Meir Dagan, almost the end of an era

The picture of his grandfather before death used to be in his office

The death of the former cheif of Mossad for nine years, Meir Dagan, can be almost the end of an era, of an old generation of public personalities in Israel whose personalities were defined by the World War II. Dagan, born as Huberman, on the train between Soviet Union and Poland in 1945, used to have in his office the picture of his grandfather down on his knees before being killed by Nazis, made a life mission that Holocaust 'will never happen again'. 

Dagan served as director of the Israel's most powerful intelligence agency beetween 2002 and 2011, under three prime-ministers: Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu. He ended his mandate on medical reasons, although during the exhange of declarations during the last years elections, Netanyahu affirmed that in fact he refused to extend his mandate. Dagan offered to the media the proof of his letter resignation letter where he requested the replacement. 

Officer of the Israeli Defense Force - IDF - he fought during the Yom Kippur War and the 1982 Lebanon War. As chief of Mossad, he ordered several operations, some of them together with other secret services, aimed at killing terrorists who put in dangerous the state of Israel. During one of them, for instance, operated together with the CIA, was killed Imad Mughniyeh, the so-called Minister of Defence of Hezbollah. After becoming a public figure, he often criticised Netanyahu for the way in which he managed the Iran problem and was a harsh opponent of the idea of an Israeli attack against Tehran. In Dagan's opinion, the then and current prime-minister turned Iran into an Israeli problem, thus limiting the interest of the rest of the world in the issue. During the last elections, he supported Isaac Herzog, part of a tandem with Tzipi Livni that used to work for the Mossad during his mandate.

Dagan was also active in the business sector, and was an amateur painter and a vegetarian too.