As Israel launches a public relations campaign to try and improve its damaged international reputation, its own spy agency Mossad is at the centre of a diplomatic row following a high profile assassination of an enemy of Israel in a Dubai hotel
Oops, looks like Mossad has done it again… and this time it is more than the New Zealand Government on the Israeli spy agency’s bumbling tail.
Top Israeli politician Tzipi Livni [corrected] has praised the killing, caring not whether it took place in
As a former CIA field officer Robert Baer told the Wall Street Journal, that the Mabhouh assassination had “all the hallmarks of an Israeli hit…” and from all accounts the number of stolen passports involved has ballooned to the high twenties. He says such a big team signals a hit that was carried out “according to the book”. All except an outdated knowledge of the new world of technology – the cameras and international financial links and such which have produced not only a trail of evidence but pictures!
But this tale of assassination, politics, spies and the use of passports from countries Israel is supposedly friends with has huge implications for Israel’s battered international image, and it has serendipitously coincided with a massive public relations exercise to turn around that bad image… but more on that a little later.
Governments take very seriously the sovereignty of passports they issue to their own citizens, which of course remain official government property even though we are allowed to take them home.
Add to the outrage expressed from
Now you’d need to be from another planet – one where the sun always shines and fairy dust is sprinkled with largess – to believe that various governments from around this world are not involved in less than savory actions. Think Rainbow Warrior.
Targeted killings are not however considered rational reactions – at least not in a world that has any moral compass. 'Live by the sword, die by the sword' is not a justification for assassination. Otherwise think of the number of officials who sanction unnecessary war and the like who could be equally subjected to such extra-judicial actions. Hit squads will not solve any of the issues that plague the
For Israel – with its long list of known targeted assassinations and attempts, and retributive killings from Golda Meir’s ‘Wrath of God’ operation on – there’s still no peace, only more moral confusion.
Amidst all the coverage indicating Mossad’s fingerprints would deliver a C.S.I. team a dream run in solving the Hamas killing whodunnit, was the revelation that Israelis who travel are being asked by their government to tell the world Israel is a modern, sophisticated, peace loving nation. The official government website shows foreign media portraying Israelis as lacking in the development department – riding camels for transport, cooking outdoors for lack of kitchens, and of course living with constant explosions. The videos then correct such “myths”.
The campaign doesn’t deal with the probable reasons for Israel’s bad rap – for starters thumbing its nose at UN resolutions and the rules governing the ownership of nuclear weapons, waging a one sided war in Gaza, continuing occupation of Palestinian lands, annexing Jerusalem holy sites as important to Muslims as to Jews, and building a wall that makes life hell for many Palestinians.
The government’s own surveys show 91% of Israelis believe their image abroad is bad. What ever was going through its head when it decided to turn that around by taking the very things the Palestinians have been subjected to – lack of modern transport, lack of building facilities, lack of electricity and water, and being victims of war – and elevating Israel by laughing at any suggestion that is the way of life for Israelis?
At the same time as the assassination story broke, the elite of the Israeli diaspora represented through the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity published full page adverts in international papers calling on world Presidents and Prime Ministers to end the “outrage” in Iran.
Ah excuse me, while the world is indeed outraged by the crackdown from the Mullahs on their own people, so too is it outraged by the plight of the Palestinians.
It seems a tad disingenuous that this foundation for humanity is concentrating on the “brave people of Iran” who are being subjected to “human rights violations”, thousands of the “regime’s political adversaries are being arrested, imprisoned…”, “the military police continue to fire indiscriminately on unarmed, peaceful demonstrations” when many of the brave people of Palestine are being subjected to human rights violations, being imprisoned in Israeli jails for political beliefs, being fired at with white phosphorus under the guise of war – some armed, many armed with rocks and even more not armed at all? Should not the outrage in the occupied territories be addressed by such an august body?
What Israel’s advertising gurus may wish to contemplate is that painting a rosy veneer over the current crisis by having happy travelers embark with a toolbox of tips to quash criticism will not turn around its negative statistics. What they are missing is that it is not
It is the government’s policies, a coterie of extremes who don’t seem to want peace, and a sheer inability to acknowledge it is a massive part of the problem in the (lack of a) peace process. It is also the government’s perfected instinct to lash out at anyone who questions it, labeling them anti-Israel or anti-Semite, and should people speak out in support Palestinian rights as writer Naomi Klein and Canadian filmmaker John Greyson did recently, they are attacked for trying to de-legitimise Israel.
If it is found that Mossad was indeed involved in the assassination of one of its Palestinian political rivals, Israel will have some more high level answering to do not only to those it has promised it is serious about making peace with the Palestinians, but also to ‘friendly’ countries whose trust and sovereignty it has abused.