In yet another story which makes one ask who are the (real) "terrorists" in the Middle East, Israel's ruthless, secret service entity is widely believed to have carried out a very clumsy assassination of a Hamas leader, who was in Dubai at the time.

And when I say "widely believed" I'm referring to it being widely believed that Mossad was responsible INSIDE of Israel - as a Der Spiegel article reports.


"Israel’s relations strained by Dubai killing"

www.nrc.nl/international/article2486718....ned_by_Dubai_killing

The Israeli government is mired in silence, but experts say the murder of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh on January 20 bears the fingerprints of the Israeli secret service Mossad. “The murder has its signature written all over it,” said Yossi Melman, Israel’s best known Mossad expert.

Earlier this week, the Dubai police force released pictures of the 11 suspects in the case: ten men and one woman. All made use of fake identities.
Mossad, Melman said, has a long history of working with stolen identities. “The service assumes it is better to adopt an existing identity than to invent a new one, because it reduces the chances of being found out,” Melman explained. “If security services do a background check, it soon becomes obvious that the person you claim to be really exists. This can reduce suspicion.”

A case of mistaken identity

One of the seven Israelis, all European binationals who were unpleasantly surprised this week by a very peculiar case of mistaken identity, is Paul Keeley.

The ‘Paul Keeley’ who paid a dubious visit to Dubai was a full-figured man with a large beard and thick glasses, the pictures released by the Dubai authorities show.

The real Paul Keeley is a UK-born, smooth shaven, wiry Israeli, who found out he was wanted by Dubai police by reading his breakfast paper. The 43-year-old handyman read he was wanted for the murder of the Hamas leader. Keeley claims he has nothing to do with the killing and is not a secret agent. He told Israeli media he hasn’t left the country in two years. “I am worried that people will come after me wanting to hurt me,” he said.

Several of the victims of the identity theft told the press about their fear of becoming targets for retribution. Hamas has already vowed revenge for the murder. Others think they will never be able to fly again, because their names now appear on every most-wanted list. And either way, their privacy has been grossly violated.

A call for Mossad chief's resignation

The case has set off a fiery debate in Israel. Opposition party Kadima has demanded a parliamentary inquiry into the murder. Yisrael Hasson, a parliamentarian who was himself a secret agent for years, has accused the service of often taking advantage of citizens to further its own ends. Journalist Amir Oren called for the resignation of Mossad chief Meir Dagan in a commentary in the liberal daily Haaretz.

The murder itself seems to have been carried out in an amateurish manner. Mabhouh often travelled to Dubai without any personal security. The police said Mabhouh was shadowed for a long time before he was – most probably – strangled in his room. The 11 suspects’ preparations were registered at length by security cameras at the hotel where the Hamas leader stayed. Images released by the Dubai police show disguised men and a single woman wearing fake moustaches, glasses and tennis gear, checking into the hotel and coming and going thereafter.

Haaretz ran a sarcastic cartoon on its front page this Thursday depicting prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling Mossad chief Dagan “But the [secret agents] are all wearing the same glasses,” to which Dagan replies “Yes. They were on sale.”

Nonetheless, Mossad expert Melman feels the murder was a “rather flawlessly executed operation”. “One should keep in mind that Mossad’s primary duty is intelligence gathering, for which they are far better equipped that assassinations, which they carry out only once or twice a year these days,” he added

Mabhouh’s murder has often been compared to a failed assassination attempt by Mossad in 1997. Mossad agents tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan by injecting poison into his ear. Mashal survived, but a crisis between Israel and Jordan followed. The Israelis had to release another Hamas leader, sheik Ahmed Yassin, to appease the enraged Jordanians.

An old habit

Melman said that, though it is not its core business, Mossad seems, in recent years, to have picked up its old habit of assassinating abroad. Israel never formally acknowledges responsibility for any killings, but Israeli experts agree a string of recent foreign liquidations was most probably Mossad’s doing.

In 2008, Hezbollah leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in an explosion near the Syrian capital of Damascus. The city was also the scene of an attack on a bus full of Iranians late last year. This attack, which killed three people, has remained something of an enigma, but many suspect Mossad was behind it. As they believe the secret service is to blame for the recent bombing of an Iranian scientist in Tehran.

The international community is up in arms about Mossad’s methods, as it was in 1997. The United Kingdom and Ireland have demanded an explanation from the Israeli ambassador over the use of counterfeit British and Irish passports. The series of assassinations has also strained relations with the Arab world. For this reason, Israeli daily Maariv called the murder an “operational success, but a strategic blunder”.

Today Reuters had the following headline:

"Unhappy with Israel, EU condemns Dubai killing"

www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L2F520100222

While the criticism is very meek, to the best of my knowledge this is the first time that the Mossad's assassination-campaign against alleged "terrorists" has been publicly criticized - if only obliquely...

"In a short statement that European diplomats said was intended as a rebuke to Israel, EU foreign ministers said that the assassination was "profoundly disturbing" and that its citizens' rights were violated.

Dubai has accused Israel of being behind the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Israel has not denied or confirmed it played any role but its foreign minister, visiting Brussels, said there was nothing to link it to the killing.

"The EU strongly condemns the fact that those involved in this action (the killing) used fraudulent EU member states' passports and credit cards acquired through the theft of EU citizens' identities," ministers said after talks in Brussels.

"The EU welcomes the investigation by the Dubai authorities and calls on all countries to cooperate with it."

Diplomats said the statement was intended to put pressure on Israel, but no direct reference was made to it because there was no proof Israeli agents carried out the assassination..."

This means nothing. The EU also "condemns" when Hamas or Fatah or any terror (or even "terror") group does any killing anywhere... "We regret the loss of life, etc." It means nothing.

Israel is a loose cannon, but if it saves Israeli lives and kills people who have sworn to destroy their State, well, if I don't applaud you won't catch me shedding any tears either. That's war. The Palie's had peace on a plate from the Clintons and they spat in the Israelis' faces because they figured they could outbreed their Red Sea Pedestrian neighbors. A greasy bit o' Mossad wetwork once-and-again won't make two licks of difference in the end -- the result is a foregone conclusion. Either Israel *will* use WMDs and thereby survive as a state, or they *won't* and the Palies will breed them out of existence. Any other outcome will be a temporary solution at best.

It's an ugly dichotomy, but then again, it's an ugly corner of the planet. Let 'em duke it out, it's not our business or our problem as soon as the oil dries up.

JsJ, am I really interpreting you correctly that we should stand back and allow the biggest and best war-machine in the Middle East (100% equipped by U.S. taxpayers) to "duke it out" with over 1 million Palestinians held prisoner in the Israeli gulag known as the "Gaza Strip"?

S.E.P. - "Somebody Else's Problem".

We need to get our money back, because there's no need to subsidize an economically efficient representative government like Israel. A basketcase state like Gaza, however, needs all the help it can get. Maybe we can send them bandages and medicines after they finally get the big war they've been spoiling for over the past five decades.

Yeah, history this and history that... bla-bla-blah-puke.
The facts as they exist now are the following:
Palies are outbreeding.
Israelis are outgunning.

If you don't have the will to pull the trigger, a gun becomes a liability. Israel needs to reach down, grab a pair, and make the Arabs hurt, I mean REALLY hurt. Otherwise both are locked in this deathgrip battle with neither able to progress. It's a cultural pathology. It's been going on for decades, and it is crippling them both.

Occasionally the Tree of Liberty has to be watered with the blood of martyrs. Sucks for the martyrs, but, hey, whatcha gonna do? Hundreds of thousands of Israelis will die, and millions of Arabs will die, but they both made that choice a long time ago. Let them get on with it.

Callous? Sure. Hard-hearted? Absolutely... but that is someone else's problem.

The clumsy assassination which the Mossad carried out in Dubai continues to have negative political consequences for Israel.

Now it is Australia which is very angry with Israel - since the Mossad agents used forged passports of several nations: British, French and Irish too.

"Australia summons Israeli envoy over Dubai killing "

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8535728.stm

No one is going to *do* anything.

I know that diplomatic posturing matters in the West, but in the Middle East?

JsJ, you're totally missing the "big picture" here.

The West will "do nothing" - as you say? You could be right. But "doing nothing" also applies to the tough, new U.N. economic sanctions against Iran, which the U.S. (and Israel) are trying to ram-down the world's throat.

The ONLY possibility of getting China to go along with such proposed sanctions would have been for the entire, Western "community" to put pressure on China. It's very difficult to see that ever happening, now.

Decades of Israeli terrorism are taking its toll. Originally, Israel was only killing THREE Palestinians for every Israeli death. In recent years, that ratio has increased to more than ten-to-one - while their Apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people generate growing contempt from the rest of the world.

Assassinations and ruthless political and military oppression are NOT the way you "make friends" in the world...and Israel is about to find out the draw-backs of having only ONE "friend" (the United States)...two, if you count Canada's U.S. lap-dog for a Prime Minister.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153316.html

Did Israel do it? Is this misinformation? Who really knows?