Page 67 Chapter 3 Freshman The next major course lecture was given by Amy Yaar, department head of the

Far East and Africa in Tevel (liaison). His story was so fascinating that when it was over, everybody said "How do we sign up?" Yaar's department had people positioned throughout the Far East who did little real intelligence; instead they set the framework for future business and diplomatic ties. They had a man with a British passport living in Djakarta, for example, working under cover. That meant the Indonesian government knew he was with the Mossad. He had an escape route ready, and a gold coin belt if he needed it, among other security measures. His main task was to facilitate arms sales in the region. They also had a man in Japan, one in India, one in Africa, and occasionally, people in Sri Lanka, and in Malaysia. Yaar's annual convention for his staff was in the Seychelles. He was having a lot of fun with very little danger. Yaar's officers in Africa were also dealing in millions of dollars in arms sales. These liaison men worked in three stages. First, they made contact to find out what the country needed, what it feared, whom it regarded as enemies information gathered through their on-site activities. The idea was to build on those needs, create a stronger relationship, then make it known that Israel could supply the government in question with weapons and training whatever they needed. The final step in the process, once a country's leader had been hooked on the arms, was for the Mossad man to tell him that he must take, for instance, some agricultural equipment as well. The leader was then put in the position of saying he could expand ties with Israel only if they set up formal diplomatic relations. It was essentially a way of creating those relations through the back door, although in most cases the arms deals were so lucrative, the liaison men never bothered to follow up with the next step. Sri Lanka They did in Sri Lanka, however. Amy Yaar made the connection, then tied the country in militarily by supplying it with substantial equipment, including PT boats for coastal patrol. At the same time, Yaar and company were supplying the warring Tamils with anti-PT boat equipment to use in fighting the government forces. The Israelis also trained elite forces for both sides, without either side knowing about the other,* and helped Sri Lanka cheat the World Bank and other investors out of millions of dollars to pay for all the arms they were buying from them. The Sri Lankan government was worried about unrest among the farmers the country has a long history of economic problems so it wanted to split them up somewhat by moving them from one side of the island to the other.

But it needed an acceptable reason to do this. That's where Amy Yaar came in. He was the one who dreamed up the great "Mahaweli Project," a massive engineering scheme to divert the Mahaweli River from its natural course to dry areas on the other side of the country. The claim was that this would double the country's hydro-electric power and open up 750,000 acres of newly irrigated land. Besides the World Bank, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Germany, the European Economic Community, and the United States all invested in the $2.5 billion (U.S.) project. From the beginning, it was an overly ambitious project, but the World Bank and the other investors did not understand that, and as far as they are concerned, it's still going on. Originally a 30-year project, it was suddenly escalated in 1977 when Sri Lanka's president, Junius Jayawardene, discovered that with a little help from the Mossad, it could become most significant. In order to convince the World Bank especially (with its $250 million commitment) that the project was feasible and would also serve as a convenient excuse for moving the farmers from their land the Mossad had two Israeli academics, one an economist from Jerusalem University, the other a professor of agriculture, write scholarly papers explaining its importance and its cost. A major Israeli construction company, Solel Bonah, was given a large contract for part of the job. Periodically, World Bank representatives would go to Sri Lanka for spot checks, but the locals had been taught how to fool these inspectors by taking them on circuitous routes easily explained for security reasons then back to the same, quite small area where some construction actually had been carried out for just this purpose. Later, when I was working in Yaar's department at Mossad headquarters, I was assigned to escort Jayawardene's daughter-in-law a woman named Penny on a secret visit to Israel. She knew me as "Simon." We took her wherever she wanted to go. We were talking in general terms, but she insisted on telling me about the project and how money for it was financing equipment for the army. She was complaining that they weren't really getting on with it. Ironically, the project had been invented to get money from the World Bank to pay for those weapons. At that time, Israel had no diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka. In fact, they were supposedly embargoing us. But she was telling me about all these secret political meetings going on. The funny thing was that when news stories were leaked about the meetings, they claimed Israel had 150 katsas working in Sri Lanka. We didn't have that many katsas in the entire world. In fact, at that time there was only Amy and his helper, both on a short visit.

Page 127 Chapter 6 The Belgian Table "I'll meet you at the airport," Amy said, "because we have a group of people coming from Sri Lanka to train here." Amy was waiting for the Sri Lankans' flight from London when I joined him. "When these guys arrive," he said, "don't make a face. Don't do anything." "What do you mean?" I asked "Well, these guys are monkeylike. They come from a place that's not developed. They're not long out of the trees. So don't expect much." Amy and I escorted the nine Sri Lankans through a back door of the airport into an air-conditioned van. These were the first arrivals from a group that would finally total nearly 50. They would then be divided into three smaller groups: An anti-terror group training at the military base near Petha Tikvah, called Kfar Sirkin, learning how to overtake hijacked buses and airplanes, or deal with hijackers in a building, how to descend from helicopters on a rope, and other anti-terrorist tactics. And, of course, they would be buying Uzis and other Israeli-made equipment, including bulletproof vests, special grenades, and more. A purchasing team, in Israel to buy weapons on a larger scale. They bought seven or eight large PT boats, for example, called Devora, which they would use mainly to patrol their northern shores against Tamils. A group of high-ranking officers who wanted to purchase radar and other naval equipment to counter the Tamils who were still getting through from India and mining Sri Lankan waters. I was to squire Penny,* President Jayawardene's daughter- in-law, around to the usual tourist spots for two days, and then she would be looked after by someone else from the office. Penny was a pleasant woman, physically an Indian version of Corazon Aquino. She was a Buddhist because her husband was, but she was somehow still a Christian, so she wanted to see all the Christian holy places. On the second day, I took her to Vered Haglil, or the Rose of Galilee, a horseranch-restaurant on the mountain with a nice view and good food. We had an account there. Next I was assigned to the high-ranking officers who were looking for radar equipment. I was told to take them to a manufacturer in Ashdod named Alta

that could do the work. But when he saw their specifications, the Alta representative said, "They're just going through the motions. They're not going to buy our radar.""Why?" I said. "These specs were not written by these monkeys," the man said. "They were written by a British radar manufacturer called Deca, so these guys already know what they're going to buy. Give them a banana and send them home. You're wasting your time." "Okay, but how about a brochure or something to make them happy?" This conversation was going on in Hebrew while we all sat together eating cookies, and drinking tea and coffee. The Alta rep said he didn't mind giving them a lecture to make it look as if they weren't being brushed off, "but if we're going to do that, let's have some fun." With that, he went into another office for a set of big transparencies of a large vacuum-cleaner system that is used to clean harbors after oil spills. He had a series of colorful schematic drawings. Everything was written in Hebrew, but he lectured in English on this "high capability radar equipment." I found it difficult not to laugh. He laid it on so thick, claiming this radar could locate a guy swimming in the water and practically tell his shoe size, his name and address, and his blood type. When he'd finished, the Sri Lankans thanked him, said they were surprised at this technological advancement, but that it wouldn't fit their ships. Here they were telling us about their ships. Well, we knew about their ships. We built them! After dropping me off at the hotel, I told Amy the Sri Lankans weren't buying the radar. "Yes, we knew that," he replied. Amy then told me to go to Kfar Sirkin where the Sri Lankan special-forces group was training, get them whatever they needed, then take them into Tel Aviv for the evening. But he cautioned me to make sure it was all coordinated with Yosy, who had just been transferred to the same department that week. Yosy was also looking after a group being trained by the Israelis. But they weren't supposed to meet my people. They were Tamils, bitter enemies of my Sinhalese group. Tamils, who are mostly Hindu, argue that since Sri Lanka won independence from Great Britain in 1948 (as Ceylon), they have been discriminated against by the island's predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Of the 16 million or so Sri Lankans, about 74 percent are Sinhalese, and just 20 percent are Tamil, largely centered in the northern section of the country. Around 1983, a group of Tamil guerrilla factions, collectively known as the Tamil Tigers, began an armed struggle to create a Tamil homeland in the

north called Eelam an ongoing battle that has claimed thousands of lives on both sides.

Sympathy for the Tamils runs high in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where 40 million Tamils live. Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad. The Tamils were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora. There were about 28 men in each group, so it was decided that Yosy should take the Tamils to Haifa that night while I took the Sinhalese to Tel Aviv, thus avoiding any chance encounters. The real problem started about two weeks into the courses, when both the Tamils and Sinhalese unknown to each other, of course were training at Kfar Sirkin. It is a fairly large base, but even so, on one occasion the two groups passed within a few yards of each other while they were out jogging. After their basic training routine at Kfar Sir- kin, the Sinhalese were taken to the naval base to be taught essentially how to deal with all the techniques the Israelis had just taught the Tamils. It was pretty hectic. We had to dream up punishments or night training exercises just to keep them busy, so that both groups wouldn't be in Tel Aviv at the same time. The actions of this one man (Amy) could have jeopardized the political situation in Israel if these groups had met. I'm sure Peres wouldn't have slept at night if he'd known this was going on. But, of course, he didn't know. When the three weeks were just about up and the Sinhalese were preparing to go to Atlit, the top-secret naval commando base, Amy told me he wouldn't be going with them. The Sayret Matcal would take over their training. This was the top intelligence reconnaissance group, the one that carried out the famous Entebbe raid. (The naval commandos are the equivalent of the American Seals.) "Look, we have a problem," said Amy. "We have a group of 27 SWAT team guys from India coming in." "My God," I said "What is this? We've got Sinhalese, Tamils, and now Indians. Who's next?" The SWAT team was supposed to train at the same base where Yosy had the Tamils, a tricky and potentially volatile situation. And I still had my regular office work to do, along with the daily reports. In the evenings, I took the SWAT team to dinner, again making sure none of the groups ended up in the same place. Every day I had an envelope brought to me with about $300 in Israeli currency to spend on them.

***
Hon. Sajith Premadasa is a member of the Sri Lankan parliament and is the deputy leader of the main opposition the United National Party (UNP). He delivered this inspiring and supportive speech at a seminar organized by the Sri Lanka Committee for Solidarity with Palestine at Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies on the 28th of November, 2012. Contents of his speech said ; Sri Lanka under President Jayewardene was one of the first to recognize the Palestinian government in exile headed by the PLO. President Premadasas contention was that 'Zionism is a form of Racism resolution should be revisited and repealed only AFTER Israel had respected the repeated resolutions of the UN urging withdrawal from all the territories it had occupied. He said that the continued aggressive behavior of Israel would prove that Sri Lankas principled position was validated in the eyes of history.