BREAKING NEWS

Arad: Gov't ignored NSC leading up to flotilla

Professor Uzi Arad said that the National Security Council (NSC) was left out of government meetings where the critical decisions were made about how to handle the flotilla of May 2010, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.
Arad headed the NSC during the events of the flotilla and his version of events support the criticisms made by the State Comptroller's report which was published Wednesday.
Most importantly, he noted that no one on the NSC was invited to the "forum of seven" where final national security decisions were made regarding the flotilla.
Subsequent to the flotilla, however, Arad said there was a seachange in how the NSC was viewed, and it became included in all meetings with arms of the defense establishment before any proposals were presented to the political level. Besides the universal recognition that the government needed a mechanism, like the NSC, to better organize future responses, Arad credited the recent passing of the NSC Law with advancing the greater acceptance of the NSC in the decision-making process.