Ex-intel. minister to ‘Post’: Not crazy for Mossad to expand

Operations budgets for the Mossad have also been skyrocketing as the IDF will need to cut billions from its budget in the coming years.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
FORMER INTELLIGENCE MINISTER Dan Meridor advocates ‘analyzing the logic’ of Hezbollah and Hamas in preparation for the next bout with these groups (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
FORMER INTELLIGENCE MINISTER Dan Meridor advocates ‘analyzing the logic’ of Hezbollah and Hamas in preparation for the next bout with these groups
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
It is not unreasonable for the Mossad’s budget to be soaring through the roof as the IDF budget gets cut, former intelligence minister Dan Meridor told The Jerusalem Post.
Meridor was responding to Monday’s State Comptroller report which revealed that the Mossad had exceeded an NIS 1.5 billion budget for long-term offices and building, instead reaching NIS 2.6b. in spending.
Operations budgets for the Mossad have also been skyrocketing as the IDF will need to cut billions from its budget in the coming years.
The former intelligence minister explained that there was no contradiction in these trends since “old style wars are gone… the nature of war is changing.”
Meridor said that if in the past, the IDF needed a certain constant force build-up and volume of tanks and other expensive land warfare elements, now Israel “faces no tank threat” and in general is not overly worried about some kind of land-invasion.
Before, the IDF needed huge budgets both to maintain that constant massive readiness to repel an invasion and it also needed a large intelligence budget to follow the constant movements of large enemy forces on its borders.
With these needs reduced, the IDF is cutting back on its budget in a variety of traditional areas of warfare.
However, in the current era, he said terrorism and threats from more distant places like Iran – both of which are more the realm of the Mossad than the IDF – are the higher priority threats.
If a rising number of major threats and even investment in trying to get advanced-warning of war or low-grade conflict is crossing through the Mossad’s territory, that means a higher budget.
In addition, he referenced that Israel, the US and others have started to use drones, aircraft and the Mossad to eliminate far more weapons experts, terror financiers and other crucial cogs in the terror-wheel than previously.
Frequently, these operations are entirely or at least jointly Mossad operations, which Meridor said also means an increased budget.
He stated that the spy agency has moved from an auxiliary force to the giant IDF gorilla to emerging as a premier intelligence agency in its own right.
When Meridor was intelligence minister between 2009-2013 – part of when key events in the comptroller report took place – he said he spent significant time on intelligence budgetary issues.
“It is good for there to be a long-term budget and plan” which allows for longer term strategic thinking and “integrating all of the [different intelligence agencies] efforts together,” he said.
Describing a specific issue, he worked hard to change, he said that in the past, there might be a joint Mossad and IDF operation which paradoxically had separate budgets.
The Mossad budget would come from the Prime Minister’s Office, while the IDF budget would come from the Defense Ministry.
Meridor said that this artificial division could create a variety of inconsistencies, missing pieces and other problems since no one person was looking over an operation’s full funding needs.
He said he successfully pushed for such operations to fall under one budget.
Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was created in the years after 9/11, following the US creation of the Director of National Intelligence, designed to ensure unified information sharing and budget planning among its many intelligence agencies.


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