When the Oslo deal that would create two Islamic terror states inside Israel came up for a vote in the Knesset, the legislator whose vote helped it pass is the same man now accused of spying for Iran.
The strange story of Gonen Segev, doctor, Minister of Energy, drug smuggler, Nigerian exile and now accused Iranian spy, is also that of the dirty politics behind the peace process. It wasn’t idealism that made the deal with the PLO. It was dirty backroom deals with dangerously unprincipled politicians.
Segev’s cousin had testified in court that he was “a pathological liar who makes excuses and evades responsibilities for his actions.” But the same is true of the Israeli left which brought Segev on board.
The alleged Iranian spy began his political career on the right. But 3 years after he became one of the youngest members of Israel’s legislature, he aligned with the left and helped pass an agreement with the PLO that is the second biggest threat to Israel’s existence after Iran’s nuclear weapons.
It’s only fitting that Gonen Segev, whose political life hit its terrible peak with the PLO deal, should climax his post-political criminal career by standing accused of spying for Israel’s worst enemy.
And the former politician and defrocked doctor has the same excuse for the latter crime as for the former one. He wanted to be a hero. But Gonen Segev doesn’t have a history of being a hero.
What he does have is a history of being willing to do anything for money.
No matter what the Iranians offered him, the biggest bribe that Israelis will remember Segev for was the time that he became the Minister of Energy in a left-wing government. Segev had no qualifications for the job. Except one. He had a crucial seat in the Israeli Knesset as the deal with the PLO was up for a vote. The idea of giving Arafat and his band of murderous killers a state was so politically toxic that even some members of the ruling Labor Party couldn’t bring themselves to vote for it. But he could and did.
Gonen Segev was a nobody. He was a doctor in a country full of them. But he happened to be living in the community of Tel Adashim. Aside from its history, Tel Adashim or Lentil Hill, wasn’t very interesting. But it was the home of Rafael Eitan, an irascible former general and fierce critic of appeasing terrorists. Eitan was right about fighting terrorists, but his ability to run a political movement was minimal.
As the Israeli casualties of Islamic terrorism mounted, the former general’s political movement grew popular. But it was peopled with opportunists. When Tzomet, his political party, stormed the Knesset, it was filled with legislators who, like Gonen Segev, had been the former general’s own neighbors.
Israeli voters had sent Gonen Segev and other Tzomet members to the Knesset to fight terrorism. Instead some defected to the other side. When the crucial vote on the deal with the PLO came up, it was the candidates elected by anti-terror voters who, perversely, were the ones to vote for terror.
The political faction that split off from Tzomet was known as Yiud or Mission. Its mission was obvious.
Of the three Knesset members who joined the left and took their votes along, Gonen Segev became Minister of Energy and Alex Goldfarb was appointed the Deputy Minister of Housing. Goldfarb, a Romanian immigrant, had been an electrician and a union activist.
The terror sellout passed 61-59.
Yiud fractured. Segev became its only remaining member. There was no long term career for the only member of an imaginary political party that had betrayed its original voters. As the PLO deal continued to take Israeli lives, the left lost power. And Netanyahu’s victory all but ended the rule of the left.
But Gonen Segev didn’t give up easily. He was accused and seemingly cleared of corruption. He allegedly developed contacts in China. Most Israelis forgot about him, but then he was suddenly back in the news.
Read the full story from Front Page Mag
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