Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by Ronen Bergman

Politics, to Ariel Sharon, was like a Ferris wheel. But he didn't make do with just staying on the wheel; he did all he could to climb to the top and stay there.

The command-and-control systems, the war rooms, the methods of information gathering, and the technology of the pilotless aircraft, or drones, that now serve the Americans and their allies were all, in large part, developed in Israel.

I think that Netanyahu is a bit intimidated of and afraid of President Trump.

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.

To the best of my knowledge, after the Pollard affair, Israel does not spy on the United States or against American targets.

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.

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

I have covered the secret war that Israeli and American intelligence have waged against Iran's nuclear program and Iran's assistance to jihadi movements in the Middle East, since the mid-'90s.

As a reporter in Israel, I have interviewed hundreds of people in its intelligence and defense establishments and studied thousands of classified documents that revealed a hidden history, surprising even in the context of Israel's already fierce reputation.

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.

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.

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.

I'm the son of two Holocaust survivors. As a child, I heard from one of my parents' best friends about living through Mengele's infamous selection process at Auschwitz. He haunted my nightmares.

Israel has good reason to be concerned about its intelligence making its way to Moscow: Russia is a major player in the war in Syria on Israel's northern border, where it has also become a close ally of Iran and Hezbollah, Israel's sworn enemies.

When something is presented as an existential threat, it is very easy to scare the Israelis.

Like Iran and Syria supplied Hezbollah with sophisticated anti-tank rockets - Matisse, Cornet, and other RPGs that caused great damage to Israeli tanks and Israeli infantry in 2006 - they did the same in Gaza with Hamas.

By virtue of the standing and prestige of President Ben-Zvi, some 3,000 manuscripts originating from Arab lands, some of them of major significance, have been deposited at the Ben-Zvi Institute. In contrast to the Aleppo Codex, most of these documents were donated willingly, in the confidence that the institute would protect and preserve them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Right after the Six Day War, Arafat launched a series of guerrilla operations from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Acting on a tip, Israeli soldiers stormed the house where he was based, minutes too late. They found his food still warm on the table.

As prime minister, Hariri did not directly confront Hezbollah or the Syrians, but conflict simmered nonetheless.

The first to grasp how sensitive Israeli public opinion was on the issue of hostages and M.I.A.'s - and therefore what a powerful weapon abduction could be - was Ahmed Jibril, the leader of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

There are some episodes in the history of Israel that are still kept under the strongest secrecy thick veil possible. Some of them are 40 years old, 50 years old, and are still under thick, thick secrecy, and anyone violating this secrecy would be thrown into jail himself.

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.

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.

Can a nation use the methods of terrorism? Can it harm innocent civilians in the process? What are the costs? Where is the line?

In 1982, Israel began an invasion across its northern border, seeking to root out elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israeli military wreaked destruction all the way up to Beirut and forced the P.L.O. out of Lebanon. It also defeated the Syrian Army and, particularly, the Air Force wherever it engaged them.

In the late 1980s, the United States and Israel believed that they had good intelligence on Iraq, but they missed the extent of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of unconventional weapons - until after he invaded Kuwait.

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.

In practical terms, Israel has become the eyes and ears of the United States in the Middle East. This arrangement has freed the United States from a heavy intelligence-gathering burden. But it has also forced the Americans to depend upon the Israelis.

If Israeli intelligence that has been shared with the United States - whether the National Security Agency, the C.I.A., the Defense Department, or the White House - is not safely guarded, Israel faces a major threat to its security. Cooperation with America's agencies is deeply embedded in Israel's intelligence community.

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

In addition to closed-circuit TV systems and the ability to track cellphone and computer users, advanced biometric identification systems and online coordination across borders are becoming more and more widespread.

Even though intense focus on Iran's nuclear program has presumably increased the volume of intelligence gathered about it, it remains true that intelligence officers tend to rely heavily on a few trusted sources.

Gaza itself is subject to constant aerial surveillance by drones and is rife with informers and collaborators with Israel.

Many casinos in the United States already use facial recognition software to identify undesirables, apparently with a fair degree of success.

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.

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.

Relying on intelligence as the chief touchstone for decisions about whether and when to attack creates a wide opening for misunderstandings, divergent interpretations, and vulnerabilities to parties with an interest in either attack or delay.

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.

In Israel's short history, army commanders and the heads of the intelligence agencies have often advocated the use of force and in many cases showed contempt for the law and human rights. Political leaders have typically been more measured.

Under international law, defendants convicted in absentia have the right to a retrial, unless the prosecutors for the authorities who do finally capture them can show that the defendants knew they were under indictment.

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.

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.

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

For years, I have been writing that ultimately, if nothing else stops the Iranian nuclear project, such as the sanctions or a change in the regime in Tehran, then Israel itself will take action to destroy it from the air.

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.

Every intelligence operation carries risks.

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.