Aman (Military Intelligence Directorate, Israel)

Origins

According to the Israel Security Agency, the Haganah’s intelligence service was dissolved on 30 June 1948; one of the three branches of the new intelligence community was the Intelligence Service, later Aman. The other two became the Mossad and the ISA.¹

Role in the state

In a peer-reviewed article in Intelligence and National Security (2014), Eyal Pascovich (University of Haifa) points out that, unlike military intelligence services in other democracies, Aman covers most areas of intelligence, including matters of state, and that its research division is sometimes drawn into political disputes, for example over Palestinian intentions during the Oslo process.²

The author notes recurring calls to end Aman’s monopoly on the national intelligence estimate and himself proposes gradually withdrawing it from intelligence on matters of state, arguing from the separation of the military and politics in a democracy.²

The Agranat Commission (1973–1974)

After the Yom Kippur War, on 21 November 1973 the government set up a commission chaired by the President of the Supreme Court, Shimon Agranat; its members were Justice Moshe Landau, State Comptroller Yitzhak Nebenzahl and two former chiefs of staff, Yigael Yadin and Haim Laskov.³

In its partial report of 1 April 1974 the commission found that Military Intelligence had misjudged the warnings of a possible war owing to its “slavish adherence to the ‘concept’”, according to which Egypt would attack only once conditions that had not yet arisen were met. It recommended the removal of the head of Military Intelligence, Eli Zeira, and the head of its research division, Arye Shalev; it also placed responsibility on the Chief of Staff, David Elazar.³

On 2 April 1974 the government accepted Elazar’s resignation and the recommendations concerning the officers; on 10 April Prime Minister Golda Meir announced her resignation, which brought down the government. The Israel State Archives publishes selected transcripts of the cabinet meetings devoted to the report.³