In a speech at the opening of the Knesset’s winter session on Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed a Mossad operation that took place last month in a quest to find information and the remains of Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad, who was captured in Lebanon in 1986 by the Shiite Amal movement and has not been heard of since 1988.

Bennett said that it was a “complex and wide-scale operation. That’s all that can be said right now.”

Following Bennett’s speech, a Channel 12 News report revealed that the operation was a failure and that Bennett revealed it simply to garner headlines and political points.

“It was a daring and complex operation but it was a failure,” the report quoted Mossad head Dovid Barnea as saying during a meeting. “We failed.”

The report quoted a security official as saying that “Bennett used a sensitive operation for political purposes. It would have been better not to reveal it.” Other security sources, including from within the Mossad, also rapped Bennett for disclosing the operation.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)