Yuval Diskin´s unbridled criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Saturday sparked a "they deserve it" backlash. Why do they deserve it? Because when Diskin was the head of the Shin Bet security service and Netanyahu and Barak worked alongside him, they consistently ignored what they knew to be true: Diskin suffers from a serious case of "me, me and me" and takes no one else into consideration.

Diskin has the reputation of a praiseworthy professional, and the Shin Bet made some significant operational progress under his leadership, building on the successes of his predecessor, Avi Dichter. Diskin was a success story when it came to fighting terror, but he also suffered the greatest security defeat since the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin: Under his watch, Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Schalit was held by Hamas in adjacent Gaza and the Shin Bet could not procure any useful intelligence to secure his freedom. The government had no choice but to swap hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for Schalit, because the Shin Bet failed to provide a worthy operational alternative.

Schalit was captured in mid-2006. Two or three years later, having failed to provide the goods, so to speak, Diskin should have fallen on his sword, out of a sense of honor. At the time, Netanyahu and Barak did not allow themselves to relieve Diskin of his duties, and that was a mistake.

This is how Netanyahu and Barak found themselves the victims of an embarrassing and well-scripted ambush: Diskin was asked about Iran, and responded that Netanyahu and Barak were acting like a couple of messiahs. Diskin then suddenly pulled a note from his back pocket with an entirely inappropriate quote by the prophet Zechariah: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy king cometh unto thee, he is triumphant, and victorious, lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zechariah 9:9). It is a good thing that Diskin is now a businessman and not a high school Bible teacher.

This supposedly cultured remark is especially inappropriate considering the personal issues at hand: Diskin really wanted to be appointed head of the Mossad upon retiring from the Shin Bet by the very same Netanyahu and Barak whom he says he doesn´t trust. Had he been appointed, he would have continued to cooperate closely with the two people he is now trying to paint as false prophets. Where is his integrity?

Not only was he not appointed to head the Mossad, Netanyahu also dared to flout Diskin´s recommendation and appointed Yoram Cohen as Diskin´s successor rather than Diskin´s own protégé. And this too: Diskin refused to hand over to the state comptroller the wealth of information the Shin Bet had gathered on the Harpaz document (involving former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi). Considering all this, how personally motivated do you think his decision to enlist the prophet Zechariah was?

Let us disregard the unimportant in his remarks and concentrate on the main point: Yes, Iran may be building a nuclear weapon, but it is mistaken to believe Netanyahu and Barak´s assertion that Israel can prevent this militarily. According to Diskin, any Israeli military action will only serve to accelerate the development of Iran´s nuclear bomb. Really? Accelerate? At most, Diskin can argue that an Israeli military strike would delay the bomb for a shorter period of time than hoped, but that certainly is not acceleration.

Who am I to determine who is right – Netanyahu, Barak and their camp or Diskin and former Mossad chief Meir Dagan (who also warned against an Israeli strike on Iran and also says he has no faith in Netanyahu and Barak), and apparently Ashkenazi as well. One thing is clear: Israel has to display willingness to unleash all its military might on Iran if it wants to preserve the chance – a mere chance – that the world will push Iran hard enough to back down. Dagan´s and Diskin´s public remarks undermine this chance and cause more damage than anything Anat Kamm, who was convicted of serious criminal offenses for leaking classified military secrets, has stood for in recent years.