Dubai seeks '11 Europeans' for Hamas killing

[Ed Jewett]

Mossad Hit

An Israeli Affront Against Germany

By Matthias Gebauer, Christoph Schult and Holger Stark

AFP

Murdered Hamas militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: Germany played an important role in the logistics of the operation.



Following the assassination of Hamas militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, German state prosecutors are considering murder charges in the case. Investigations in Dubai and the West are strongly pointing to Mossad involvement in the targeted killing.
One should not speak ill of the dead, the Prophet Muhammad once intoned. But Mahmoud al-Zahar, 64, the leader of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza Strip, is now forced to make a small exception. Sitting on the ground floor of his home in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, he talks about his comrade Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was liquidated by a hit squad in a Dubai hotel on Jan. 20. How could al-Mabhouh have been so careless and booked his flights over the Internet, asks the co-founder of Hamas? "That was more than stupid."


Shortly after al-Mabhouh's death, when Hamas leaders began pointing the finger at Israel, many observers wrote it off as just another Middle East conspiracy theory. But following revelations by police in Dubai as well as their own investigations, governments in the West have little doubt that this was a Mossad hit. Last week, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, told members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, that Mossad was apparently behind the Dubai operation.
This is also now an open secret in Israel, despite military censorship. A number of Israelis have identified acquaintances from the photos released of the 26 suspects who are thought to be involved in the operation. Karmel Shama, a member of parliament in the center-right Likud Party, even stood before the Knesset and praised the killing as a mitzvah, a religious commandment, adding that Mossad chief Meir Dagan had done "good work."
A Brazen Denial
But that didn't stop Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman from issuing a brazen denial during a conversation with his Irish counterpart at a meeting in Brussels last week, maintaining that it was all merely propaganda. "The Arabs have a tendency to blame Israel for anything that happens in the Middle East," he said.
In view of the results of the police investigation, however, statements by Israeli diplomats claiming that they had no explanation for the hit squad's use of foreign passports also show a good deal of chutzpah. In response to the affair, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has warned Israel that his country would regard any involvement in the forging or abuse of Australian passports for the killing of a Hamas militant as "not the act of a friend."
As details of the murder continue to emerge, it is becoming increasingly clear that the hit was planned well in advance -- and that by all appearances Germany played an important role in the logistics of the operation. In addition to looking into whether documents were fraudulently obtained, state prosecutors in Cologne have launched a murder investigation. Federal prosecutors have also initiated proceedings to determine whether a German citizen has been working for a foreign intelligence agency. The investigations are being coordinated by the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe.
The probe focuses primarily on a man named Michael Bodenheimer, supposedly born in Israel in 1967, who applied for a German passport last year -- and is allegedly one of the agents involved in the Dubai operation. Bodenheimer had a German law firm submit his application, which included his Israeli passport along with his parents' marriage certificate. Since his family had allegedly been persecuted by the Nazi regime, officials issued Bodenheimer a German passport on June 18, 2009.
Multiple Attempts in Dubai?
Mossad apparently used the document a couple of months before the Dubai operation. German investigations have revealed that back on Nov. 8, 2009, Bodenheimer flew from Frankfurt to Dubai, and then continued on to Hong Kong -- precisely the same route that he selected in January. Investigators presume that the trip in November was either a test run or a botched attempt to liquidate the Hamas operative. The fact that al-Mabhouh had earlier just barely survived an attempt to poison him in Dubai fits well with that theory.
Bodenheimer was in fact not traveling alone in November. According to the latest findings by police in Dubai, nine other suspected fellow agents also went to the emirate, and they traveled very similar routes to the ones that they used in January, when they finally struck.
One of the hubs used in November was also the international airport in Frankfurt. Two of the alleged agents flew from there on Emirates Flight EK 46 and landed shortly before midnight in Dubai.
German investigators are currently examining airline passenger lists, entry protocols and video surveillance tapes at Frankfurt Airport to determine what identities the agents used during their travels. After the assassination, Bodenheimer left Dubai together with five other members of the hit squad on Emirates flight EK 384 bound for Hong Kong, and then flew back to Frankfurt with one of the agents.
It's likely the Mossad calculated the risk that Dubai police might discover the passport fraud into its planning. As a precautionary measure, the Israeli agents lightly touched up the photos on their passports. This would allow them to pass unhindered through the controls, but also make them more difficult to identify later on. The team apparently felt so confident of their false identities that two of the spooks later even traveled from Dubai to Iran, a country that is normally off limits for Israelis.
An Affront to Germany
The Mossad operation is a particular affront to the Germans. Since last summer, current BND head Ernst Uhrlau has been acting at the behest of the Israeli government as a liaison between Jerusalem and Hamas. He sought the release of roughly a thousand Palestinian prisoners held by the Israelis and, in return, Hamas was to set free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Palestinian militants in 2006.
The BND official was in Israel just a few days before Jan. 19 to discuss the next steps in the negotiations. By then the hit squad must have been already on its way to Dubai.
The BND negotiator also returned to the region following the murder in Dubai, but neither before nor after the assassination did his colleagues in Israeli intelligence brief him on their risky plot.
This marks the second time that the Germans have been snubbed. In late December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected at the last moment a detailed agreement that his negotiator Hagai Hadas had hammered out with Hamas via the German intelligence agency. BND head Uhrlau has admitted internally that he currently sees no chance of reaching an agreement in the Shalit case.
This sentiment was also echoed by Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. He said it's impossible to make an agreement with the infidels, and cited a line from the second Surah of the Koran: "Is it not so that every time they made a promise, some of them cast it aside?"
Zahar said it had been difficult to convince Khalid Mashaal, the exiled political leader of Hamas in Damascus, Syria, to approve the deal. Netanyahu's subsequent rejection seriously damaged his reputation within Hamas, says Zahar. "I have suffered a lot internally," he adds. "I am not ready to negotiate anymore."


http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...13,00.html

[Carsten Wiethoff]

http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestin...g-1.595265

There is an Israeli supermarket ad using the style of the CCTV images of the Dubai assassination. Calling this tasteless does not really hit the mark.
:puke:

[Ed Jewett]

Dubai Investigation Exposes Israeli Ops in USA

by Michael Gillespie / March 11th, 2010
An ongoing investigation by the Dubai Police force into the assassination of a high-level Hamas official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January has drawn back the curtains of secrecy and deception to reveal yet again the contours of Israel’s massive and ever-expanding espionage operations in the United States.
The murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana, a 275-room five-star luxury hotel, in Dubai on January 19 has been widely perceived to be a Mossad operation involving, by the most recent count, 27 suspects traveling on fraudulently obtained and falsified European or Australian passports. In late February and early March, the plot thickened suddenly and significantly when major US media outlet reports connected the crime and many of those involved in it to the USA and to corporations based in the USA and Israel and revealed that some of the suspected assassins, apparently members of a Mossad kidon team, had entered the USA after leaving Dubai.
ABC News reported on February 24 that Dubai police had identified 15 new suspects as part of a ring that killed Al Mabhouh.
“Fourteen of the suspects purportedly used credit cards from META Bank, a regional American bank, to pay for hotel rooms and travel arrangements. … Dubai police linked META Bank to a New York-based company called Payoneer, which provided prepaid MasterCard credit cards issued by META Bank. According to its Web site, Payoneer has a research and development center in Tel Aviv,” reported ABC.
The TV network report noted that some of the additional suspects played a central role in the crime while others were accused of “‘providing prior logistical support and preparations to facilitate,’ making a series of trips to Dubai in advance” of the assassination.
The New York Times reported on March 1 that, “At least two suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in a hotel here in January traveled to the United States afterward, according to a person familiar with the investigation.”
“One suspect traveling on a British passport arrived in the United States on Feb. 14; the other used an Irish passport and arrived on Jan. 21, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. He did not say where the men entered the country, and added that there was no known record of their leaving,” wrote Robert F. Worth in a story filed from Dubai.
Worth’s report noted that if the suspected assassins who entered the U.S. presented foreign passports, they would have been photographed and finger printed upon arrival.
The Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cummins filed a similar report from Dubai on the same day attributing the information to “people familiar with the situation” and “records shared between international investigators.” In many previous news reports from Dubai information about the investigation had been attributed to Dubai’s Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim.
Neither report explored the rather remarkable news that the suspect carrying a British passport in the name Roy Allan Cannon was confident enough to travel on the falsified document more than three weeks after the assassination and to present it upon arrival in the USA, where passport controls are generally assumed to be most stringent.
“At one time it was possible to produce false identity documents with little or no regard for what is referred to as backstopping as data bases at national points of entry were unsophisticated and were generally unlinked to any central sources of information. That has all changed in the past eight years. European and American passports in particular can all be verified from central data bases that include information that is also drawn from other public record sources,” wrote former CIA officer Philip Giraldi in a February 25 column for Antiwar.com.
On March 3, Al Jazeera TV reported that Tamim, “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the head of Mossad [Meir Degan].”
Tamim’s investigation, which has been described by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble as “thorough,” has seriously inconvenienced and embarrassed the Israeli government and its espionage organization.
The Money Trail
The Independent Monitor contacted MetaBank’s corporate headquarters in Storm Lake, IA to ask why an Iowa bank would provide credit cards to 14 suspected members of a death squad.
MetaBank’s Lisa Binder, Vice President for Investor Relations and Corporate Communications responded via telephone and e-mail with a statement saying, in part, “The Meta cards in question were issued in conjunction with a Meta Payment Systems program, not at a retail bank location. Meta Payment Systems, which has issued more than 150 million prepaid cards, markets its payroll cards through various Program Managers─in this case, Payoneer─to offer reputable US companies network branded payroll cards with which American companies can pay expatriates, employees and contractors of their company who live in the US and in foreign countries. The cards in question were ‘loaded’ by the companies using direct deposit for payroll, disbursements, and other compensation.”
The Independent Monitor attempted to contact Payoneer offices at 410 Park Avenue in New York City but found that the only phone answered at Payoneer headquarters was a customer support line for Payoneer’s Birthright Israel customers.
Birthright Israel provides first time educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. The program sends “thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people,” according to the organization’s website.
Funding for Birthright Israel is “provided by our partners: private philanthropists through The Birthright Israel Foundation; the people of Israel through the Government of Israel; and Jewish communities around the world (North American Jewish Federations, Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency for Israel). …
“Taglit-Birthright Israel requires that all participants pay their deposit through Payoneer. … If you lose your Payoneer card while in Israel, it can be immediately blocked and will be replaced with a new card within 24 hours. … You will not need to contact your bank back home or worry about making many calls. One call to our Customer Support center and you are all set,” says the www.birthright.payoneer.com website.
Payoneer’s Birthright customer support center declined to provide the Independent Monitor with contact information for Payoneer founder and CEO Yuval Tal or for Payoneer corporate communications/media relations personnel.
“Since the assassination, Tal has been shielded by a wall of public relations representatives and does not respond to media requests for comments. … Tal’s public relations representatives in New York have refused to comment on his past and relations with Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad,” wrote Abbas Al Lawati, a staff reporter for Gulf News.com on March 3.
“Tal is referred to by his associates in Israel as ‘an outspoken Israeli patriot’ despite having lived in New York for over ten years. In a 2006 Fox News interview about Israel’s summer war on Lebanon, Tal was presented as a ‘special ops commando’ on Fox and Friends, and stated that ‘this is a war Israel cannot (afford to) lose,’” wrote Al Lawati.
Payoneer’s website proclaims that the company is “a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider (MSP), and partner with MetaBank or Choice Bank Limited to deliver our services. Privately held, our funding partners include Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.”
The Independent Monitor found that all three of Payoneer’s funding partners are venture capital firms that have offices in or strong connections to Israel.
Charlie Federman, Managing Partner of Crossbar Capital, previously co-founded BRM Capital in 1999, headed its New York office, and served as a Managing Director of the Israel and New York based fund until 2007. BRM Group, headquartered in Herzliya was founded by Nir Barkat, mayor of occupied Jerusalem.
Carmel Ventures is also headquartered Herzliya. Greylock Partners, founded in 1965, “operates in a number of global centers of innovation, including Boston, China (Beijing), India (Bangalore), Israel (Herzliya) and Silicon Valley. … Current Greylock portfolio companies include Data Robotics, Digg, Facebook, Imperva, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin, Workday and ZipCar,” according to the firm’s website. Greylock’s investment activities in Israel were launched in 2002 by partner Moshe Mor, who “served six years in the Israeli Army as a Captain in the Military Intelligence branch.”
Tal almost certainly possess information that could be of value to U.S. law enforcement and counter-intelligence investigators, but whether their political masters, many of whom have been effectively co-opted by Israel, will allow U.S. investigators to pursue any sort of meaningful investigation is an open question. Thus far there has been little to indicate that U.S. officials are seriously interested in investigating the funding of travel expenses and hotel accommodations of suspected Israeli assassins through U.S. corporations, despite the reported entry of at least two of the suspects into the U.S. on fraudulent, falsified passports.
When the Independent Monitor contacted the Department of State (DoS) for comment about the news reports, a DoS press officer declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press offices. A DoJ press officer also declined to comment and referred questions to a DHS press officer who has not responded to an e-mail message sent on March 5.
The Sayanim Network
Any substantive U.S. investigation of the suspected Dubai killers’ connections to the USA would likely focus on members of the Mossad’s worldwide network of sayanim, diaspora Jews who provide a wide variety of services to the Israeli intelligence and special operations agency. In his books, By Way of Deception (1990) and The Other Side of Deception (1994), former Mossad field officer or katsa Victor Ostrovsky described the sayanim network.
“Sayanim─assistants─must be 100 percent Jewish,” wrote Ostrovsky in 1990.
The Mossad’s helpers, chosen because they are well placed, willing, and able to provide valuable assistance to Israeli agents, are businessmen, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, intelligence officers, politicians, government bureaucrats, university professors and administrators, media professionals, information technology specialists, any occupation, profession, or position in which a sayan might prove useful in support of Israeli espionage operations.
Though they do not live in Israel, their first loyalty is to Israel. They do whatever Mossad officials, field officers, or assassins ask of them in behalf of Israel against the enemies of Israel or those who are seen as opposed to Israeli policies.
“Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this,” wrote Ostrovsky.
“The one problem with the [sayanim] system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: ‘So what’s the worst that could happen to those Jews? They’d all come to Israel? Great,’” wrote Ostrovsky.
“A sayan will rent a car or pass money to a kidon with no questions asked,” said Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (1999) in a report by Alun Palmer of the Mirror (UK) on February 18. Thomas, who has estimated that there are at least 20,000 sayanim in the US and Great Britain, writes that all Mossad assassinations are authorized by the office of the prime minister of Israel.
The illegal use of U.S. banks and credit card companies to fund the movements and other expenses of a Mossad death squad in the Middle East indicates an alarming expansion of Israeli espionage operations on US soil and reveals to an unprecedented extent the foreign intelligence agency’s penetration of major U.S. financial institutions, developments that limn the breadth, depth, and success of the Mossad’s desperate efforts to expand and consolidate Israel’s malignant influence over the Washington foreign policy establishment and sway within a broad range of U.S. institutions, despite growing popular opposition to Israel’s the brutal and patently illegal occupation of Palestine and the punishing siege of Gaza.
The Myth, Cult, and Culture of Redemptive Violence
The supposed clash of civilizations, the conflict between the putatively modern Western Judeo-Christian tradition and radical Islam, the Bush administration’s Global War on Terrorism later rebranded by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operations, and the suppurating wound that is Israel’s long-running illegal occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine are evidence of a retrograde social and political dynamic that now threatens the continued progress and future of human civilization. That dynamic is epitomized by the myth, cult, and culture of redemptive violence.
“The myth of redemptive violence defends the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace. It is one of the oldest stories in the world. It misappropriates the language, symbols and scriptures of Christianity. Its God is the tribal God worshipped as an idol. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not unconditional love of enemies but their elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous. And it is immensely popular,” writes Dr. Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.
Wink might have added that while Christian scripture is tainted by the myth of redemptive violence, the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures, attached at the spine of the Holy Bible to the New Testament, are Christianity’s primary source of the pernicious mythology of redemptive violence. Only about 10 percent of the New Testament is devoted to Jesus’ teachings about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the happiness of peacemakers, and forgiveness and mercy as moral and spiritual imperatives.
True religion opposes violence as a technique of social evolution, but many Christians have been and are today all too willing and ready to embrace Hebrew Old Testament teachings that glorify war and the wholesale slaughter of innocents and ascribe such acts to the commands of a wrathful God that is both vengeful and violent. The popularity of the myth of redemptive violence in the West and the attitudes and policies it engenders in political and economic spheres of activity severely undercuts the supposed moral superiority of Western modernity and culture in relation to other traditions and cultures.
U.S. leaders often attempt to justify their wars with self-serving declarations that they are fighting for peace.
“One day the Iraqi people will understand that we came in peace,” averred Secretary of State Colin Powell in March 2003 as U.S. troops advanced on Baghdad after a devastating and enormously destructive “Shock and Awe” air assault on the city.
If the status of a civilization can be accurately gauged by the fairness of its courts and the integrity of its judges, resort by national leaders to extra-judicial killings conducted by intelligence agency death squads is emblematic of the West’s glorification of war and ruinous reversion to militarism─autocratic, cruel, and savage. Rigidly ultranationalistic Israel, more an army and an espionage agency with a country than a country with an army and an espionage agency, clearly intends to be the West’s model and instructor in this regard.
A feature article by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman published in the Washington Post on March 4 quoted Jonna Mendez, who worked for the CIA for 27 years and became the agency’s chief of disguise. Mendez “believes the Dubai perpetrators took the fallout into account, all of it: the TV footage, the blown aliases and the head shots. The agents, she said, clearly knew they were under surveillance─they had simply decided it was unavoidable and a price worth paying.
“‘You can be sure they knew they were being surveilled. Likewise, they would assume that the documents they were using would be made available after the fact,’ said Mendez. ‘What does this mean? It means it didn’t matter. The faces and the documents that were captured by the cameras will probably never be seen again.’
“The fact that the perpetrators had to take the identities of real people rather than simply invent false identities is a symptom of the new world facing modern-day spies, one of databases and traceable passport information, she said.
“The real agents likely don’t resemble the faces in the photos, she said … And if they do, plastic surgery, dental implants and hair grafts can ensure they are unrecognizable afterward.
“‘Steal the identity, disguise the participants, be ready on the other side with another set of identities and documents, and embrace and conceal the protagonists on their return,’ she said.
“‘With that goal in mind this may, in fact, be the operation of the future,’” wrote Friedman.
Thinking Americans have an increasingly clear choice.
They can join the cult of redemptive violence, kneel before a Zionist tribal God of vengeance, and watch their country and its culture revert to the law of nature as militarism runs amok and Israeli spies and assassins, protected by corrupt and co-opted political leaders, roam America at will.
Or they can embrace and actively support not the savagery of assassins but the rule of law. They can cultivate the wisdom, insight, and foresight that are indispensable to the endurance of nations. They can persevere in their efforts to elect honest, wise, and progressive leaders. And they can continue to strive to live up and into the noblest ideals of their religions.


Michael Gillespie, in addition to his regular freelance work for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is also a contributing editor and the Des Moines, IA correspondent for The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans, published by Sami Mashney in Anaheim, CA. Read other articles by Michael, or visit Michael's website.


This article was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 9:00am and is filed under Culture, Espionage, Israel/Palestine, Religion, Zionism.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/dubai-...ps-in-usa/

[Bill Kelly]

I started a file on this case as soon as I heard about it.

Please note the differences in days between when the assassination happened and when we first heard about it. - Weeks?

Also note how, like 9/11, we get to learn all of the false identities, the names of people whose identities were stolen, but the names of the real operators are still unknown.

Except for one of the women, right - she's the sister of a British PM?

And now they have photos, mug shots and apparently DNA of more than 20 in the hit team, but still no names.

Where did they get the DNA?

This use of more than 20 people in such an operation that could have been accomplished by one really good assassin - ala the Jackal, or the official Oswald, makes me think of the Big Con - the use of the Sting style confidence game in covert operations.

It is also a good example of the application of the policy of plausible deniability by a state intelligence apartus (See: James Douglas 2009 Dallas COPA talk), which seems to be still working despite the unraveling of the details of the operation.

There seems to be a general reluctance of most federal government police to not place these suspects - of whom we only have photos and fake names for - on wanted lists, or even bother to look for them, other than to investigate the identity theft and false passports.

The US is apparently not looking for the two suspects who entered the USA and are apparently still among us.

It seems like these governments don't want to investigate this further, don't want to unravel the operaton any further, and would like to accept the idea that the guy had it coming to him.

Just like Dealey Plaza.

Bill Kelly

[David Guyatt]

A nice piece of work. I wondered if anyone would follow up on the credit card angle. I suspect Tal is a known and accepted foreign agent operating in the US.

[Magda Hassan]

I started a file on this case as soon as I heard about it.

Please note the differences in days between when the assassination happened and when we first heard about it. - Weeks?

Also note how, like 9/11, we get to learn all of the false identities, the names of people whose identities were stolen, but the names of the real operators are still unknown.

Except for one of the women, right - she's the sister of a British PM?

And now they have photos, mug shots and apparently DNA of more than 20 in the hit team, but still no names.

Where did they get the DNA?

This use of more than 20 people in such an operation that could have been accomplished by one really good assassin - ala the Jackal, or the official Oswald, makes me think of the Big Con - the use of the Sting style confidence game in covert operations.

It is also a good example of the application of the policy of plausible deniability by a state intelligence apartus (See: James Douglas 2009 Dallas COPA talk), which seems to be still working despite the unraveling of the details of the operation.

There seems to be a general reluctance of most federal government police to not place these suspects - of whom we only have photos and fake names for - on wanted lists, or even bother to look for them, other than to investigate the identity theft and false passports.

The US is apparently not looking for the two suspects who entered the USA and are apparently still among us.

It seems like these governments don't want to investigate this further, don't want to unravel the operaton any further, and would like to accept the idea that the guy had it coming to him.

Just like Dealey Plaza.

Bill Kelly

As far as I can see Dubai is the only country which has gone to Interpol about this matter. None of the other countries whose passports were used in an international high profile and political murder are using Interpol to seek arrest warrants on any of the people in the photographs. Israel certainly has done nothing to determine why their residents and citizen's identities are being abused by others in a criminal action which implicates them. There has been huffing and puffing for the microphones and then nothing. I wonder what, if anything Biden is saying about this on his visit there?

[Peter Lemkin]

If they did their investigation right, getting the DNA would be very easy. They had known rooms and had been to and touched known objects - you only need a hair or razor blade or fork or glass or similar. Matching them would be a bit more work - but a DNA match is a positive match, unless the person has an identical twin.

As to certain countries looking the 'other way', yes JUST like Dallas. Same thinking behind it, IMO.....'enemies' of those in power are not missed if killed - no matter HOW the killing is carried out by those much further down the chain...ie. the mechanics and those that plan what the mechanics do...then hide them.

The morality of the present would have much been served by clearing up Dallas - but that is the main reason they didn't want us to know or tell the People......

[Austin Kelley]

http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan03122010.html

A Dangerous Prelude?

Dubai: Debacle or Dangerous Prelude?

By Conn Hallinan

At first glance, the recent assassination of a mid-level Hamas operative in Dubai by the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad, was a comedy of errors, as if the Three Stooges has suddenly been put in charge of one of the fabled agency’s hit squads: Easily traced passports and credit cards were used; team members put on fake mustaches and beards, sometimes so clumsily they could clearly be identified; and a female agent slipped on a disguising wig, only to walk back and forth in front of a surveillance camera for half an hour.

But was it really just a case of ineptitude and arrogance run wild or, as the Financial Times—not a publication given to wild-eyed conspiracy theories—editorialized, “part of a much bigger operation, or quite likely…about Dubai itself, and about Iran, which Israel sees as its greatest threat?”

There are certainly grounds for the Three Stooges theory. While Mossad has a reputation for lethal efficiency, in fact, its track record is extremely spotted. It has carried out a series of successful assassinations, including Imad Mughniyeh, a founder of Hamas, Syrian General Mohammad Suleiman, and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members following the 1972 killing of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.

But most of the PLO members it offed in the aftermath of Munich were diplomats working openly in Europe. Knocking them off, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery points out, was like shooting “ducks in a gallery.” The same Mossad assassins also killed the wrong man in Norway. And the agency famously botched the assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Jordan, permanently damaging its relationship with its closest friend in the Arab world.

Like the CIA, Mossad has also shown a streak of cluelessnes. It was completely surprised by the 1973 Yom Kipper war, the first and second intifadas, the 1979 Iranian revolution, and the Hamas electoral victory in the Gaza Strip. In short, like most intelligence organizations, its reputation rests largely on the myths the agency spins in its press releases.

There was certainly a hefty quantity of arrogance about the whole Dubai operation. For instance, the Israelis must have been aware that Dubai has lots of surveillance cameras. It was just such cameras that nailed the murderer of Lebanese movie star, Suzanne Tamim in 2008.

And yet Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman told Der Spiegel, “The big surprise lies in the ability of the Dubai police to have put together all of this material to assemble a single picture. That’s an extremely complicated undertaking.”

Another Israeli intelligence source told the New York Times, “The operative teams were very much aware of the CCTV in Dubai, but they have been astonished at the ability of the Dubai police to reconstruct and assemble all the images into one account.”

Even the hit itself was sloppy. The assassins apparently shocked the victim, injected him with a muscle relaxant, and suffocated him. They left behind high blood pressure pills to make it look like a heart attack, and then carefully slipped out, putting the chain back on the door. But the coroner spotted the injection mark and the whole scheme unraveled.
So was it just Mossad thinking that the Arabs were just too dumb to figure this all out, or were the Israelis indeed trying to send a message?

There are some arguments that support the latter theory.

First, the size of the team. As the Financial Times put it, “not so much a hit squad as a swarm.” It is hard to hide 27 people, nor is it easy to understand why the Israelis needed a hit team that big to knock off a single person who didn’t even rate a bodyguard.

Second, the passports were easily traceable to the individuals whose identities Mossad had hijacked.

Dubai is one of the countries in the Middle East that is friendly with Israel, but it is also an important outlet for Iran. Iranians funnel money and goods into and out of the country, and large numbers of Iranians live in Dubai. The Financial Times calls Dubai “an extra lung for a regime already withering under sanctions, with more to come.”

Well, maybe more sanctions to come, maybe not. And that may be part of the story.

Washington’s drive to impose further sanctions on Iran is not going well. Brazil, currently a UN Security Council member, just told the U.S. to take a hike on Iran sanctions, and it is very unlikely that China will agree to major sanctions as well. Even Russia, which has supported some sanctions, has made it clear that Moscow would not go along with the “crippling” variety.

And while it has received very little coverage in the U.S. media, Iranian human rights organizations and trade unions are deeply opposed to sanctions because they fear they will provide an excuse for the Ahmadinejad regime to crack down on the opposition under the guise of national unity. Unionists are particularly worried that the Teheran government will use sanctions as a screen behind which it can accelerate dismantling food and energy subsidies, and as a cover for its program to turn much of the economy over to the Revolutionary Guard.

Screens and covers are not. However, the monopoly of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Behind the smoke pumped out of Tel Aviv about how Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel, the Netanyahu government has accelerated its colonization of the West Bank. According to the Israeli Defense Ministry, 29 settlements on the West Bank are building more houses, in spite of the so-called “temporary freeze” on such building. Peace Now says the figure is 34 settlements. On the day that U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden touched down in Israel, the Netanyahu government announced it was constructing 1600 more homes in disputed East Jerusalem.

Besides the building blitz, the Tel Aviv government also announced that two key places on the West Bank—the cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb/Ibrahimi Mosque—were “heritage sites” and they, along with the entire Jordan Valley, would remain part of Israel. The moves, say U.S./Middle East Project President Henry Siegman, have “left the prospects for a two-state solution dead in the water.”

So what was the message of Dubai?

Maybe nothing more than simple incompetence and arrogance. But maybe the Israelis want Iran and the U.S. to think Tel Aviv is a little out of control and quite capable of doing something really bonkers, like whacking Iranian nuclear power plants.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bombast about Iran aside, the Obama Administration doesn’t want to add yet another war to its portfolio, but any Israeli assault on Iran will put the U.S. on the spot.

The attack would have to cross U.S. controlled air space, and of course it would be carried out by U.S.-made fighter-bombers and U.S. bunker buster bombs. Since it would be without UN sanction—and thus a violation of international law—the U.S. would have to use its veto power in the Security Council to keep Israel from being branded an international outlaw. The U.S has exercised that veto on behalf of Israel 40 times in the past, but defending Israel in this case would take a major act of contortion on Washington’s part.

The fear of an Israeli attack was behind the recent visits to Israel by Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice-President Biden. On arriving in Jerusalem, Mullen told his hosts that an “attack on Iran would be a big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the untended consequences.”

Maybe Tel Aviv’s saber rattling is smoke and mirrors. Even the Israeli armed forces think an attack would not stop Iran if it were determined to construct a nuclear weapon. As retired Maj. Gen. Issac Ben-Israel, one of the planners of the 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, told UPI, if an attack does take place, “Israel will be denounced as a militant and aggressive state, the price of oil will soar, American and its allies in the Gulf are liable to be adversely affected---and worst of all, Iran will be perceived as the victim of Israeli aggression and will obtain international legitimization to renew the devastated nuclear project.”

Maybe the Israelis are looking for a quid pro quo: “We don’t attack Iran and make your life difficult. In turn, you keep your mouth shut about what we are doing on the West Bank, and maybe send us some new military toys.”

It is hard to sort out exactly what members of the Netanyahu government are thinking. The Prime Minister has thumbed his nose at the Obama Administration on the settlements, and his Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman has managed to threaten Syria, insult Turkey and snub a delegation of U.S. Congress members all within the last month. Israeli has never been as isolated internationally as it is today.

One is tempted to think that maybe the Three Stooges are in charge of the whole shebang, except that the outcome is unlikely to be comedic. A war in the Middle East is a real possibility, either with Iran or a rematch between Hezbollah and Israel. The consequences will be tragedy.

[Ed Jewett]

Nice article, Austin, and thanks for finding it and posting it. The "Three Stooges" angle resonates with me, not because I have any expertise on Mossad or others things Israeli -- far from it -- but I do know that the Mossad has been recruiting a lot recently. This runs in some parallel with the massive and explosive growth of 'intel' worlds here in the US, with the CIA recruiting on campuses again, with the incredible growth of the Homeland Security and fusion center 'movement', and the generalized decline in individual intelligence, competence and capability -- the dumbing down process -- as is evident in almost all of American culture. I think it has something to do with the quality of training and education; the Empire is so furiously trying to put out "product" that they can do little but make a copy of a copy of a copy. Whether it is the cashier at the convenience store, the typist handling the bottom-of-the- screen crawler entry on TV, the editors of news outlets, or the idiots who come up with underpants bombs, the quality of workmanship is in great decline. We are grateful when it applies to black ops and assassinations -- hey, we have the infamous potato-chip hijinks of the Embassy guards under private contract as an example too -- but it is, as the article suggests properly, not a laughing matter when we consider the powderkeg of the Mideast and Southwest Asia. Suddenly, competence matters... along with morality and a grounded awareness of the consequences.

[David Guyatt]

Good grief, Milliband might have grown a pair.

But of course, I'm being daft. Slap on the hand time as FO flexes its paunch to grovel favour with Obama.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar...t-passport

'Compelling evidence' Israel was behind misuse of UK passports in Hamas hit – David Miliband

Foreign secretary confirms Britain has demanded withdrawal of Israeli diplomat following 'intolerable' use of identity papers

Hélène Mulholland, Julian Borger and Mark Tran
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 March 2010 17.17 GMT

Britain is to expel an Israeli diplomat over the use of fake British passports during the killing of the Hamas militant by suspected Mossad agents.

David Miliband said today that there was "compelling evidence" that Israel was responsible for misuse of British passports as part of a plot to kill a prominent member of Hamas.

The foreign secretary confirmed that Britain had demanded the withdrawal of an Israeli diplomat following the "intolerable" use of 12 forged British passports by a hit squad that killed the founder of Hamas's military wing in Dubai.

Miliband attacked the "profound disregard" for UK sovereignty and said the apparent involvement of a friendly nation "added insult to injury".

The statement will be seen around the world as the first definitive allegation from a western government of Israeli responsibility for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel in January.

Today's developments follow an inquiry by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

Mliband said inquiries were still under way in other countries and that it would not be appropriate for "legal and other reasons" to release the Soca report in full.

But he said that, given the quality of the forgeries, it was "highly likely" that they were made by a state intelligence service.

"This, together with other enquiries, and the links to Israel established by Soca, [means] we have concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe that Israel was responsible for the misuse of British passports," Miliband told MPs in a statement this afternoon.

Miliband said the UK government took the matter extremely seriously and had written to the Israeli administration seeking assurances that such misuse would never happen again.

The misuse of UK passports not only presented a hazard to British nationals in the region but also represented a "profound disregard" for the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, the foreign secretary said.

"The fact that this was done by a country that is a friend with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK only adds insult to injury. No country or government could stand by in such a situation."

Miliband told MPs that the Soca report had been studied by the prime minister and was presented to the cabinet earlier today.

Soca had conducted an "extremely professional" investigation and all requests had been met by the Israeli authorities, he said.

The evidence showed beyond "any doubt" that none of the 12 British citizens involved were anything other than wholly innocent victims of identity theft, the foreign secretary added.

Biometric passports that would be considerably more difficult to counterfeit have now been issued to all but one of the British citizens, he added.

Miliband also said the Foreign Office's travel advice for Israel would be amended to highlight the risk of papers being cloned, and how that could be minimised.

A total of 12 British passports are alleged to have been forged. An initial six had the names of Michael Barney, James Clarke, Stephen Hodes, Jonathan Louis Graham, Paul John Keeley and Melvyn Mildiner.

Last month, Dubai identified the use of a further six fake British passports with the names of Mark Daniel Sklar, Roy Allan Cannon, Daniel Marc Schnur, Philip Carr, Stephen Keith Drake and Gabriella Barney. A Foreign Office spokesman said the government believed their passport details had been used fraudulently.

Other members of the hit squad travelled on fake Irish, French and Australian travel documents, Dubai police said. At least 15 of the suspected killers share names with Israeli citizens, fuelling suspicions that the Mossad was behind the hit. Interpol has published a wanted list of 27 people in connection with the killing.

Miliband stressed today "in the strongest possible terms" that the UK had no advance knowledge of the assassination and no involvement whatsoever in the killings.

The expelled official is not being accused of direct personal involvement, officials said earlier today. The unusual step is intended as a gesture to reflect British anger.

Al-Mabhouh, who established Hamas's military wing, was assassinated in his luxury hotel room in Dubai on 19 January by a team of killers wearing fake beards, wigs and other disguises.

Dubai officials said they were "99% certain" that Mossad agents were behind the murder, but Israel has refused to confirm or deny the link.

At the time Miliband branded the abuse of British passports "outrageous" and demanded that Tel Aviv cooperate fully with the UK's investigation.

Israel's ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, was summoned to the Foreign Office last month to discuss the situation, but he flatly denied there was any "additional information" to give.

In 1986, a Mossad agent left an Israeli embassy envelope containing eight forged British passports in a German telephone box. Israeli diplomats were only expelled a year later after a Palestinian working as an Israeli double agent was found with a cache of weapons in Hull. Margaret Thatcher also closed down the Mossad's London base.