(TIME) Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin interviewed by Karl Vick - Amos Yadlin was a fighter pilot in the squadron that in June 1981 destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. But Yadlin, 71, is best known for the five years he spent in charge of Israel's Military Intelligence. Yadlin said: "Israel was attacked by a neighboring state, a mini-state controlled by Hamas....We see Hamas attack Israel by surprise, and we are going to war to destroy Hamas." "What we have to put behind us is all the thinking before Oct. 7, because the paradigm was that Hamas, even though it's a terror organization, is a reasonable government....This assumption no longer exists. We now see Hamas as worse than ISIS. Hamas was not "an address" for anybody for negotiation....We are not anymore in a deterrence game. We are in denying Hamas the capabilities to attack Israel. We are not dealing with their intentions. We are dealing with their capabilities." "We are not dealing with ideology. We are not trying to convert them....They are terrorists and they believe in terrorism. They proved it. What they have done is unacceptable. They killed families, women, beheaded children, raped young girls, killed 90-year-old elderly and behaved like animals, so we cannot change the ideology of 21st-century Nazis. That's how we treat them now, the way the Allies treat the Nazis - not to convince them to be liberals and democrats, but to destroy their capability to inflict harm on Israel and the Jewish people." "They took an observation post with five women and they killed all of them and they did more than killing....In the kibbutzim...they burned people alive. This is a nightmare of every Jew since the Holocaust, that he will be at the mercy of animals that want to destroy him. I grew up like this, knowing that it can happen again and swearing that it will not happen again....12 kibbutzim were basically taken by Hamas and what happened there was unbelievable. I saw generals crying when they saw the pictures." "My recommendation, as a strategic expert, is not to re-occupy Gaza for the long-term....We can take over Gaza, do the cleaning, the destroying of Hamas, and then hand it over to the PA after Hamas is destroyed, or to Egypt or to any Arab country that wants to control this piece of land. And if not...Israel will deploy its forces around the Strip according to our defense needs and will not let them do it again." "It's not necessarily that Israel will control 2 million Palestinians. But we are no longer telling ourselves, 'We need Hamas as an address, otherwise ISIS will take over.' We saw that Hamas is even worse than ISIS. So let the Palestinians decide who will control them and Gaza. But we will destroy and will continue to target any attempt to have a military power in Gaza." "We are not going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by this war. But we want to make Israel safe. We came to Israel after the Holocaust, and said there will be no pogroms anymore - that women and children will not have to hide in closets, in shelters, and face bloodshed. So, at this moment, it's not about the conflict. We care about the security of Israel."
2023-10-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive