inFOCUS: Tell us how you came to found Ad Kan; it wasn’t a straight-up military decision.
Gilad Ach: I was in the Golani Brigade for six years, and my older brother was a commando in Shayetet [a branch of the IDF that specializes in sea-to-land incursions]. He and his team were sent for training in the Kishon River near Haifa. At the time, the river was very polluted. Within a few years, almost everyone in his team had died from diseases related to the pollution.
I worked with a group of former army and intelligence officers to collect information about the pollution in the river. As it happened, the pollution began during the British Mandate, when the British were exporting oil from Iraq through Haifa. We started an organization called Green Israel Forum (GIF) to build a legal case for damages and environmental crimes. GIF became one of the few organizations in Israel certified to bring these kinds of cases on behalf of the Israeli Government. We won damages and a lot of people went to jail.
We became more involved in Judea and Samaria after that because it was like the Wild West – there was no real legal authority. In 2013, we saw a Palestinian attack an Israeli soldier, and the soldier did not defend himself. He told us he was afraid he would have to face charges if he did, and that the Israeli Government would not support him. This was a very common feeling at the time.
The problem was that once an event began, the Palestinians would bring out cameras and take pictures or videos. There was no other evidence or point of view. So, we started using our investigative methods to show how they created the situation, and in a lot of cases, we were able to collect evidence showing what really happened.
We often send undercover agents to infiltrate the Palestinian groups. There was an organization called Anarchists Against the Wall that was organizing protests and violent attacks along the Green Line fence. Their objective was to get the Israeli soldiers to react, and then to complain about Israeli “atrocities.” We infiltrated the organization and got evidence that they were paying Palestinians to attack the soldiers and then take videos of the soldiers’ responses. We shut them down, and many of their leaders went to jail.
Another investigation involved Palestinians who wanted to sell their land to Jews and leave Judea and Samaria. We learned that there was a Palestinian project to torture and kill them. This became a very big story in Israel, and appeared on the TV show Uvdah, which is like the Israeli version of 60 Minutes.
The investigations I mentioned are just some of the public projects we’ve worked on, and in these cases and others we’ve brought legal cases resulting in prison for the individuals who attacked Israel in one way or another, and also, we collected damages. We usually have about 8-10 projects going on at any one time.
Funding and Connections
iF: Talk about the support for Palestinian and anti-government groups – is it from Europe? From the US?
Ach: Many of these groups receive funding and other help from Europe and America, and of course, Iran. I don’t think we can say that we’ve shut down the pro-Palestinian networks in Israel or any other country. But I do think that we have made operations much more difficult for the pro-Palestinian groups who try to pretend that they are not under foreign control. First, they know that we are out there, and they have to be much more careful about how they do things. Second, we have made clear to the people that these groups are not just honestly pursuing a moral agenda; they are pursuing an agenda set by foreign countries, with the money being traced back to supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah, and ultimately to Iran.
iF: Where does Ad Kahn get support?
Ach: We get support from Americans, both individuals and organizations. I think some Jewish groups in the United States would think of us as a very right-wing organization, but the fact is that when we produce the results of our investigations, and we bring cases, we have to provide evidence in court. As the whole world knows, the Israeli courts are not exactly right-wing, yet we win a lot of cases.
Also, we have good contacts in Washington. I have met with senior leaders in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, to talk about how the situation looks from the perspective of a soldier who fought on the Lebanon front earlier in the war, and I’ll be leading a battalion in Gaza starting at the end of June. Not every member of Congress will meet with me, of course, but I am glad that many are willing to take their time to learn the facts.
iF: Tell us more
Ach: One of our investigations involved a radical left-wing Israeli organization called Breaking the Silence. We were able to infiltrate their operations, and we learned that their money was coming from several European governments – Norway, Ireland, and some others. They would give the money to local churches, and then the churches would send the money to these pro-Palestinian organizations. We were able to show that they were getting funding from foreign governments and then spreading lies about Israeli soldiers.
The governments would then condemn Israel, so it was a vicious cycle.
Then, in 2016 or 2017, one of our investigators in Samaria was able to infiltrate a Palestinian organization there, and she learned that they were getting money from Hamas’s branch in Europe – basically the Muslim Brotherhood. She volunteered to go to Europe to investigate, and she rose in the organization and became a manager of one of the flotilla operations that was illegally sending ships into Gaza. We were able to identify people in the US and Europe who were acting as fronts for Hamas, to purchase ships and so forth – and also to damage Israel’s reputation.
Civil-Military Relations
iF: There is a story about horses – but it has a deeper meaning when connected to civil-military relations in Israel
Ach: The IDF does not have as much of a “top-down” command structure as the American army, at least as I understand it. For example, early in the war, I was in charge of an army unit responsible for guarding a large section of the Lebanon border. We knew that Hezbollah terrorists were right across the border, and that if we used motor vehicles at night, we would be targets. So, we commandeered horses from a local town, and we patrolled on horseback. It also helped that a nearby Arab town, in Israel, used horses for travel, so we thought the Hezbollah troops would be reluctant to fire on anyone riding a horse. It worked.
At the same time, we knew from Israelis in the area that there was a building about five-stories high just inside the Lebanese border that had been used as a spotting tower to target missiles into Israel. When we finally moved into Lebanon, the government was reluctant to let us blow up the building because they said it was owned by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), not Hezbollah, and they didn’t want to target the regular army. But it was a clear danger to us and to the towns in Israel along the border, so we blew it up anyway.
This happens often. The government and top military officers come under political pressure to take certain steps, or not to take certain steps. But the soldiers on the ground assess the situation, and their local commanders make decisions. This can lead to misunderstandings in the international press about what really happened and why. This can have a very significant effect on morale in the army and in the country, especially if the government does not come right out and explain the situation.
As the War Goes On
iF: Describe, if you will, the levels of morale and trust in the IDF as the war goes on longer and longer.
Ach: We need to consider the impact the war has had on the country as a whole. There are 170,000 people serving in the regular army, and another 400,000 or so in the reserves. And this of course does not count their families, their businesses, the other institutions in the country, that have all been affected by the war.
[Israel’s first Prime Minister] David Ben-Gurion said there were two principles for a war in Israel. Make it fast and fight on the other side’s territory. No one expected this war to last almost two years, and the damage it has had on Israel’s economy, society, and politics cannot yet be determined, but it has done tremendous damage.
But we also know that we cannot continue with this never-ending cycle of violence in Gaza. There is not much support in Israel for the idea of signing another peace agreement, only to face another disaster a few years from now.
Israel’s War Goals
iF: What do you think Israel’s goals in Gaza should be?
Ach: Everyone knows that Hamas is a terrorist organization. In 2005, Israel gave a terrorist organization a defined territory and a population. Hamas is, in effect, a terrorist organization and also a country. When countries fight wars, the objective is to defeat the other country. The United States and the West learned this in World War I. They did not defeat Germany, and Germany arose stronger 30 years later. Then the West learned that it had to defeat the Germans once and for all. The same is true with Gaza.
In some of my meetings on the Hill, I’ve talked about the idea of supporting emigration from Gaza for the tens of thousands of Gazans who are tired of living under Hamas and want to rebuild their lives in other countries. President Trump mentioned this idea last February, and I am hoping that there will be international support to help the Gazans who want to leave. This will help solve two problems – Israel’s security problem and the perceived humanitarian crisis that the world seems ready to blame on Israel, and not Hamas. Unless we find a way to address these issues, the problems will arise again and again just as they have been for the past 60 years.
Israel and the rest of the world are forcing the people of Gaza to stay and live under Hamas and suffer during the war. Some of them are also hostages. I would like to see a program where people in Gaza can leave if they want and go in peace. We know that tens of thousands have already left, many through Egypt, and settled in countries all over the world.
All of the countries who criticize Israel for its conduct of the war could provide support to Gaza refugees to relocate. Many countries have already welcomed them. If the world is concerned about their plight, this would be a good way to address the situation.
The Domestic Side
iF: Turning to Israel’s domestic issues, what do you see as the future of Israeli politics?
Ach: There is a new political force in Israel – for the first time, a large portion of the population has served in a war that has lasted for nearly two years. For years, our government, on both sides, did not confront Israel’s challenges –security or domestic.
They left Hamas and Hezbollah to develop into existential threats to Israel. The idea was that we could ignore them or at least manage them. There are efforts around the world to delegitimize Israel, and our governments have ignored that as well. Israel has many domestic problems, too, that haven’t been addressed. For example, there’s a huge criminal syndicate in Israel that no one has addressed, and many people outside of Israel don’t know about.
And then, of course, there will be the issue of reviving Israel’s economy, healing the society, after this war.
There will be a strong new force in Israeli politics. It will center on the people who have served in the war, and the millions of others who were directly affected by it. I don’t think it will be left or right necessarily – I don’t know. But I think it will be a more unified party that will focus on addressing Israel’s problems in a practical way.
I think people who might have been aligned with the left and the right before the war will be brought into the coalition because they will see that Israel needs to solve its domestic, security, and international problems in a practical way, not in an ideological way. It might happen that the far left and the far right – including the haredim – might lose a lot of their support and political influence.
My sense is that most Israelis realize that any effort to manage the Palestinian conflict will not work. We gave the Palestinians a state in in Gaza 2005 and they have been firing missiles at Israel ever since – and then we had October 7. But realistically, the Palestinian conflict has been going on for at least 60 years. I think most Israelis believe there has to be a way to bring an end to the violence.
iF: Can you leave us on an optimistic note?
Ach: There is a will in Israel now to solve our security problem with the Palestinians. After the war, many people will remain physically and emotionally scarred, but Israel has the ability to rebuild its economy, and to solve many of its social problems. Finally, I think a new political consensus will allow Israel to rebuild its standing in the international community.
iF: Gilad Ach, thank you for an enlightening look at the problems – and the strengths – of Israel. Stay Safe.
