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Yehoshua Sagi (also rendered Saguy) served as director of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) from 1979 to 1983 and was found by the Kahan Commission to bear personal responsibility for indifference regarding the Sabra and Shatila massacres. | 2026-05-14 | 2026-05-14 | 1933 | Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine |
Yehoshua Sagi (also transliterated Saguy in some English-language sources) was born in 1933 in Jerusalem, then under British Mandatory rule. He entered the Israel Defense Forces in 1951 and built a career within the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman), serving during the Suez Crisis in 1956 and through the Yom Kippur War. He rose to deputy head of Aman in 1978 before being appointed director the following year.
As Aman Director (1979-1983)
During his directorship, Sagi was involved in two of the most consequential Israel strategic decisions of the period. According to Rodger Claire, Sagi opposed Operation Opera, Israel's June 1981 airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, stating that his assessment did not support the level of threat attributed to the Iraqi program, and was overruled.1
Kahan Commission
Following the September 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, an Israeli government inquiry chaired by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Kahan examined the conduct of Israeli military and political leadership. The Kahan Commission, whose report is dated February 8, 1983, wrote that the picture from Saguy's own testimony was "of indifference and a conspicuous lack of concern, of shutting of eyes and ears to a matter regarding which it was incumbent on the director of the intelligence arm of the I.D.F. to open his eyes and listen well," found that he had not given sufficient attention to the decision to send the Phalangists into the camps and had not warned after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel of the danger of revenge, and recommended that he "not continue as Director of Military Intelligence." The Commission also quoted Saguy as saying of the Phalangists' entry, "I simply step aside in this matter," and wrote that the remark showed "the main reason why he 'stepped aside.'"2
Later Career
Sagi subsequently entered electoral politics, serving as a member of the Knesset on the Likud Party list from 1988 to 1992. He then served as mayor of Bat Yam.
Footnotes
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Rodger W. Claire, Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign That Denied Saddam the Bomb (Broadway Books, 2004). ↩︎
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Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, Final Report, February 8, 1983, section on "The Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Yehoshua Saguy," in Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel's Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, vol. 8, 1982-1984, doc. 104. https://syriaaccountability.org/content/images/wordpress/ISRAELMFA_Commission-Inquiry-Beirut_1983_EN.pdf ↩︎