Quotes from Ronen Bergman

What the Shin Bet did in the Bus 300 affair is no less than declaring a revolt. They took the methods of manipulation, disinformation, threats, blackmail, etc. and instead of using them against the enemy, they used these tactics against their own side.

The problem is that the same technological tools we use to thwart terrorists can also be used against the people whose job it is to stop them.

As much as I am very critical of Ariel Sharon in the first Lebanon war, I think that he was the right person at the right time in the right place as prime minister. He made a series of very significant decisions, not one of which was popular or seemed justified at the time.

Before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish leaders were intent on discovering and laying claim to their heritage in the region. They took an intense interest in archaeology, embarking on quests to bring significant items of Judaica to Palestine.

The heads of the K.G.B. were deeply anti-Semitic and saw in Israel and world Jewry 'a danger which is only second to the main enemy, the United States.' The K.G.B. was intent on destabilizing Israel, totally disproportionate to the country's strength or influence.

For years, Israeli and American intelligence agencies assumed that if Iran were to gain the ability to build a bomb, it would be a result of its relationship with Russia, which was building a nuclear reactor for Iran at a site called Bushehr and had assisted the Iranians in their missile-development program.

Both Israel and America should acknowledge that scraps of information cannot serve as the basis for action against Iran, and they should find new criteria for such a decision.

Around A.D. 930, the sages in Tiberias assembled all 24 holy books and completed the writing of the codex, the first definitive Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. From Tiberias, the codex was taken to Jerusalem.

Israeli society's inability to tolerate even a single soldier held in captivity results in popular movements that have tremendous impact on strategic decisions made by the government. The issue has become a generator of history rather than an outcome of it.

The way that Soviet intelligence tried to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East is essential to understand the developments that led to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.

I have covered Israeli hostage and M.I.A. cases for more than 15 years, including the covert ways in which Israel's powerful espionage agencies operate to bring soldiers home alive or dead. Over that time, the issue has come to dominate public discourse to a degree that no one could have predicted.

David Ben-Gurion established the Israeli intelligence community in June of 1948, just three weeks after the establishment of Israel and in the midst of war.

Israelis cannot enter Iran, so Israel, Iranian officials believe, has devoted huge resources to recruiting Iranians who leave the country on business trips and turning them into agents.

In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated.

Generally speaking, Israeli intelligence did not hunt Nazi war criminals.

Israel and the United States have been locked in a mutually necessary and beneficial intelligence-sharing relationship for more than 60 years.

A country, people, and society are in a sorry state when the guardians of its democratic values and the rule of law are the officers of the armed forces who are forced to stand up to the mob and the politicians who incite it and kowtow to it.

Every intelligence operation carries risks.

Israel's decision on whether to strike or not is dictated not from the atmosphere and not from American or European promises but is based on the Iranian project. And I don't think the Iranians would agree to anything that would satisfy Israel.

For a thousand years after the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, the Jewish holy scriptures - the five parts of the Torah and 19 other holy books - were copied and passed down in the various Jewish communities from generation to generation.

Throughout the 1990s, Israel and the United States devoted vast resources to weakening the nuclear links between Russia and Iran and applied enormous diplomatic pressure on Russia to cut off the relationship.

Israel's discourse with the United States on the subject of Iran's nuclear project is more significant, and more fraught, than it is with Europe. The U.S. has made efforts to stiffen sanctions against Iran and to mobilize countries like Russia and China to apply sanctions in exchange for substantial American concessions.

Israel has the right to defend itself, especially against the huge numbers of Iranian long-range missiles pouring into the Gaza Strip from Iran via Sudan and Egypt.

In most countries, the political class supervises the defense establishment and restrains its leaders from violating human rights or pursuing dangerous, aggressive policies.