The Daily Telegraph reports:
The new head of Israel’s secret service, Mossad, is ready to apologise for the use of forged British passports during the assassination of a leading Hamas militant in Dubai.
Tamir Pardo, who took over as Mossad’s chief earlier this month, will also promise that Israeli agents will never again be allowed to use fake British documents during operations abroad.
Who has benefited most from the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005? As the International Court of Justice arrives at its version of events, Dyab Abou Jahjah, writing in Open Democracy, finds confirmation in WikiLeaks for pointing us in a different direction.
Lebanon nowadays seems much bigger than it actually is. In a way this is no surprise for a country that always was a playground for regional and international agendas and a laboratory for testing any new formula in the area. However, this time, Lebanon is much more than that. Since 2006 it has become clear to all serious observers that this country is the focal point of a strategic divide, or more accurately the strategic divide in the Middle East. By virtue of the victory of Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, the Lebanese resistance has become a major factor in tipping the balance in favour of the Syrian/Iranian influence in the region as against that of the American/Israeli-led project. The latter project aims at further fragmenting political and social regional structures based upon sectarian and ethnic divisions, in order to create a new Middle East in which – to put it simply – Israel can play boss over everybody.
The Iranian and the Syrian regimes naturally oppose this scheme as it targets them in the first instance, but Iran at least also opposes this for ideological reasons. For the surge of the neo-conservative ‘creative chaos’ strategy in Iraq and beyond, the war against Lebanon in 2006 was supposed to be the final blow to any resistance, especially as this occurred at a time when Iraqi resistance was starting to be divided, weak and marginal, and the American grip over Iraq was growing stronger. Hezbollah’s defeat of the Israeli onslaught stopped the American surge in its tracks. The tide has started to turn since that moment: since then, both the Lebanese resistance and its Syrian and Iranian allies have been strengthened.
At this point, for the Americans and the Israelis a new priority was established: to destroy Hezbollah by any means necessary. This conclusion is confirmed by one of the documents lately published on wikileaks where the heads of the CIA and the Mossad are to be observed contemplating a possible augmentation of the pressure on Syria to make it take its distance from Iran, in order eventually to weaken Hezbollah. In that conversation between Meir Dagan and Frances Townsend, Dagan conveys to his American counterpart the “advantage of such an approach” – that, “the legal ground is already in place for action by the UNSC.” It is in this context that one must read the actions of the international tribunal investigating the death of Rafik Hariri and the indictment of Hezbollah that it will be releasing shortly.
In The Independent yesterday, Yossi Melman made an intriguing statement. Melman is the intelligence and military affairs correspondent for Haaretz and generally regarded as well informed on the operations of Mossad. He wrote:
Three events – not seemingly related – took place yesterday. The leaking of State Department documents, many of which deal with the world’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme; the mysterious assassination in Tehran of a top Iranian nuclear scientist and the wounding of another, and the appointment of Tamir Pardo as the new head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign espionage agency.
But there’s a link between them. They are part of the endless efforts by the Israeli intelligence community, together with its Western counterparts including Britain’s MI6 and America’s CIA, to sabotage, delay and if possible, to stop Iran from reaching its goal of having its first nuclear bomb.
In the rest of his article he focused on the assassins in Tehran and says that it is “obvious” that “Israel was behind it.” He does not amplify on this part of his opening assertion, namely, that the leaking of State Department cables is part of the effort to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. However you read it, he seems to be suggesting that WikiLeaks is in some way part of the effort.
Interestingly, a request for a debate on WikiLeaks in the Israeli parliament has been rejected.
The Knesset will not hold a debate on WikiLeaks, despite a request by a number of parliamentarians for a session on leaked U.S. cables that has rocked the diplomatic world.
The Knesset Presidium, the body which regulates plenary debates in Israel’s parliament, turned down a request from a number of members for a session on the consequences of the leaks for national security.
Among the WikiLeaks disclosures were an Israeli plan to coordinate its 2008 invasion of Gaza with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and details of Israel’s covert ties with governments in the United Arab Emirates.
I didn’t come up with the headline — it’s from Israel’s pro-settler Arutz Sheva news network. And as their report makes clear, this favorable review of what has been described as a diplomatic 9/11, reflects the views of the Israeli government.
Just as Benjamin Netanyahu on September 11, 2001, said the attacks were a “good thing” for US-Israeli relations and then again in 2008 told an Israeli audience, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon,” it’s likewise reasonable to assume that he is similarly pleased with the repercussions of “Cablegate.” If for the past few days the diplomatic world has been thrown into disarray, the one country that so far remains unscathed is Israel.
WikiLeaks, on the other hand, having placed itself at the vanguard of a movement demanding transparency in global affairs, has so far failed to live up to the standard it is setting for others. They don’t need to jeopardize the security of their own operations, but they do need to explain the inner workings of the editorial process through which by releasing some cables and withholding others they are now feeding a narrative to the global media.
I’ll leave it others to construct elaborate theories on how WikiLeaks could be seen as a Mossad or CIA operation, but whether or not either or both intelligence organizations have played a role in shaping this story, one of its central features echoes the history of Israel and its use of a strategy of “divide-and-survive” across the Middle East.
In The American Interest earlier this year, Benjamin E Schwartz described this policy:
When American diplomats talk about the road to peace, few Israelis dare articulate one awkward truth. The truth is that Israelis have managed their conflict with the Arabs and the Palestinians for half a century not by working to unite them all, but either by deliberately and effectively dividing them, or by playing off existing divisions. By approaching matters in this way, Israelis have achieved de facto peace during various periods of their country’s history—and even two examples of de jure peace. It is because of divisions among Palestinians that Israelis survived and thrived strategically in 1947–48, and because of divisions among the Arab states that Israel won its 1948–49 war for independence. Divisions among the Arabs and divided competition for influence over the Palestinians allowed Israelis to build a strong state between 1949 and 1967 without having to contend with a serious threat of pan-Arab attack. It was because of divisions and the strength of Egypt amid those divisions that Anwar Sadat decided to make a separate peace in 1979. It was because of another set of divisions that King Hussein was able to do the same in 1994.
The results of Israeli statecraft did not produce an American-style comprehensive peace, and it did not produce peace with the Palestinians. It may not even have produced a lasting peace with Egypt and Jordan—time will tell. But it did produce peace in its most basic and tangible form: an absence of violence and the establishment of relative security. This is what peace means for the vast majority of Israelis, most of whom do not believe that their Arab neighbors will ever accept, let alone respect as legitimate, a Jewish state in geographical Palestine. And the way Israelis have achieved this peace is, in essence, through a policy of divide and survive.
Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, we see the Saudi king insulting the president of Pakistan, Egypt insulting Iran, America’s fear of Turkey — suspicions, fear and hostility pushed from the background into the foreground with no consequence more predictable than that these expressions of candor will be divisive and further erode the political authority of every player, except for one: Israel.
Meanwhile, if Israeli officials are discreet enough not to openly celebrate the divisions exposed by WikiLeaks, they have no hesitation in trumpeting their sense of vindication arising from the public display of hostility towards Iran expressed by so many of the region’s autocratic leaders.
With only 220 out of 251,287 cables released so far, who knows what surprises lie ahead, but it seems striking and noteworthy that Israel has managed to be the subject of so little attention. Considering the tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government that have been so widely reported, it’s strange that in the first collection of cables we would see little or no evidence of this discord. At the same time there is an abundance of ammunition provided to those who want to push for war against Iran.
At face value, Wikileaks if not serving can at least be said to have been very obliging in advancing Israel’s agenda — and giving the neocons cause for celebration.
Meanwhile, as the media’s attention is riveted by Wikileaks, assassins — presumably operating under the direction of Mossad — have been active on the streets of Tehran, murdering one nuclear scientist and injuring another.
The Guardian reports:
Assassins on motorbikes have killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another in identical attacks this morning. They drove up to the scientists’ cars as they were leaving for work and attached a bomb to each vehicle which detonated seconds later.
The man who was killed was Majid Shahriari, a member of the engineering faculty at the Shahid Beheshti in Tehran. His wife was wounded. The second attack wounded Fereidoun Abbasi, who is also a professor at Shahid Besheshti University, and his wife.
They are senior figures in Iranian nuclear science. Abbasi was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, and once taught at the Pasdaran-run Imam Hossein University. He was hailed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad three years ago as Iran’s academic of the year.
(Update below)
Gulf News reports:
Dubai Police Chief Tuesday confirmed the arrest in Canada of a suspect, believed to be involved in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh last January.
Speaking to reporters, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim said Canadian authorities have arrested another suspect who is connected to the murder of Al Mabhouh that took place in a Dubai Hotel on January 19.
Lt Gen Dahi refused to give further details, but according to Al Ittihad Arabic daily, the suspect was one two people caught by the hotel’s CCTV cameras wearing tennis gears as they staked out Al Mabhouh’s room in the Bustan Rotana Hotel.
Update: Richard Silverstein reports: “Israel’s Channel 10 has revealed that the alias of the arrested Mossad agent is Eric Rassineux. His passport is displayed here. It is the first Israeli source also to confirm that Canada is holding him.”
Eight months after the murder of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, two reports in the last few days present intriguingly contradictory pictures.
First came a Wall Street Journal report on Friday with the headline, “In Global Hunt for Hit Men, Tantalizing Trail Goes Cold.”
The Journal has followed this story more closely than any other US newspaper and this report contained some interesting new information — such as that one of the key suspects, recently using the name Christopher Lockwood, had previously used the identity of a young Israeli soldier, Yehuda Lustig, who was killed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Still, as the headline suggested, investigators were no closer to tracking down Lockwood or any of the other suspects widely assumed to be Israeli Mossad agents. An Israeli who had been arrested in Poland, extradited to Germany and then released on bail in August, swiftly returned to Israel.
The trail has gone cold — but not according to Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the Dubai chief of police. He told The National on Monday that in fact a major suspect was arrested two months ago by a Western country but authorities in that country have requested that no information about the arrest should be made public.
The Abu Dhabi newpaper reported: “The country that arrested the suspect two months ago is not believed to be European.”
So which Western countries do we already know are involved in the case? The only non-European Western country that suspects are known to have traveled to after the murder is the United States.
A suspect traveling as an Irishman, Evan Dennings, entered the US on January 21, the day after Mabhouh’s body was found. And another suspect traveling with a British passport under the name, Roy Allan Cannon, casually entered the US on February 14, right in the middle of the period when the story was receiving global media attention.
The Journal now reports on these suspects that:
Their passport details showed up in a U.S. border-control system that collects electronic manifests of international flights and screens them against passenger watch lists, according to people familiar with the probe and to investigation documents reviewed by the Journal. That suggested the suspects had boarded planes bound for the U.S. The information was passed to international investigators involved in the case, raising hopes of a capture.
But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has since said it doesn’t have records of the two suspects in its system.
It doesn’t have the records — meaning the records have vanished? Been handed over to a different agency, such as the FBI? Or what?
Something doesn’t add up here.
If it turned out that a suspected murderer who belonged to Mossad was arrested in the US, there’s no doubt that the Obama administration would be in a quandary about how to proceed. The one thing we can sure of is that it would guard its actions with the utmost secrecy.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
American investigators, cooperating in a probe of the January assassination of a top Palestinian leader in Dubai, have identified a handful of U.S.-based companies believed to have been used to transfer money to suspects in the case, a finding that brings international authorities closer to identifying who funded the operation.
The findings show American authorities playing a bigger role in the investigation than previously revealed. The case is especially delicate for the U.S., because Dubai police have said their prime suspect in the case is Mossad, the intelligence service of Israel, a key U.S. ally.
International investigators see money transfers made through the U.S. companies as key clues in a globe-spanning manhunt aimed at identifying more than two dozen suspects in the case, according to officials familiar with the matter.
The U.S. companies identified by investigators include Internet-based businesses that match freelance job-seekers with employers and process payments between the two sides. Authorities have identified financial transfers from several of these intermediary businesses into prepaid, cash-card accounts used by suspects in the Dubai killing, according to international investigators.
U.S. authorities say they don’t believe the intermediary companies had any way of knowing the money would be used in the plot, according to a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.
Instead, U.S. investigators believe, suspects might have posed as freelancers in order to get money in a way that obscured their funding source, and used the money for operational expenses, such as buying plane tickets.
The next step in the investigation would be to determine who the employers were in the transactions.
Representatives of several companies identified in the probe said they hadn’t been contacted by U.S. authorities and weren’t aware of any investigation.
Note that the report says “several companies” — it does not say “all the companies” — which leaves open the possibility that Payoneer, the New York-based company run by the former IDF special ops commando, Yuval Tal, is indeed under investigation.
In March Al Jazeera reported: “The UAE central bank is investigating how 24 suspects obtained credit cards from US company, Payoneer. Although registered in the US, Payoneer’s employees are mostly in Israel, this creating a stir on the internet about possible Mossad connections.”
In March, Gulf News reported:
The Payoneer connection unveils a network of links to Israel, specifically its intelligence community.
Its CEO is Yuval Tal, an Israeli citizen who, according to media reports, described himself as a former Israeli special forces commando in a 2006 Fox News interview.
Clips of the interview on video sharing websites have been removed.
However, a person who said he met Tal a couple of times but did not want to be named told Gulf News that “there is no question in my mind that Yuval has contacts with [Israel’s spy agency] Mossad”.
He recalled a conversation Tal had with attendees of a Jewish charity event in New York, where he spoke of his connections with Mossad.“Yuval was entertaining a small group of people with tales of his IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] exploits… Specifically, he was commending Israeli intelligence and how Mossad and [Israel’s internal security agency] Shin Bet always gave him great information on his commando raids. He said his ‘colleagues’ are tracking [Hamas leaders Khaled] Mesha’al and [Esmail] Haniyeh’s movements almost every day,” he said.
Payoneer is held by three venture capital firms: Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.
Greylock, which has offices in the US, India and Herzliya, Israel, was established by Moshe Mor, a former military intelligence captain in the Israeli army.Carmel Ventures is an Israeli venture capital fund based in Herzliya. Crossbar Partners is run by Charlie Federman, who is also managing director of the BRM Group, a venture capital fund also in Herzliya that was founded by Nir and Eli Barkat, the former of whom is the mayor of occupied Jerusalem.
For almost six months, at least 32 Mossad agents wanted in connection with the murder of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud Mabhouh, have managed to avoid arrest. Now that Uri Brodsky (or whatever his real name might be) has been caught, the Israeli government is going to be forced to break its silence on the case. For the Israelis, still struggling to deal with the political fallout from the Mavi Marmara massacre, the timing could not be worse.
The National reports:
Polish police have arrested a suspected Mossad agent sought by German authorities on suspicion of helping prepare for the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a senior Hamas figure, in a Dubai hotel in January.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Germany said the man was detained by Polish police on suspicion of illegally obtaining a German passport for one of the members of the hit squad.
Authorities in Poland were reviewing a request to extradite him to Germany, the office said.
“A person was arrested in Poland based on a European arrest warrant issued by Germany, and his extradition has been requested,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said. “The matter is now in the hands of the Polish authorities.”
The Dubai Police chief, Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said last night that his department had been informed of the arrest. He could not be reached for further comment.
The German spokesman said the arrest was linked to the German investigation into the illegal obtaining of a passport in the name of Michael Bodenheimer, which was allegedly used by one of the assassins.
“There is a suspicion that he was involved in intelligence activity and that the procurement of the passport was linked to that,” the spokesman said, adding that the arrest took place at the Frederic Chopin International Airport in Warsaw early this month.
On February 23, 2010, Der Spiegel reported:
In the early summer of 2009, a man named Michael Bodenheimer went to the local residents’ registration office in Cologne, where he applied for a new passport and a new identification card. He claimed that he was a German citizen, unmarried, who had been born in Israel. He invoked Article 116 of the Germany constitution, which permits individuals persecuted by the Nazi regime, as well as family members who were expatriated, to regain German citizenship. He presented the Cologne authorities with the supposed marriage certificate of his parents and an Israeli passport, issued in Tel Aviv in November 2008.
Bodenheimer provided the authorities with an address in Cologne’s Eigelstein district. However his name is not listed on the mailbox at the address, a modest beige-colored apartment building. The building is in an area near the train station and has a high turnover of tenants — the perfect place for someone who doesn’t want to be noticed.
Bodenheimer claimed that his Israeli residence was in Herzliya, a city north of Tel Aviv. But the trail ends there, in the city’s business district. Although Michael Bodenheimer is listed as the name of a company in the lobby of a modern, four-story office building, a security guard says that the company moved out half a year ago. As coincidence would have it, the Mossad headquarters is only one kilometer away.
Bodenheimer received his German papers on June 18, and it seems very likely that the assassination was completed with the help of an official German government document. Bodenheimer was apparently in charge of communications for the hit team. The Cologne public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation on Friday into alleged document falsification. Federal prosecutors are considering initiating an investigation into possible activities by intelligence agents. Because of such investigations, the affair could expand into a serious strain on German-Israeli relations.
After the British government expelled an Israeli diplomat understood to be the London Mossad chief, the Daily Telegraph reports:
…members of the Israeli parliament likened the British government to “anti-Semitic dogs” and demanded the expulsion of Britain’s military attaché in Tel Aviv.
“The British are being hypocritical, and I do not wish to insult dogs here, since some dogs show true loyalty, [but] who gave the British the right to judge us on the war on terror?” said Arieh Eldad, a Right-wing member of the Knesset.
Another member, Michael Ben-Ari, said: “Dogs are usually loyal, the British may be dogs, but they are not loyal to us. They seem to be loyal to the anti-Semitic establishment.”
In an editorial, the Jerusalem Post says:
…the British government, it would appear, has its good guys and bad guys confused. Intelligence activities designed to protect citizens’ lives, even if they cross certain diplomatic frameworks, merit a sensible public response founded in moral support.
There is however one “diplomatic framework” that Israel sees fit to observe: it doesn’t steal the identities of American-Israeli dual nationals.
As for what sinister motives might lurk behind the rebuke to Israel dished out by the British, Dominic Waghorn says:
Right of centre free-daily newspaper Israel Hayom expresses the suspicion shared with me by a senior Israeli diplomat yesterday. “Some three million Muslims live in Britain, and Gordon Brown needs their votes in the upcoming elections.”
“We’ve recently had the feeling that Miliband thinks the route to leading Labour and the government goes through slighting and hurting Israel,” a diplomatic source tells Maariv.
What’s interesting about this notion that the Labour government could be pandering to Muslim voters is that those making the accusation would I am sure — even while AIPAC is in the middle of a conference graced by the attendance of virtually every member of Congress — see no parallel between a British government attentive to the views of Muslim voters and American politicians attentive to the views of Jewish voters.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that this senior Israeli diplomat refers to Muslims who “live in Britain” — as though he can’t quite accept the fact that the Muslims who live in Britain and who will have an impact on the upcoming election are actually British Muslims and British citizens.
After a recent warning from US military leaders that Israel is putting at risk the lives of American soldiers in the Middle East, the British government has warned that actions by Israel present “a hazard for the safety of British nationals in the region.”
This latest warning comes after a criminal investigation has concluded that Israel stole the identities of 12 British citizens in order to murder the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January. As a result of that investigation Britain today expelled an Israeli diplomat from London who is understood to be the UK-based Mossad chief.
From London, the Daily Telegraph reports:
An investigation by the Serious and Organised Crime Squad (SOCA) has concluded that there are “compelling reasons” to believe that Israel was responsible for the “misuse” of a dozen British passports.
A senior diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in London – widely believed to be a member of Mossad, the feared Israeli secret service agency – is being expelled from the Untied Kingdom as a result.
As the diplomatic row escalated, Mr Miliband told the House of Commons that he had demanded that the Israeli government give assurances that British citizens will never again be drawn into such an operation.
Describing the passport holders as “wholly innocent victims,” the Foreign Secretary aid that the fact that Israel was a “friend” of the United Kingdom added “insult to injury.
The British government has also taken the unusual step of warning British passport holders not to hand over their passports to Israeli officials unless “absolutely necessary.”
Since it’s impossible to enter any country without handing over your passport, perhaps this advice should be interpreted to mean that British citizens should only travel to Israel when absolutely necessary.
Aryeh Eldad, a National Religious Party member of the Knesset suggested that the British are worse than dogs when told Sky News: “I think [the] British are behaving hypocritically and I don’t want to offend dogs on this issue, since some dogs are utterly loyal, who are they to judge us on the war on terror?”
Robert Baer considers some of the wider implications of the assassination of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai in January:
If Mossad was indeed responsible, it means that blame for Mabhouh’s assassination can be put at the doorstep of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel’s Prime Minister has historically approved hits staged in countries with which Israel is not at war. Such details are unlikely to be made public any time soon, but it does make you wonder what the deliberations might have been leading up to Mabhouh’s assassination.
More than a few Middle East hands shrugged their shoulders at the question: Netanyahu wouldn’t have cared whether Israel was fingered for the assassination of Mabhouh or not. The whole point, they argue, was to send a reminder to Israel’s enemies that it will eliminate them anywhere it can find them. When Mossad went after the Palestinian Black September movement in retaliation for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, it didn’t give a damn about the diplomatic blowback. It was a case of an eye for an eye, and the belief that the best deterrence is to strike fear into your enemies.
But the evidence that the assassins tried to make it look as if Mabhouh died in his sleep belies the deterrence explanation. And it doesn’t answer the question why Mossad would risk exposing 26 operatives. A small intelligence service, Mossad cannot afford to take this many people out of circulation by having their pictures beamed around the world. It also doesn’t explain why the alleged assassins stole the identities of Israeli citizens. Israelis may be proud that their secret service can reach its enemies anywhere, but it serves no national or political interests to expose their own people to retribution.
If Netanyahu authorized the hit, though, the real question is whether he really considered the strategic implications. Look at the map. If Israel goes ahead and bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will need over-flight clearances from the Gulf Arabs. Antagonizing the U.A.E. in this way, leaving almost no doubt Israel was behind Mabhouh’s assassination, does not seem the best way to facilitate such clearances.
Baer makes a good point. If everything had gone as planned not only would there have been no news about the killing, but Hamas’ leaders themselves would have had little reason to doubt that Mabhouh had died of natural causes.
As for Netanyahu’s strategic thinking, there are at least two ways of interpreting his action. Either it was purely opportunistic and a decision made without clearly thinking through the implications. Or, it can be taken as further evidence that despite the Israeli leader’s bellicose posture he does in fact have no intention of asking Arab states for over-flight clearances because — and this would be Israel’s most closely guarded secret — Netanyahu has in truth no intention of attacking Iran and that his thinly veiled threats are hollow.
Bloomberg reports:
Suspected assassins of a Hamas leader in Dubai “fraudulently” acquired prepaid payroll cards and stole identities to obtain jobs at U.S. companies, according to card-issuer MetaBank.
Authorities informed Meta, a unit of publicly traded Meta Financial Group Inc., that the suspects used fake passports to get cards issued by the firm and other banks, according to an e- mailed statement from Meta yesterday. The lender, rooted in regions of Iowa and South Dakota tied to farming, said it followed proper procedures and that the people weren’t on federal lists designed to block potential terrorists.
“No other readily apparent method existed for Meta to determine that identity theft had been perpetrated on valid governments and their citizens,” said MetaBank, based in Storm Lake, Iowa.
Fourteen of the suspects in the January killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh used payment cards issued by MetaBank to book hotel rooms and pay for air travel, Dubai police said last month. Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim accused Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, of orchestrating the murder of al-Mabhouh, a founder of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Palestinian movement Hamas.
Next question: which US companies?
Reuters reports:
Dubai’s police chief plans to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of Israel’s spy agency over the killing of a Hamas leader in the emirate, Al Jazeera television reported.
Dahi Khalfan Tamim “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for … Netanyahu and the head of Mossad,” the television said. It did not give details.
Gulf News reports that Yuval Tal (the CEO of Payoneer, the New York-based company that issued prepaid debit cards used by the Dubai assassins) is alleged to have links to Mossad:
… a person who said he met Tal a couple of times but did not want to be named told Gulf News that “there is no question in my mind that Yuval has contacts with [Israel’s spy agency] Mossad”.
He recalled a conversation Tal had with attendees of a Jewish charity event in New York, where he spoke of his connections with Mossad.
“Yuval was entertaining a small group of people with tales of his IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] exploits… Specifically, he was commending Israeli intelligence and how Mossad and [Israel’s internal security agency] Shin Bet always gave him great information on his commando raids. He said his ‘colleagues’ are tracking [Hamas leaders Khaled] Mesha’al and [Esmail] Haniyeh’s movements almost every day,” he said.
Payoneer is held by three venture capital firms: Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.
Greylock, which has offices in the US, India and Herzliya, Israel, was established by Moshe Mor, a former military intelligence captain in the Israeli army.
Carmel Ventures is an Israeli venture capital fund based in Herzliya. Crossbar Partners is run by Charlie Federman, who is also managing director of the BRM Group, a venture capital fund also in Herzliya that was founded by Nir and Eli Barkat, the former of whom is the mayor of occupied Jerusalem.
For those of us who view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being an issue of injustice, there’s plenty of reason to believe no resolution is in sight simply because justice is one of the weakest among the principles governing world affairs. To this extent, Israeli leaders can feel confident in their sense of impunity.
But there is another line Israel crosses at its peril: where its actions conflict with the commercial interests of its allies. Israel can be a moral liability but it cannot be a financial liability.
US taxpayers have every reason to feel that Israel, as the largest single recipient of US foreign aid, is already a massive financial liability. Even so, since most of those tax dollars get plowed straight back into the US defense industry, Washington is unlikely to become more attentive to the concerns of ordinary American citizens than it is to the interests of its corporate sponsors.
Nevertheless, there is now reason to think that with the murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai, Israel crossed a line that strains the limits of Western tolerance. Western governments would have paid scant attention to this event were it not for one egregious error by Mossad: its flagrant disregard for the integrity of foreign passports.
For many international travelers from Western countries, a passport might seem like nothing more than an obligatory document of no extraordinary value, yet in many ways these carefully bound and embossed permits are the lubricants of globalization. Swift passage through immigration control is one of the things that keeps the wheels of business turning smoothly.
But anyone traveling to the Middle East on an EU or Australian passport will now face a new level of scrutiny from immigration officers intent on blocking the passage of Israeli assassins.
Dubai’s police chief Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim announced on Monday that any travelers suspected of being Israeli, even if they hold passports from another country, will now be barred from entry into the UAE.
Asharq Al-Awsat reports that any foreign traveler visiting Lebanon who has a Jewish name will now be placed under surveillance.
Major General Wafiq Jizzini, director general of the Lebanese Public Security, said: “When someone comes to Lebanon on a foreign passport and the name of his family indicates that he is of Jewish origin, the border center sends the information to the central information office at the General Directorate of the Public Security. Afterward, the directorate observes this person who would have already registered his address in Lebanon. Both the visiting person and the one who receives him at the airport are observed.”
Israeli leaders such as Israel’s minister of industry, trade and labor, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who still regard the Dubai murder as a victory for Israel, have further reason to question that conclusion as fallout from the operation has now reached the United Nations General Assembly.
On Friday, the only countries willing to side with Israel in opposing a resolution that makes a renewed call for the investigation of war crimes committed during Israel’s war on Gaza, were the United States, Canada, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, and Macedonia.
Australian government sources informed the Sydney Morning Herald that there was a direct connection between the UN vote and the Dubai affair:
Britain, France and Germany have all recently expressed anger at Israel after their passports were caught up in the Dubai plot.
One Department of Foreign Affairs source told the Herald there was no doubt the decision to abstain was intended as a sign to Israel not to take Australian support for granted.
“A number of things made it easier for us to switch our vote,” the source said.
“Firstly, the Americans helped the Palestinians to soften the wording of this resolution compared to the last one. Secondly, a number of other countries had indicated that they were toughening their own positions on Goldstone. But there is no question that the debacle surrounding our passports being used in Dubai helped to make up the government’s mind to abstain. The final decision was taken late on Friday, Australian time, just a few hours before the vote.
“Our pattern in the past has been to vote with the US when it comes to Israel, to show as much support for Israel as possible.
“We were also aware that the UK’s decision to vote in favour of the resolution was influenced by the fact that so many of their citizens had been caught up in the Dubai assassination.”
Israelis would do well to remember that even among their most effusive supporters, an allegiance to business invariably trumps all others.
A murder suspect, traveling as an Irishman Evan Dennings, entered the US on January 21, a day after Mahmoud al Mabhouh’s body was discovered in Dubai.
Roy Allan Cannon, entered the US on February 14.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
At least two of the 26 suspects sought by Dubai police for the alleged killing of a top Hamas leader appear to have entered the U.S. shortly after his death, according to people familiar with the situation.
Records shared between international investigators show that one of the suspects entered the U.S. on Feb. 14, carrying a British passport, according to a person familiar with the situation. The other suspect, carrying an Irish passport, entered the U.S. on Jan. 21, according to this person. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s body was found in a Dubai hotel room on Jan. 20.
There aren’t records of either man leaving the U.S., though investigators can’t be sure the two are still in the country, according to this person. Since the two were traveling with what investigators believe to be fraudulently issued passports, they may have traveled back out of the U.S. with different, bogus travel documents.
The suspected U.S. travel broadens to American shores the international manhunt triggered by Dubai’s investigation into the death of Mr. Mabhouh. Dubai police have already identified two U.S. financial companies they believe issued and distributed several credit cards used by 14 of the suspects in the alleged killing.
The Times reports:
Would you be prepared to cross-dress? And kill a guest in an adjacent hotel room? If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, and you can also act, enjoy luxury international travel with a twist and can carry off a convincing Irish or Australian accent, then the job could be yours.
The Israeli spy agency Mossad may be the target of international reproach since it allegedly killed the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel this month, but at home emerging details of the operation have generated Mossad mania.
It has never been more popular in Israel, with stores selling out of Mossad memorabilia and its official website reporting a soaring number of visitors interested in applying to become agents. “Mossad has been restored to its glory days,” said Ilan Mizrahi, a former deputy director of the agency, which is located in the affluent beach town of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.
One of the signature elements of cult psychology is that the more a group is vilified, the more self-righteous it becomes. The outsiders’ opprobrium, far from provoking shame or doubt, has the opposite effect: it is treated as a vindication of the cult’s sense of superiority.