In an exclusive article for TheTower.org, where he is a Contributing Editor, Yossi Melman reveals that Netanyahu failed.  Here is a small excerpt:

Israeli diplomatic sources are expressing disappointment at the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Netanyahu, who initiated the meeting, …was accompanied by Chief of Military Intelligence Major-General Aviv Kochavi and Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin, who served as a translator. Netanyahu hoped to persuade Russia not to honor its contract to supply surface-air S-300 missiles to the Syrian army. But Israeli sources told The Tower that Putin was evasive and refused to commit himself on the issue.

During the meeting with Putin, Netanyahu also clarified Israel’s position versus Syria. He explained that Israel would continue to obstruct by all means available  — including continued air attacks — Syria’s efforts to ship long-range missiles to Hezbollah.

The Russian president, on the other hand, made clear that his country objects to any foreign intervention in Syria and advised Israel to restrain itself, arguing that further attacks may escalate the situation.

Click here for the full article at TheTower.org, published by The Israel Project in Washington: http://www.thetower.org/exclusive-netanyahu-putin-meeting-a-bust-as-russia-refuses-to-back-off-s-300-sale-to-syria/

The authors are Dan Raviv (of CBS News) and Yossi Melman (the longtime Haaretz expert on intelligence, who now is a defense, strategy, and espionage analyst for the Israeli news website Walla).  This is their fifth book together.  Their best seller (in 1990-91) about Israel’s intelligence community was Every Spy a Prince.  They also wrote a character-filled history of U.S.-Israel relations, Friends In Deed.

To glance at readers’ reviews posted at Amazon.com, please click here.  For example:

“Despite the book being over 350 pages, it goes by very quickly (I read it in a weekend). ” –daniel michael  |  17 reviewers made a similar statement

“Highly recommended read for those interested in Middle East events. ” –zedillo99  |  15 reviewers made a similar statement

“Raviv and Melman have written a wonderful history of Mossad. It reads like a thriller, but conveys a thorough history of the Israeli intelligence agency.” –Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize winner

SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON is a powerful, vivid history of Israel’s intelligence community – led by the famous and feared Mossad – from the country’s independence in 1948 right up to the crises of today. Israel’s battle plan, aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program, may drag the United States into war and soaring oil prices. The plan is based on deception, sabotage, assassination, and intimidation. The book tells the story, never told before, of Kidon – the super-secret unit that is like a Mossad within the Mossad. Kidon carries out special operations, including assassinations and sabotage. Kidon had a daring role in destroying Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007.

Israel’s methods and motivations can be fully understood only when seeing how they developed over the decades. Bold spies have penetrated enemy capitals, and secret agencies felt a historic responsibility to protect Jews worldwide. The authors chronicle major changes in Israeli intelligence agencies’ priorities – away from Palestinian peace prospects, shifting to Iran as the main focus. The book also exposes some episodes of which Israeli spies are ashamed; scandals they would prefer remain buried. Still, in the age of the internet and spy satellites, Israel is the most innovative nation in the use of espionage as an alternative to war.

Dan Raviv

Yossi Melman

Among the burning questions addressed and answered in SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON are these: Who planted a powerful computer worm in Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges? Who has been motorcycling boldly through the streets of Tehran, assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists? Are Israeli spies regularly inside Iran and other enemy countries? Did the Mossad make a huge mistake when two dozen of its operatives were seen by hotel security cameras in Dubai, or was it a successful murder mission? Do the assassins, as portrayed in the movie “Munich,” really feel pangs of conscience? Have Israel’s enemies ever managed to plant agents in the Israeli government? Does the United States really trust Israeli intelligence, or is the relationship limited by mutual mistrust? Why do U.S. security agencies believe their close ally is spying on America? Is Israel trying to maneuver the U.S. into attacking Iran?

This book contains new information about the Mossad director from 2002 to 2010, Meir Dagan, and how he put “the dagger back between the teeth” of the spy agency. When he publicly declares that he opposes an Israeli military strike on Iran, what does he favor instead? The authors of this book have spoken with all the major players, and a multitude of minor players as well, to gain a balanced and deep understanding of Israeli actions at times of crisis – and Israel almost always feels it is in a crisis.  Click here for reviews and more information on Spies Against Armageddon.

CNN video showed smoke and fire from apparent Israeli Air Force strikes inside Syria (used in TheTower.org coverage)

By striking military targets inside Syria three times this year, Israel is engaging in what former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles would have described as a strategy of “brinksmanship.”

It is not in Israel’s national interest to intervene in the bloody Syrian civil war – a sad, violent, and regionally destabilizing conflict with no end in sight.  And it is not Israel’s intention to do so.

Though the Israeli government has mostly maintained official silence – neither confirming nor denying – there are sufficient hints to conclude that three aerial attacks this year, on sensitive military facilities and on Hezbollah and Iranian assets in Syria, were carried out by the Israeli Air Force.

The first, in January, destroyed a convoy loaded with Russian made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The targets struck in early May included depots of medium-range surface-to-surface missiles also prepared for transfer to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Another target was Jamraya, Syria’s most secretive military R&D center. It is situated in northwest Damascus, the Syrian capital. Israeli intelligence sources tell The Tower that the facility housed sensitive Syrian research on chemical weapons as well as long-range guided missiles.

All three attacks illustrate a pattern. They certainly suggest that Israel has excellent, precise intelligence. It must have been gathered over months and even years of painstaking work from agents on the ground, communications intercepts, aerial reconnaissance, and satellite imagery.

Politically and diplomatically, the attacks also highlight the determination of the Israeli government not to repeat past mistakes. Since 1996, Israel ignored the systematic, ongoing transfer of Iranian-made missiles to Hezbollah via Syria.

As a result of this choice – and even after a U.N. Security Council resolution demanded the disarmament of Hezbollah and an end to the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon – Assad’s terrorist allies amassed more than 40,000 rockets and missiles of all types and ranges. Their arsenal included long-range missiles capable of hitting almost every target in Israel: cities, military bases, power stations, and perhaps even the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

The previous government, still in power during the January air strike, and the new coalition (still headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) decided that enough is enough.

Israel is determined to stop shipments of weaponry systems it calls “game changing.” They include Russian made anti-aircraft missiles, Russian made surface-to-sea missiles, and the Iranian made Fateh-110 (Victory) and M-600 surface missiles. Those can carry both conventional and chemical warheads.

Israel’s decision to carry out air strikes, albeit without making a public announcement, is based on a calculated risk. It assumes that the Assad regime is too weak to respond, and that neither Iran nor Hezbollah has the desire to escalate the situation.

There is the risk that repeatedly hitting a weakened President Bashar al-Assad will goad him to retaliate for the sake of his personal honor and national pride.  But if he fires rockets into Israel or gives the “green light” to Palestinian proxies or Hezbollah terrorists to strike Israelis, Assad and his backers in Tehran know that Israel would respond forcefully.

There is much talk, lately, of “red lines” in the Syria crisis. Israel, in effect, must guess what are Assad’s limits of tolerance. Israeli officials are  adamant that their country is not aiming at destabilizing the Syrian regime. But Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has hinted that further actions remain possible.

While it is unclear if the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis understands that years of impunity regarding arms shipments have come to an end, there are also lessons from the Israeli Air Force attacks that can affect Israel’s relations with the United States.

The region assumes that raids by the IAD were coordinated with the Obama Administration — in part to dispel criticism that President Obama has done nothing to punish Assad, even though the Obama “red line” was violated when chemical weapons were used against rebels and civilians in Syria.

Still, the gambit is highly risky. Israel’s successful air operations, after all, undermine Administration arguments regarding the sophistication of Syrian air defenses. U.S. officials repeatedly say, “Syria wouldn’t be as easy as Libya was,” hinting at their concern that U.S. or NATO planes trying to carry out missions in Syrian air space might be shot down.

If Israel’s pilots could penetrate into Syria, surely the United States Air Force or NATO would be capable of enforcing a non-fly zone. Grounding Assad’s warplanes and helicopter would, at least, reduce the bloodshed inside his suffering country.

Meir Dagan, who ended eight years as head of Israel’s secretive foreign intelligence agency at the end of 2010, was speaking (April 29) on Israeli television’s Channel 2 in an interview by Ilana Dayan on her “Uvda” (Fact) show.

Dagan, the former spymaster who last year had a medical emergency but then successful surgery in the former Soviet Union, is again actively speaking out — with the intention of restraining Prime Minister Netanyahu from ordering Israel’s military to attack Iran.

Last year, Dagan told the CBS News broadcast “60 Minutes” that the likely retaliation that would follow such an attack by Israel would ruin daily life in the Jewish state.  In short, Dagan does not believe it would be worth it to attack Iran.

Now he has told Dayan on her TV show (in Hebrew) that there was a situation — when he was still the Mossad director — in which the political leaders of the country favored a military conflict, while those who would have to execute such orders were firmly against.

Meir Dagan on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” 2012

Dagan was undoubtedly referring to the opposition expressed to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, Ehud Barak, by Dagan, the top military officer (Chief of the General Staff) Gabi Ashkenazi, and the head of domestic security (the agency known as Shin Bet), Yuval Diskin.

As Yossi Melman reported over 4 months ago:

“Netanyahu turned to the chief of staff, General Ashkenazi, and told him to ‘set the systems for P-plus,’ a term meaning to swiftly increase the preparedness of the military in case of a war with Iran. The measures to be taken in such a situation could include moving military units, strengthening intelligence capabilities and preparing the home front for a war. …

“The truth is that Netanyahu and Barak did not order the military to plan a direct, all-out attack on Iran. Their true intention was to trigger a chain of events which would create tension and provoke Iran, and eventually could have led to a war that might drag in the United States.

“At that meeting and on other occasions, General Ashkenazi warned Netanyahu and Barak that such an order could ‘create uncontrollable facts on the ground’ which could ignite an undesired regional war. ‘If you open and press an accordion, the instrument starts playing music’ was the picturesque description from the chief of staff, who retired more than a year ago.”

Now, on Israeli TV,  Meir Dagan has gone public with his account of how his country’s top political leaders — meaning Netanyahu and Barak — wanted to ready the “military and the entire systems, and then you may have a situation where you are on alert — and the other side sees it — and everybody is ready and preparing for war.  A war which maybe nobody wants.”

While hinting that he saw the danger of an unwanted war at that time, Dagan has not publicly said what he advocates.  It seems obvious that he would like robust covert action — including sabotage coordinated with the United States — to continue.

Dagan did repeat this week that he pledged, while leading the Mossad, that Iran would not create or acquire a nuclear weapons during his time as head of the spy agency.  And Iran has not developed nuclear bombs. Dagan says publicly that Iran cannot make a nuclear weapon before 2014, meaning that there still is time to slow down the Iranians — or for American military action to destroy Iranian facilities far more thoroughly than could Israel.

My true feelings on the eve of our Holocaust Remembrance Day are of shame. Israeli governments and some corporations (such as Bank Leumi, which for many years withheld the funds of people who perished and refused to release the money to their relatives) are so hypocritical. They praise the bravery of the World War Two Partisans and the Warsaw Ghetto fighters — now saluting the 70th anniversary of the uprising in Poland against Nazi occupiers — and promise never to forget.  The phrase, “Never again!” repeatedly rings in our ears.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, seen on Israel’s Channel 2, at Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day) ceremony at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

The Chief of the General Staff — himself a son of Holocaust survivors — is leading the March of the Living in Poland, with its show of mass defiance at the gates of Auschwitz.

But there are still 180,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel. One-third of them live in poverty. Thousands of them are in despicable conditions. The bureaucratic machinery is doing everything to deny them the very little to which they are entitled: financial support, housing subsidies, medication, discounts on their utilities, and so on.

Israeli governments, leftist and rightist, consistently promised in the last two decades — promised? swore! — to improve the situation of the Holocaust survivors and to reform a system which essentially was wicked. But it turned out that very little was done.

Yossi Melman

It’s likely that the Mossad told ASIO — the Australian Security Intelligence Organization — what Ben Zygier allegedly did to endanger Israeli security.  Zygier committed suicide in a high-security Israeli prison cell in December 2010.  A native of Melbourne, Australia, he moved to Israel and reportedly became an undercover Mossad operative.

In this interview with Australia’s ABC Television (the Lateline program today), Yossi Melman — co-author of Spies Against Armageddon and previous books including the best-seller Every Spy a Prince — said Israeli intelligence may have been in a mood to share more information with ASIO than usual, because in early 2010 there was uproar in Australia over the revelation that Mossad operatives on an assassination mission in Dubai had used Australian passports, among others.

On a sunny, humid afternoon in June 2010, I sat on the plaintiff’s bench in Judge Hila Gerstel’s court in Petach Tikva, a town about eight miles east of this bustling city.

Yossi Melman

Opposite my lawyer and me were representatives and legal advisors of Israel’s security establishment.  My goal, on behalf of the newspaper I then worked for, Haaretz, was to persuade Judge Gerstel to lift a gag order.

We lost the case. Judge Gerstel refused to consider even a compromise – to allow us to reprint news items published abroad about a mysterious Prisoner X. Because of the judicial gag, the episode was not included in the book which I later co-authored.

Twenty months later, I wonder what would have happened had the judge given her consent?  Would that have prevented Ben Zygier from committing suicide?  He was the Australian who moved to Israel and, as Ben Alon, reportedly worked for the Mossad until he did something that enraged the Israeli foreign espionage agency.  Perhaps a glimmer of media attention would have offered some hope to a man in solitary confinement whose very existence was a state secret.

The 6 Former Shin Bet Chiefs (from Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated film “The Gatekeepers”)

He was arrested in February 2010, almost certainly by officers of Shin Bet – the domestic security agency spotlighted now in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Gatekeepers.”  Zygier/Alon was interrogated, was represented by four lawyers, appeared before judges, was visited by his wife and other family members, and was eventually indicted.  In December 2010 he was found dead in his high-security cell, originally constructed to house Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin. Authorities decreed that the prisoner somehow hanged himself. Every move and stage of this case was conducted in secrecy.

We still don’t know the nature of his alleged crime. Did he betray fellow Mossad operatives – known as “combatants” — and compromise ongoing operations? Was he recruited by a foreign agency, perhaps an Arab entity or other enemy of Israel?  Or, as Australian media now suggest, did he spill the beans to a basically friendly security service such as ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization?

Senior Israeli government officials, including current and former heads of the intelligence community, are saying: “Trust us.  We don’t make any of our citizens simply disappear.  The civil rights of suspects and prisoners are respected.  But telling you anything about them would do severe harm to the security of the Jewish State.”

Yet the secrecy culture is clearly exaggerated and habitual, tarnishing my country’s image as a society based on freedom – boasting proudly that it is the only true democracy in the Middle East.

The deafening silence of the authorities about Zygier and his death for nearly two years, until they were forced by an Australian TV documentary to open the information portal slightly, made Israel look like a dark nation whose citizens can simply vanish from the face of the earth, as happens under tyrannical regimes. And we are not one of those.

In 2006, Amos Manor, who headed Shin Bet for 11 years beginning in 1953, told me that since the War of Independence in 1948, no Israeli prisoner suspected of security offenses had been executed in Israel. None, he said, had even been detained for long without trial.

Yet since the 1950′s Israel did operate an X Files system. When members of the Mossad or other security agencies and institutions were suspected of betraying Israel, they were typically held in solitary confinement under assumed names and isolated from the outside world. The media were banned from reporting about the arrests, word of which generally leaked to journalists in this small and intimately talkative land.

The prisoners’ interrogators threatened them that if they failed to follow these guidelines, they would be deprived of various rights, such as family visits.

The last known case of this disturbing practice was that of Professor Marcus Klingberg, the deputy scientific director of the top-secret Israel Institute for Biological Research. He was arrested in 1983 and convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. He had to play along with using a false name in prison and was known to his jailers as Greenberg.

Gossip about some of these cases naturally reached foreign correspondents, and the result was that readers around the world knew about some occurrences in Israel – often drawn in harshly negative tones – even while gag orders prevented Israelis from reading or hearing reports that were freely available abroad.

The age of the internet has made a mockery of the practice, as Israelis can click and read foreign websites.  Yet judges and security agencies here cling to the old days when they thought they could control everything.

The ties that bind the intelligence community, the defense establishment, and law-enforcement authorities including the courts are too tight and too cozy.  Espionage agencies that are rated among the world’s finest show only a Neanderthal knowledge of how information reaches the public in a high-tech era.

The Mossad and its sophisticated combatants display daring and courage behind enemy lines, and they know how to gather information.  In the pre- and post-internet age, they have been very good at waging psychological warfare involving the dissemination of disinformation and rumors.

Yet the Mossad is less capable of handling crises involving the mass media. Attempting to conceal facts only serves to stimulate interest and draw even more attention. By treating every bit of information as a national secret, the Mossad and the other state security institutions have caused the number of secrets to multiply. And trying to protect all of these secrets has made it difficult for any secret to remain intact, including ones that really deserve to be.

Here is one example to prove the point. Victor Ostrovsky, a Mossad cadet who was ousted, wrote a book aggrandizing his own role and supposedly revealing Mossad secrets. He should never have been recruited by the secretive agency in the first place, since he had been a known swindler who was caught in a fraud scam. The Israeli government foolishly tried to block publication of Ostrovsky’s book in the United States, which naturally resulted in its becoming a global best seller in 1990.

The Mossad’s handling of the Zygier/Alon affair is reminiscent of what was said about French royalists more than two centuries ago: They forget nothing, yet they learn nothing.

As effective as Israel’s covert combatants have been, their chiefs repeatedly display a we-know-best attitude that crosses the border into harmful arrogance.  The Mossad’s shiny image has been tarnished by this episode – with the agency seen to be desperately scurrying to close the barn door after the horse has bolted, perhaps because there are other embarrassing steeds and stories still tightly held.

Damage may also have been to ongoing operations. Iran and other enemies of Israel surely now are double- and triple-checking any contacts they had with Australian-accented men who resemble the published photographs of Zygier/Alon.

America’s leader will be making his first visit to Israel as President, around March 22.  Officials say the subjects will be how best to confront Iran’s nuclear program and how to re-start peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  Obama does plan a visit to the PA’s headquarters in Ramallah, which is in the West Bank just a few minutes’ drive north of Jerusalem.

Obama will be accompanied by his new Secretary of State, former senator John Kerry.  Will they make a major push for Israeli talks with Palestinians?  Will that be, in part, a response to unrest in Egypt and other Arab countries and — worst of all — a civil war in Syria which is said to have killed 70,000 people?

Below is an op-ed article we wrote for The New York Times last November, and we see the possibility that the wider strategic goals for the Obama Administration can still be pursued.

-  -

FOUR years ago, when Israel invaded Gaza and around 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed — the very model of a pointless war — Washington did nothing to offer a creative or positive path to the combatants. George W. Bush was the lamest of lame ducks, and although Barack Obama, after he was inaugurated, vowed to push for Middle East peace, he was too distracted by America’s domestic problems.

Now, strengthened by his re-election, Mr. Obama should work intensively to create a pro-peace, pro-stability coalition in the region.

He needs to put three key leaders to the test: President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Egypt and Turkey have been trying, with Qatar, to fashion a halt to the bloodshed between Hamas and Israel. Yet a cease-fire in Gaza is only a first step.

America must now demand more of Mr. Morsi. In recognition of the billions of dollars America gives to a country now starved of tourism income, the Egyptian leader must be required to help the United States achieve its interests in the Middle East. Mr. Obama should be prepared to threaten a sharp reduction in foreign aid, unless Mr. Morsi uses his Muslim Brotherhood credentials in a positive way. The United States should not watch passively if Mr. Morsi positions himself as a great friend of the rocket-launching regime in Gaza.

That is what he did in the first days of the crisis, apparently considering it necessary to mouth stale rhetoric by condemning Israeli aggression and encouraging dreams of liberating Palestinians from Jewish control. Those are not the most helpful of words, but the test for Mr. Morsi is what he actually does during and after this crisis. He should be compelled to talk some sense into Hamas, so that the rockets stop and civilians on both sides can enjoy quiet and safety — and not only for a few months.

If Egypt truly wants to retain its role as the leading nation in the Arab world, Mr. Morsi will have to earn it. He has to honor his country’s peace treaty with Israel and crack down on terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula. He also should act strongly to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, including Iranian missiles that are shipped to Sudan and then trucked through Egypt and Sinai.

Fortunately, Egypt’s army would welcome a diplomatic, rather than bellicose, course. The military, which has a huge role in the country’s economy and ultimately guarantees a government’s ability to stay in power, wants to avoid a return to the pre-1978 days of hostility and frequent wars with Israel. Mr. Morsi, already walking a tightrope between volatile factions, would do well to please the generals and avoid fanning flames that could erupt into regional conflict.

If Mr. Morsi exerts himself, he can help bring Palestinians to the negotiating table with Israel — at least the Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas, with Hamas perhaps opting for only a tacit role.

This is Egypt’s chance to impress the United States. Mr. Morsi does not need to govern his country the way the American-sponsored Hosni Mubarak used to. But working with Washington should be stressed as the only certain path to regional leadership for Egypt. The United States should insist that Mr. Morsi become the core of an active and creative coalition that promotes peace.

Turkey should also be part of that, and President Obama can easily let Mr. Erdogan claim the leading role he obviously wants in the region.

America can stand firmly behind any Turkish initiative to promote moderation and nonviolence. One obstacle is Mr. Erdogan’s decision to distance his country from Israel — most recently calling it a “terrorist state” — after a long period of warm military and political ties. Now Mr. Obama should strongly encourage Turkey to mend relations with Israel, so that the two countries can covertly and overtly help each other keep wary eyes on Iran, Syria and other shared concerns.

A coalition promoting stability that includes Egypt and Turkey would also be a potent way to dent Iran’s bid for regional hegemony. The United States and Israel share that aim, and so do the oil-exporting kingdoms of the Persian Gulf. They are all concerned that Iran’s uranium enrichment will lead to a nuclear weapon.

That is the key to winning Mr. Netanyahu’s cooperation with a new pro-peace coalition. He will not easily agree to concessions like a new freeze on building Jewish housing in the West Bank, and there is hardly any chance of his displaying flexibility until after his expected re-election on Jan. 22.

Yet very soon after Israelis vote, Mr. Obama — having demonstrated his support during the Gaza crisis — should begin a major effort to bring Israel on board for peace negotiations.

Iran could be the trump card. The president must convince Mr. Netanyahu that the best way to ensure American support for Israel in slowing, sabotaging or destroying Iran’s nuclear program is to genuinely take part in a broad American-sponsored effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ben Zygier/Allon (from Australia’s ABC)

On Wednesday night, the Ministry of Justice in Jerusalem issued a statement confirming that an Israeli-Australian dual citizen had been imprisoned and in 2010 was found dead in his cell.  It said the man’s family had been informed after he was arrested.  Only recently officials (without any public announcement) reached a conclusion that he committed suicide by hanging, but investigations continue into any failures, abuse, or wrongdoing by prison officials.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Foreign Correspondent” series had a half-hour report this week on the mysterious life and death of the man, born as Ben Zygier to a prominent Jewish family in Melbourne, Australia, who was known in Israel as Ben Alon.

On Wednesday morning, Israel Radio’s Keren Neubach phoned Yossi Melman, co-author of Spies Against Armageddon, seeking his analysis.  Melman explained that two years ago, when he was working for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he and the paper tried to publish an item — giving some partial details about a “Prisoner X” held secretly in an Israeli prison — based entirely on something that had appeared in a British newspaper.

Usually Israel’s military censor permits repetition of claims and information that have appeared in foreign publications, but — citing a gag order issued by an Israeli judge — the authorities did not allow Melman or the newspaper to say anything about Prisoner X.

Melman said on the radio that in the age of the internet and social networking — when any Israeli can go on the Web and read or watch what Australian TV revealed about Prisoner X and his suicide in 2010 — there is no point in banning any word of it in the Israeli news media.

Melman added, however, that the State of Israel does not “disappear” people.  If someone is charged with a crime, however serious, that person is brought before a judge, a state prosecutor draws up charges, the person’s family is informed, and a legal verdict is reached by a court.  In many cases touching upon the security and intelligence agencies, every step is however “behind closed doors.”

The Associated Press notes that the most recent case of a person vanishing — apparently through the action of Israel’s espionage agency Mossad and/or security agency Shin Bet — was that of an Arab who was last seen on a train in Ukraine.  Dirar Abu Sisi was later confirmed to be in custody in Israel, where he faces charges of being the director of Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israel.

Confronted with this set of new facts — and a host of older facts, such as Iran’s nuclear program, which Mr. Obama has warned must not produce nuclear weapons — the American president could choose to be highly active, or to stand back for a while and let the Middle East simmer.

 The problem is that the Mideast, left practically unwatched to simmer, tends to boil over.

 So far, because the United States is so pleased that Morsi mediated successfully between Israel and Hamas, Washington is giving Morsi a fairly easy time. In the first Obama Administration comment on the apparent power grab in Cairo, the State Department meekly said that it raises “concerns” because “the revolution” was supposed to mean that no one man will ever again wield too much authority in Egypt.

 But, beyond that, the U.S. only urged that everyone keep calm — and perhaps move toward writing a constitution that would protect the civil rights of Egyptians.

 President Obama may decide to be more ambitious in the Middle East, but at the least he will probably wait until after the Israeli election on January 22 before launching any major initiative. He had a special envoy for peace in the Middle East for a few years, former Sen. George Mitchell, but Mitchell quit after finding that he could not make much headway in keeping Israelis and Palestinians at the negotiating table.

 In the Gaza talks, however, Mr. Obama demonstrated the unique role of the U.S. by sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to push the talk forward in Jerusalem, Ramallah (in the West Bank), and Cairo. She was able to preside over the announcement of a cease-fire on Wednesday in the Egyptian capital, where she spoke of a need “to consolidate the progress” and improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.

 As well as trying to help Israeli and Palestinians negotiate — defying strong skepticism on all sides — Mr. Obama could pursue a wider goal of creating a pro-peace, pro-stability coalition in the Middle East.

For the rest of the article, see: http://cbsn.ws/V4OymG  or click here.