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[quote=Anonymous]In 1980, Yehoshua Saguy, the head of Military Intelligence, informed Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Zippori that Ben-Gal was conducting “rogue operations” inside Lebanon. In one instance, a car bomb meant for PLO personnel had detonated on a main road in southern Lebanon, killing an unspecified number of “women and children.”

In June 1980, the month when Helena Cobban’s Christian Science Monitor story was published, a meeting was convened in the Prime Minister’s office. Zippori accused Ben-Gal of conducting “unauthorized actions in Lebanon” and insisted that “women and children have been killed.” Ben-Gal replied that this was incorrect (“Four or five terrorists were killed. Who drives around in Lebanon in a Mercedes at 2 a.m.? Only terrorists”) and assured Menachem Begin that he had received permission for the action. The Prime Minister accepted these assurances and, Bergman writes, from that point on “the top brass realized there was no point in asking the prime minister to rectify the situation.”

The story investigated by Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir was accurate. And Dagan’s denials to Remnick were lies.

When the Israeli military censor banned publication of the story, therefore, it covered up serious state crimes that had already been committed. Even more problematically, this decision made it possible for Israel to continue, following Likud’s (very narrow) victory in the 1981 legislative elections, to use the FLLF to conduct an ever deadlier, and fully covert, campaign of “terrorism.”

On August 5, 1981, Menachem Begin picked Ariel Sharon to replace him as Defense Minister. As Israeli historians have long documented, for the next 10 months the Begin government engaged in military operations, from the air and the ground, in order to goad the Palestinians into a military response that would be used to justify a major military offensive into Lebanon.[/quote]

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