Five Israelis had their identities stolen – apparently by Mossad!

Anyone who is Jewish but doesn’t have a Jewish sounding name and who has been considering emigrating to Israel might soon be having second thoughts.

To the extent that Israel provides a safe haven to Jews, it turns out your religious identity might count for less than your name.

The Israeli government has yet to acknowledge that the murder of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai last month was carried out by Mossad, but the evidence is now overwhelming.

But the fact that Mossad carried out the killing may turn out to concern Israelis (and Jews elsewhere) less than the apparent willingness of the Israeli intelligence agency to put the lives and liberty of Israeli citizens in jeopardy by stealing their identities.

It now turns out that five Israeli dual nationals claim their identities were stolen in order to provide the Dubai killers with fake passports. (Update – Israel’s Hebrew Ma’ariv now reports that seven Israelis had their identities stolen.)

Haaretz reports:

At least five Israelis awoke Tuesday morning to find their names tied to the assassination of senior Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel room last month. All were stunned to find their names displayed on passports that police in the emirate said were used by the assailants.

However, the people pictured in the photos released by police looked nothing like them. All denied involvement in the affair.

“I’m in shock – I just don’t understand how something like this could happen,” said Paul John Keeley, a British-born repairman who lives on Kibbutz Nahsholim, near Zichron Yaakov. Keeley’s name appeared on the British passport Dubai authorities said belonged to one of the hit men.

“From the moment I heard about it I was very worried. I’m worried for my family,” said Keeley, who immigrated to Israel more than a decade ago. “The fact that it was my name that was published in this context makes me worry that someone will try to harm us.”

Keeley, 43 and a father of three, said Tuesday his passport was in his possession before, on and after January 20, the day Mabhouh was assassinated.

“I don’t know who a person calls when his identity is stolen,” he said. “I’m waiting for someone from the British or Israeli government to contact me and give me answers. I don’t understand how something like this could happen.”

Amir Oren adds:

Using the identities of real, living, innocent Israelis for operational documentation is against the law. This kind of abuse also causes innocent civilians to suffer the evil that already plagues ministers and officers: being prevented from traveling abroad for fear of being arrested by Interpol on suspicion of being the Dubai assassins.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy pushed for a Mossad Law to be legislated that would enshrine the state’s obligation to defend its agents caught breaking laws abroad. The initiative never got off the ground: A state can’t legitimize illegality. But neither can it allow one of its institutions to arbitrarily harm civilians — not the police, not the tax authority, not the Shin Bet security service and not the Mossad.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein was asked yesterday whether an investigation will be opened following the public complaints of those whose identities were stolen from them, and whose lives and liberty are therefore now threatened. Weinstein has not yet had time to study the issue.

Oren is calling for Mossad chief Meir Dagan to be fired. But why stop there? Who can be so naive as to doubt that this operation was conducted with the authorization and at the behest of the Israeli prime minister himself.

Imagine a parallel in the United States. Richard Nixon couldn’t get away with ordering a burglary – can Netanyahu put his own citizens in jeopardy while ordering a murder?

This may end up not merely undermining public confidence in government officials; it might even shake Jewish confidence in Zionism.

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5 thoughts on “Five Israelis had their identities stolen – apparently by Mossad!

  1. blowback

    You’re assuming that this was a case of identity theft. Since the murderers in Dubai seemed to have used genuine passports that were amended, one has to ask if these “victims” reported the thefts to the British embassy? If they didn’t then they should have a bloody good explanation for why they did not

  2. Paul Woodward

    Reports indicate that the individuals who are claiming identity theft don’t match the individuals in the photos released by Dubai police, they have not lost their passports and they have not left Israel. In other words, the information inside their passports was used – not the physical passports themselves.

    I don’t think Mossad or any other intelligence agency would send out a team of assassins traveling under their own identities.

  3. Steve

    Mossad must be slipping. A very shoddy operation indeed. If Hamas or Hizbullah were even the slightest bit clever one might suspect them of doing this to implicate Israel.

    They are however not that clever.

  4. Irishman

    Article insert In today’s Irish Independent: Robert Fisk: Not one of the nations spoken to has notified Interpol of the passports used in their name

    By Robert Fisk in Beirut
    Thursday February 18 2010

    “Collusion. That’s what it is all about. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) suspect — only suspect, mark you — that Europe’s ‘security collaboration’ with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other EU nations) can be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel’s enemies.

    At 3.49pm yesterday (Beirut time, 1.49pm in London), my Lebanese phone rang. It was a source — impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi — to say that ‘the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?”‘

    Three Irish passport identities were also used some of whom were never in the Middle East

  5. DICKERSON3870

    • FROM “The Independent”: …In 2005, two Israelis were convicted of fraudulently trying to obtain New Zealand passports. When the government in Auckland secured an apology from the Israeli authorities it regarded that in itself as proof that the two men were acting on behalf of the Jewish state.
    Although there was no immediate UK confirmation yesterday, the Israeli press also reported that Israel was obliged to apologise when British passports the agency had been using were left in a phone booth in West Germany in 1987. Ten years later, Canada protested over the use of its passports in the famously botched attempt to assassinate the Hamas political bureau head Khaled Meshal in Amman – a failure which led at Jordan’s insistence to the Gaza Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin being freed from jail….
    • SOURCE – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-reels-from-backlash-at-killing-of-hamas-militant-1902993.html

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