’s involvement in the region and its goal of sinking the peace process by means of terrorist activity.

Many Israeli intelligence operatives feel sure that the reason for Iran’s rush to stop the Middle East peace process is that Tehran government officials believe a peace between Israel and the Palestinians will all but eliminate the Hamas, and that peace between Israel and Iran’s ally Syria will reduce, if not render completely useless, Hezbollah, thus diminishing Iran’s standing in the region.

Israeli intelligence operatives choose their targets carefully.

However, the Israeli intelligence community remains split on that matter. There are many who feel that since Binyamin Netanyahu is no longer in power it is time to regard the region rationally, and to end the production of cookie-cutter intelligence reports fashioned to conform with the ideological predelictions of the elected leader.

This less ideological element within Israeli intelligence circles has been gaining ground as it appeals to Prime Minister Barak’s more rational understanding of regional dynamics.

Realizing that they are on shaky ground, the radicals, including Aman’s chief of research, Gen. Amos Gilad, Deputy Defense Minister Efrain Shneh, and Uri Lubrany, the coordinator of intelligence activities in Lebanon, have agressively foisted their view on the government that the Iranians are striving hard to attain nuclear capabilities and long-range missiles, thus making themselves the principal threat to the security of Israel. From their reports it would appear that Iran’s efforts to develop or acquire these weapons of mass destruction are motivated primarily by the desire to wipe Israel and its people from the face of the earth.

To drum up an attentive audience, Aman has targeted its psychological warfare capabilities inward. For example, in the past few months articles have begun to appear in the Arab media describing Iran’s deadly intentions. Such an article in Al-Watan al-Arabi in late July described a meeting that allegedly took place in a villa in Greece where representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and a top Iranian official formulated plans for a wave of terror that would end the peace process. Shortly thereafter the same story appeared in the Israeli media, attributed to the Arab paper.

According to my sources in Israel, however, that story, and other alarmist reports about Iran now appearing in the Arab press and then picked up by the Israeli press, in fact originate with the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency.

This method of demonizing an enemy is not new, and certainly was not invented by the Israelis. However, its obvious use by the Israeli intelligence community to alarm and activate public opinion in Israel has angered thoughtful Israeli media critics.

From the Source’s Mouth

According to a major Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, a reporter was contacted by his source in Aman who bluntly asked the reporter to reprint an article on Iran that had been published in an Arabic newspaper. “Republication of such material helps us as it reaches the decision makers directly,” the Israeli military intelligence officer told the journalist.

When asked by the reporter how he could be sure the article was true, the intelligence officer responded impatiently that he knew it was true because it was he who supplied the report to the Arabic paper in the first place. A second officer present for that exchange boasted that he manages to get articles published regularly in Al Watan in Paris, and in Foreign Report in London.

It is one thing when an intelligence agency tries to smear someone—a dirty part of a dirty game. But it is something completely different when a journalist goes along willingly. The reputable journalist’s role is supposed to be separating fact from fiction and thwarting sources with an agenda from getting their fabrications or distortions into the dialogue between the media and the trusting public. It appears, however, that some Israeli media personnel have reached a point where they no longer can distinguish between what is true and what is merely “good for the country” according to the agenda de jour formulated by the national security apparatus.

As for members of Israel’s media elite, they must recognize that no matter how inconvenient and unpalatable, the truth is still the best guardian of democracy. And only a free and responsible media can protect the truth.

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda. Both are available on audiotape through the AET Book Club.