No need to plug these leaks

November 29, 2010 - 8:50 AM by

Israeli officials were quivering in their chairs on Sunday in anticipation of WikiLeak’s release of the trove of diplomatic cables it had obtained. The weekend papers warned that there would be much embarrassment on both the Israeli side over revealed US government assessments of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and former PMs Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.

Netanyahu went so far to remind reporters on Sunday, before the documents were published on news websites around the world, that Israel was not expected to be the focus of the documents.

“Israel is not the center of international attention,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the southern border with Egypt. “Normally, there’s a gap between what is said publicly and what is said privately, but in this case, the gap is not large.”

It turned out that he was right. While the documents released Sunday night included some titillating tidbits about other public figures – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was referred to as “Hitler,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “naked emperor,” the German chancellor was called Angela “Teflon” Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “driven by paranoia,” Vladimir Putin was referred to as “Alpha Male,” while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is “afraid, hesitant,” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s full-time nurse is a “hot blond,” and Berlusconi loves “wild parties,” – the material pertaining to Israel is serious and to the point.

• Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who stepped down as head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence last week, said in a meeting in 2009 with US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) that Israel was not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the United States was on 9/11.

• Mossad director Meir Dagan told Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2007 that Israel and the United States need to do more to create regime change in Iran.

• Dagan also told Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the US president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in the summer of 2007 that IDF operations against Hamas in the West Bank were preventing the terrorist group from taking over the Fatah-controlled territory, according to a cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department.

• According to another cable sent from the embassy in Tel Aviv, Barak revealed to a congressional delegation in 2009 that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

According to an analysis by The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz, “while there were some comments made by Mossad director Meir Dagan regarding leaders in the Middle East – the emir of Qatar is “annoying,” and the king of Morocco is not interested in governing – that are slightly embarrassing, Israeli politicians were spared the more embarrassing analyses of their personalities that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi received.”

Not even a mention of Bibi’s comb over. And Katz also surmised that from an Israeli perspective, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the WikiLeaks documents may have helped Israel.

By presenting the Arab leaders as more extreme in their remarks than Israeli leaders, the cables show the dissonance in the region and the danger involved in allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear program.

So, our initial pre-embarassment over the release of the classified documents has turned into satisfaction. At least until the more damning ones come out.

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