YouSaid · the spoken record

Uzi Arad

lines on the record: 71
first: 2025-01-27
most recent: 2025-01-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You learn a great deal by coming, and what you learn here is not necessarily good theater, but also a good political views, politics at the highest level, and Shakespeare is his greatest when he does the political plays. And let me add you one thing. I do number myself among those who would like to see a restoration of the memory of Richard III, who was given a very bad press, and he deserved so much better. That is because even Shakespeare got his history wrong.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I do look forward to enjoy the play and the rest of my days here in London. Well, Hamilton, like all good tourists. But I know the end.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, the Trump period, I don't know how to look at it. Is it the kind of world we're getting into which would be affected by so many eccentricities and things like that? I don't know. I hope it is the exception from the historical rule and will go back sometimes to the more boring world in which, you know, things are within boundaries.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So say it. There is no penalty in saying that, but be truthful, be surgically correct. You gain more by that than by trying to cover or deceive or do that. And in many, many cases, I found that this of management of either relationships, personal or institutional is advantageous. It pays off. Although there are always exceptions.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And some even prosper in using that because there are some advantages to hiding from one another, not trusting one another, as well as there are disadvantages in being too confiding and trusting because then they are duped. I've always thought that one should give a chance to be innocent, naive and direct and honest even at the expense of your own interest. For example, whenever we were meeting with some of our American friends after something went wrong, we were quick and I insisted on admitting our mistakes. Well, why should you not do it? We got something wrong. We fouled up something.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This comes into the ethics and the practice and theory of how to work with partners, allies and so forth. Usually, assumably partners and allies are friends of yours, not enemies. The common is greater than the different, and the thing that you share interests are more than the ones you have in dispute. So basically attitude should be one of being cooperative, honest, direct, and act loyally as you should, as allies should, and that is also true on the level of the functionaries themselves. Every once in a while it so appears that Machiavellian considerations and the values of deceit and not telling the truth and deceiving one another entered into play”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The margins that doing a good service to the president and the national security machinery that makes decision. So scraft was my example as the effective NSC. Now, I don't know the guy who is in, that would be an interesting thing. Trump had experimented with some. And about the British, well, you know, about so much better, but there are also some formidable characters whom I admired greatly.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He writes historical grand history, and nobody writes like Kissinger Cyrus Vance wouldn't be able to write even a chapter, but he was a superb lawyer, an extremely straight shooter and very direct, very correct, the prototypical, legally trained man with defense and foreign affairs. So they're completely different. But if you ask me, I get to know many of them, but also knew the history of I regarded as the best national security advisor that America had Brent Scrollcroft, which was a man who was managing things from behind, doing things quietly, doing the necessary stuff work, not trying to play himself.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These characters who have become typical bureaucrats in the modern age sometimes compare themselves one to another. All countries have those kind of guys which do the thing, and they often refer to the big examples that we know in the American case, although I take interest in the British as well. And of course they are different and also my French friends and my European friends all have them. Kissinger was a certain type of national security type. He was extremely active. He was first national security advisor, then he moved to the State Department became minister, secretary of state. And he liked to play the game of countries. You know, he was a student of metternich and European history. And he liked all those machinations. By the way, he is the grandest strategist of them all. And when he writes,”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The method of negotiating for the hostages release was effected by some considerations of his own political expediency. This is pure damage to Israel's national, to Israel itself, and he is guilty of that.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started to appoint his own kind. He's a man who's been convicted scores of times. This is not just an omission at the margins. This is an act I would, you know, comes close to, I don't know. Reckless. I think, you know, we used to refer to Caligula's appointing his horses as senators as to be a kind of a metaphor to what Bibi might do. But, you know, Caligula's horses were not damaging the state. Benkir, as pure damage to Israel's interest and indu it. So in that sense he's doing damage. Another thing is that it was evident that he was prolonging the war, although it could have been stopped earlier because it served his political interest. And even the case of”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See, when he appointed as the Minister for National Security, this person who is called Bengvir, by all accounts he knew who he was, is really a small place we know all each other. We are very incestuous, we all know each other. This guy is a thug. He's a clown. He is a provocateur. You don't do that, it is a mark of utter irresponsibility to the nation to give the portfolio of national security to this kind of a guy. He did it only because he needed this man's votes for his own personal staying. But that is a damaging thing that he did. He knew it what the man has corrupted the police.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the moment he is really causing more damage than in Israel than good, but he's still there, and he still feels that he has other battles to win, not only the one to stay in office. He still wants to see us addressing the Iranian threat which he believes is no less apparel to Israel than other things. So we have to wait and see, but there is an end to that story.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come variations. He could withdraw out of his own volition because he would be exhausted, but he could also fight it out because he believes that he still can and even be good for the nation. He could be chased out by the criminal investigations that are afflicting him. He could lose his support from his base because the base is eroding. And it takes a BB to defeat Bibi. There is no opposition. One of the problems we have in Israel is deficit in leadership. None of the leaders of the opposition has the stature, the background, and the political strength of Bibi. And that's his success because he essentially neutralized them all, that's his political savvy. But he will have to leave the scene.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interest to resolve its crisis and century old dispute with the Palestinians. And baby survival? Well, you know, there is a race here. I used to say back in 2015, people were concerned what will happen if you'll get elected. I said, if he gets elected, that increases his chance of being re-elected after that each time his chances increase. And because incumbency has its advantages. So in effect, I said, prepare for BB as Prime Minister in perpetuity. So my audience was shocked. I myself did not think, I mean, I don't take myself that seriously, but it turns out that I was coming to being close. But no, he'll depart from the scene sooner or later.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To sustain stability and to move on a very fragile and a very thin ice to move forward, each time overcoming the complications. Now things that have been done before in our history You know, when Sadat was assassinated, I was having lunch with the American CIA station chief in Israel. We were both surprised. But look at the surprises. First, the peace with Egypt just a few years before came as a surprise, a pleasant surprise, an important surprise. But so was the assassination of the architect of that piece of Sadat, Hubai, Islamicists. So all these boilers and all these things happen, and we have them around, so we need luck and also creativity, and the usage of interest and the judicious employment of leverages and enticement and all that. And we can move on to have a positive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It is in Israel's absolute”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, I'm not sure that this hostage issue would be fully resolved, and the built in problems are there that even with that malice, there is a chance that it will not be consummated and therefore it could collapse under its own weight. So we have to brace ourselves and hope for the best and try to help this happen. But should it be concluded, then of course one would have to move on from our stand, and it is extremely difficult to effect this process. Much depends on the role that the United States would choose to act. Will it succeed? Well, if nothing is done, then a war would be resumed. This is the natural product of no action. You need active innovation.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to involvement of other interested parties which often involved the United States, Europe, we have had such international involvement throughout because of the significance of the Middle East, so all help would be welcome, I think.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But possibly the militarized. But there is open-mindedness and this is what we ought to do. So, Rory, I think that on the inclusion of Hamas, it would be self-defeating. That's the point. We should not take that as a reality because it would ruin the process from the start. It should be the Palestinians, and they should be as demanding as they can, and they should feel as nationalistically as they can. And we know some of them, and they do have people who care for their own interest, and this should be nurtured. The creativity should come from the fact that now we have a constellation in the Middle East in which other participation could assist that process, ranging from the local partners in the Middle East who have normalized their relationship with Israel.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is not a pipe dream. Now one should work toward that possibility. I think that the Israeli government would go for it. Yes, we have some extreme fringe in Israel, which is always less than ten percent, which have either Messianic ideas that they believe that they are not really influenced by realities, and they would like to annex, but they've never been the majority, far from it, and they've never been even seriously considered. At this moment, they emit some voices, but when reality comes in, Netanyahu himself throughout his career, when he dealt with a certain efforts, he talked about another entity, called it a state minus, and he meant that the Palestinian would have a state.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said essentially that one should go back to approximately the sixty seven borders, but let me add you a very creative idea that had been injected that if there would be some Israeli who would hold on to territories that we occupied in sixty seven, there would be a swap so that if we take some land, we'll also give some land. That principle had been inserted by Clinton and is a possibility, so essentially there would be this one could adjust the borders to the current realities that the Oslo process in its various configurations as late as Anapolis about fifteen years ago to have final borders declared, to have a peace between the two parties, and to have normal relationships.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing, then upon the changing circumstances and came involved, said OK, the role of violence has ceased, now I'm part of another process, and I do not renounce, but I am in favour of peace. What kind of peace? Suppose it is the long formula, the old formula, which is the two entities, which is the one of partition that has always been since the British in mandate and since the UN decision always whenever they came to finding a formula how to settle the issue between the rivals for sovereignty over Palestine or the Holy Land, it was one of partitioning along the lines of demography, and that has been the case. Today this is called the two state solution. Today it rests on the United Nations Security Resolution two hundred forty two.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Palestinian Authority elects hopefully responsible people who do have national positions and aspirations, of course why not, but they should not be Hamas not because the Hamas is some kind of a label, but because Hamas by its very principle does not call for a resolution of the conflict. It calls for the destruction of Israel. They do not being there would be as part of a party that would do anything but call for action to bring about Israel's destruction. So you're not bringing into the leadership a kind of a poisonous pawn, but if they renounce, for example, if they just did, the neat thing that leaders have done in history, you know, former terrorist who employed terrorism and were brutal and everything.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you know, this is a very fluid time, and there is certainly room and need for action by leaders and by people capable of effecting action. And there are many, many possibilities, and they're all extremely complicated because of the microeconomic or the micro-political difficulties that each one has in terms of practicality. But under Hall, in very simplistic terms, There is a course of action which would be positive, and that is possibly through the benefit of other actors from the Middle East, a process will be put in place in which order would be restored to Gaza, a leadership that would come and be responsible for the Gazan interest should come from the Palestinian Authority.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They say we are here to see Israel destroyed. I hate to see that, but this is what the Iranians say they call for our complete demise. It is not even the kind of evil that Churchill had said but the Germans should ever invade Britain. The expectation was not to destroy Britain and its population. Here you have people who ideologically mean what they say. They would like us as a collective entity and as individuals to vanish. And they affected a very brutal offensive of a limited nature which they thought was conducive to that future option. We failed to deter them from that kind of attack. Now, should they want a repeat, they would have to factor into that the price tag is at least on the same order of magnitude as the one exacted now.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at the context. Somebody had made the statistic that is, I don't know if you call that in the course of one day on that early October 7th, we lost a number of fatalities that we've never had in one single day in our entire history. Only the time of the Holocaust ahead, that number as a daily production death production. But remember again what memory this evoke The Hamas are not saying that and they do not do that because they say we have an issue with Israel or because it is the occupation.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I grant you, understand what you're saying, and I understand why you're saying that I can understand. I'm trying to tell you what it looks from Israel's point of view, because again, you're not looking at the full scope. The full scope is look at how Metullah, the city, why don't you go and film Metula? Metula is completely destroyed like Gaza, except that there were villas, and not this kind of dense, or the city of Kiryachmon. Entire cities have been burned and levelled off, and in the south you have at least four areas of urban which are about the size of Gaza. But somehow it is a concentration of people in Gaza which has been watched. We have civilians hurt at the same time, and again, in our case, those civilians were deliberately targeted. As such, and there is another thing, Rory, I want to tell you.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that this is collateral damage we are not after civilians, certainly not after babies and that. Yes, the commanders, yes, but that was decapitation. Decapitation as a process is understood. And you know, why did somebody go after bin Laden? Although sometimes you hold the heads responsible particularly when it comes to those. That's another issue. When you talk about the civilian population in Gaza, this is very much collateral damage should have been avoided, can be avoided, and hopefully we will not return to this kind of condition which coerces us. To go and confront this difficult situation.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As if attacking civilians and causing death and destruction was confined by the Hamas only the first two days, or as we, when in fighting for the duration, were causing more damage in Gaza. True, this is what we did in Gaza, but that was done, and you should have been in Israel to see it when at the very same days again civilians in Israel, and the misery among those Israelis displaced, the hundreds of thousands whose homes were burned, businesses were burned, farms were burned, they are inhospitable now, neither in the north nor in the south. There are old people who are now, as I said, internally displaced, and the fact that civilians were targeted, you see, in our case.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should be finished, obviously, but let me explain a thing that one has to focus the question a little in a wider scope. It is not just the two first days in which the Hamas committed those atrocities. Not at all. For the last a year and almost a half, the Hezbollah and others were daily bombarding Israeli cities, settlements, population. There were daily death of children, women, civilians in Israel, all those throughout the war until the very last day, even the last hour before the ceasefire went to effect, they still fired a symbolic mislead. So it is an artificial and wrong editing of the situation.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of making it sure that their severan population is immune or protected and taken away, they do the exact opposite. They place their facilities within those populated centers, they place their command position in hospitals, expecting us that because it is a hospital we won't touch that. So in a way they are deliberately exposing them to danger, and that confronts you with a choice, what are you to do? What are you to do, for example, if suppose you are a policeman and somebody stands ahead of you holding a hostage to protect his body and says there I go? Don't touch me. Well, as we've seen in films and also in history, sometimes people say okay, we will not touch you and you'll get away with it because others might be hurt. But sometimes you take the risk.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Course, of course, listen we are close, this is a reality what Gaza is like is not a new thing to us who are the people there we know The politics and the history of what has happened is clear and the kind of condition that those people are going through one can imagine more than you think. Sometimes we take into Israeli hospitals people who were brought from Gaza discreetly to be operated in Israel and so forth the human condition, the desperation, the destruction, the pain one does not attempt to have a big imagination to know what's going on. But let's understand what is happening here. In the first place it is the deliberate strategy of the Hamas to use those people as human shields that is to say instead of”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them terribly while they were in captivity. And the issue of bringing about the release of those hostages became the driving factor. With a passage of time that is the single issue that brought about this ceasefire. The desire of the other side to stop our offensive against them and for us to have our hostages back those alive, alive. So that's led to what is essentially an interim agreement, a ceasefire, and not a final cessation of hostilities.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of what they thought they scored very little turned out our defenses, intercepted much of what they did. But still one cannot take away from them that they attacked us directly with heavy missiles, hoping to create large dammers again to Israeli population centers and to especially to certain targets. So that was a very complicated thing. But what brought about the ceasefire is that dimension that no one attractored into it, the hostage taken business. Hostage taken is a worldwide practice today done by criminal organizations or terrorist organizations. We are not the only one to be subject to that. It was part of their plan to take hostages, again, elderly, young, women and so.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But this was done systematically, but at the same time, almost four days into the war, the question begged itself whether we should open a second front with the North, and some people had proposed because we knew that we had as contingency plans some of those jazzy means that were employed, this booby trap communication gear that essentially are decimated their command structure. So the option was to do it right away the beginning. We would have succeeded in some extent, but the decision was taken not to so as not to spread ourselves too thin, because we really stretch, so first concentrates on the south. In the interim, Iran at one point charged us directly with those missile, ballistic missiles barrage, and they were disabled.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Hamas targets, there already was a beginning of what would amount to a pretty heavy punishment, and it took few days more for us to go on the offensive, namely to prepare because they were not even prepared the plans for how to enter the Gaza Strip with which forces, according to which plan, and we started the grand maneuver, so to speak. And it went on and on and on, and it became very prolonged because this is urban warfare, and we all know from other examples that there are no easy way about it, and you have to go after them individually. We were surprised by the scope of the tunnels, although we know but little did they know how extensive they were. We were surprised by some of their munitions. We had many small surprises.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, the Israeli reaction followed three steps which led ultimately to the ceasefire. The initial one was defensive to blunt the invasion and to turn them out. It took a few days in which many died gallantly. The valor of the Israeli reservists who all flocked to the south took up their arms and under their own initiatives without command, they all met essentially until the military and at one point there were no one left in occupation of the Israeli villages or kibbutzim or settlements. But at that very moment we already started to attack from the air. An air attacks have a limited purpose, but they already caused damage. The collateral damage involved in that is always there. So we attacked from the air.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they're very interesting to look at, to watch how it evolved over time. It started very badly, as you know, to such an extent, as some people had said, Israel was traumatized and the early decision making was affected by this shock, what had happened to us. As I said, the degree, it's not only the barbarism, but the scope, the number of people had been killed on the first day, all civilians, women, children, and the numbers and the fact that Israel territory was invaded, and their ambition was to reach very far, and it was done almost jointly from all fronts. The Hezbollah North started to bombard our villages, then the Iranians led indirect, but they also fired a few things, so at certain moments we were attacked from all directions at the same time. That's a night”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To distort the legal procedures, to fire the prosecutors, to go after the courts, to select the juries. This is not the case when the leader himself is the head of the police indirectly, and when it happens at that level, you cannot really take action. That is why all incidents of grand corruption that we know of were not in the defense area. There are only two instances of the many scandals that I know that went up as high up as to the number one. In South Africa, in the purchase of submarines, and in Israel. Here in England its ministers, in Greece, is usually ministers of defense, top generals, but the big ones stay away. The Berlusconis of this world, they go into other fields which are no less. Netanyahu got implicated in defense and to me, not only to me that's a weakness, a moral weakness, and it's very, very grave.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And which it involves submarines of the kind that we purchased in Germany. In the past we used to buy them in England, but in Germany which presumably were the spearhead of our national security, to be involved in that kind of thing when your closest aides or your cronies are benefiting financially from making those deals, that to me is not pardonable. Now, when you have leaders committing crimes of this nature, you enter the field that is already called grand corruption. This grand here is well tailored with grand strategy. There is a grandness to this, but the problem with grand corruption is that unlike any other field of corruption, lesser officials cannot use their power.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in that anal thing something adds, and that was that some of this corruption took place in the procurement issue, in defence. Now, it's a whole different when, say, a corrupt leader gives certain licenses to real estate. Nobody really gets hurt by that. You know, it's a breach of trust. It's not elegant. But exactly, you can't say that the average guy is adversely affected by the fact that some licenses were given to a certain trade or when it comes to national defense, when it comes to the domain in which there is sort of a contract between the citizens and the leaders. This is their very existence. When it talks about the acquisition of submarines, which are the most expensive war machine that men had invented.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he would, wouldn't he? We can be very, very factual about it. I don't have to tell you about the similar incidents of corruption that have happened here in England. There are some well documented I'm talking about or elsewhere. There are two types of things you were guilty of. One is of benefiting in some way in an illicit way from his position, and this is usually when you take bribes or you get gifts, or you have other things, and that is a thing that is not permissible. And it is illegal and it's criminal.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would not be surprised if one ever thinks that would affect his decision to stay or leave would be his health problems.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he explained it. I have a mission to say. He said, I'm not there because I need to have a V on my CV to show that I've been Prime Minister. I did it, but I have a mission to accomplish. He convinces himself that he is a blessing to the country and that he has a mission to accomplish, and that's what drives him. Now that may be true or was true, but now his problem is to escape punishment, so he has to stay in power because as an incumbent he can avoid the illegal procedures that any normal citizen would have to go through. And besides people say enjoys the difficulties of political life to the boredom of the absence, he's got nothing else to do, and on top of that, by the way, he's aging, and with age come health problems.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, all this is making him fighting to such an extent. The interesting thing is, which is also the case with Trump, Narcissists do not take easily the fact that they've been defeated. They need a second chance, a comeback. Now, in the case of American president in which the terms are regulated, I don't know what precedence you have to this one in which you have a president who lost, went into, say, the wilderness, only to come back. Why does he want to come back? He had it already. Well, he wants to come back because he wants to something. Netanyahu, it was clear to all, who knew his personality that once he was defeated in ninety nine by young Barak, he couldn't help himself. He had to have a comeback. And he did it.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, more than a survivor, to the extent that he confronts problems they are often his own doing, and they are the product of his weaknesses. For example, the corruption he cannot blame the corruption of somebody else. Neither can he blame others for his choice of wife. He has some weaknesses, but at the same time he survives because he is strong and is a combative and is intelligent and his consummate politician and he knows how to pull the levers of political power, be it electorally or politically.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“believing that if you throw big money on something, it's a solution to big problems. So these are all tendencies of his at the time of crisis, and you have to help him, sometimes by telling him to be quiet, we're doing the job, and allow him to get out of this moment. The same had happened on October 7th.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kill half of humankind. Now, half of humankind, where did he get that? You know, half of humankind apparently somebody told him about the exponential nature of that thing, but not realizing that it does not go indefinitely. So for a few hours, he really believed that this is, okay, but he was quickly corrected. But on other issues, his first reaction is to inflate the threat so as to collect himself the own strength to confront this big, big threat of any kind. It could be a financial crisis, and then the reaction is hyperactivity. He starts micromanaging and also going for the big, big things. He needs either super tankers to fight fire and to throw money.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know there have been psychological and biographic profiles of Netanyahu, and most of those who wrote them did notice that at times of stress, at times of crisis, he usually has a built in type of reaction which usually, if it really hits him by surprise, if it is something that is not anticipated at all, and in which you have to make quick decisions, and in which you have very, very important issues at stake, he usually panics in a sense, but that panic takes the form of exaggerating a threat. To give you just one silly example, when COVID came on the scene, one day he appeared on television and said, you know, with a very, very stern face that pandemic could”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the head of the Mossad, all three also opposed that position. So I became against my will, an additional member of the gang of four. The gang of four Barak called us like that, and it was a deadly thing to be called.”
2025-01-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 118. Ex-Head of Mossad: Hamas, Ceasefire, and Netanyahu (Uzi Arad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source