Caught red- handed

25 February - 3 March 2010

Caught red- handed

Al-Ahram

Can the European countries involved really allow Israel to use their passports for state sponsored extrajudicial killing, asks Ayman El-Amir*

The Israeli government and its lobby in European countries and the United States are preparing to whitewash Israel over the Mossad crime of the assassination of Palestinian Hamas senior official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

With the support of its Western allies, Israel usually gets away with murder.

In this case, several factors are complicating the time- honoured practice of cover-up and complicity. The Dubai police's incontrovertible evidence of the entry and movement of the assassins, as documented by security cameras, is a factor the legendary Mossad did not count on, or did not care to cover. Identity theft culminating in the use of passports issued by four European countries to Israelis holding dual citizenship has proved to be more disturbing to Britain, France, Germany and Ireland. All four countries, with varying degrees of emphasis, have demanded Israel to furnish an explanation or carry out an investigation. Austria, where the Mossad agents met, planned and used communication equipment, promised to investigate. The Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which has approved the covert operation, or re-approved the decision it inherited to carry it out from its predecessor government of Ehud Olmert, is sorting its options. Unfortunately for Israel, this time, the manipulative charge of anti-Semitism is not an available option to silence its European critics.

Dubai is also keenly interested in getting to "the bottom of this case", to quote British Foreign Secretary David Milliband. It is incensed by being made to appear as a hub of personal or political assassinations, of appearing as a playground for foreign intelligence operatives, in addition to victim of smuggling and money laundering, a position previously reserved for Beirut. Its police chief, General Dahi Khalfan, said the assassination was by 99 per cent probability the work of Mossad and that he still had more undisclosed evidence, including the traceable credit cards used by the perpetrators. He raised more controversy by stating that the passports used by the 11 Israeli agents to enter Dubai and carry out the assassination were not forgeries, prompting speculation that they could have been legally issued by the four European countries to the Mossad agents at the request of Israel -- a more troubling implication of complicity. In this case, European rhetorical furore over the incident could only be part of the cover-up.

If the Mossad agents did not slip up when they left behind such irrefutable evidence it could mean one of two things: European complicity that assures Israel of only a mild reaction if the operation would produce a scandal, or that the murderous government of Netanyahu is putting its staunch Western allies to the test of tolerating its criminality. If it were complicity, it would give militant Palestinian organisations a blank cheque to retaliate against Israel, including acts of assassination on European soil. This could be a discomforting escalation for European countries. If it were unauthorised complicity by individual operatives in the intelligence services of the countries involved, redeeming government action would be needed to restore the credibility and political trustworthiness of these countries in the eyes of the world. It would require the four European countries named -- in addition to Austria -- to come clean.

For the duration of its existence Israel has conducted war operations against Palestinian civilians and activists that would qualify it as a terrorist state, not just a state sponsor of terrorism. By Western definition, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya were blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism. Libya later recanted and was forgiven. It had been bombed, isolated and subjected to punitive sanctions for doing exactly what Israel has been doing for decades. In its 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza, Israel killed more than six-fold of Palestinian civilians than Libyan intelligence agents killed in the Pan-Am passenger aircraft explosion over Lockerbie in 1988. Both incidents were state sponsored acts of terrorism, with the Israeli operation being a state executed act. Recently 54 members of the US House of Representatives called on President Barack Obama to end the Israeli siege on Gaza and allow the entry of essential supplies. And despite the Goldstone Report, Israel seems to be successfully dragging its criminal act of invasion into a labyrinth of legal arguments, denials and counter- attacks.

By this brazen act of assassination Israel is presenting its close Western allies, and its Arab peace partners, with a litmus test. For one year now, it has tested US President Obama's resolve with regards to the stalled Middle East peace process by refusing to stop settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. What it got from him was a squeamish expression of frustration with Israel, and the beleaguered Palestinians, which it can live with. It manages to hold its potential Western critics at bay under the Damocles Sword of anti-Semitism and the threat of unleashing the pro-Israeli Zionist lobby on them. These are not the moral standards that Western powers claim to view the world with. To rub it in the eyes of Arab governments and the Palestinians, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not deny the charge but said there was "no evidence" that Mossad was responsible for it. That is to say, Mossad could have carried out the assassination, but incriminating evidence is lacking.

Israel is a warrior state that has no respect for anything other than military power and aggression. It lives by the sword, not by the acclaimed Jewish tradition of humanism. After 62 years of its foundation, Israel behaves with the same mentality of the Stern and Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist organisations in its regional relations. In international relations it employs blackmail and the power of its main ally, the US. When the leaders of Western democracies bend to the same low moral standards of Israel, and when its autocratic Arab partners shy away from comment, then Iranian regional policies, including those of confronting Israeli regional threats, make a great deal of sense. Israel and its leaders have demonstrated innumerable times that it is a rogue state bent on hegemony through destruction and intimidation. It has to be checked, but its biggest supporter, the US, is unable or unwilling to do that. Eventually, Iran could prove to be the most effective antidote to Israeli violence, aggression and threat to the region.

For Arab regimes that seek to appease Israel and overlook its murderous actions in order to curry favour with the US, they are hanging on to a losing strategy. It could only lead to encouraging Israel, weakening their legitimacy, and alienating the people they rule. Appeasement of Israeli policies could only destabilise the region and hurt Western interests. With Israel wantonly practising political assassination and military aggression in the region, and US-protected Arab regimes too timid to confront it, the onus is on the European countries whose legal integrity was shattered, willingly or unwillingly, to defend their interests and the principles for which they stand. Israeli officials believe that the initial sense of outrage expressed by European leaders will end up as a storm in a teacup. However, to turn a blind eye to the Netanyahu's government breach of European sovereignty would only confirm speculation of complicity.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/987/op151.htm