Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "mossad"
Espionage is a dirty business
You’d think there was something wrong with spying.People pay rather a lot of money to watch Daniel Craig dispose of villains in the bloodiest fashion. They nod in approval when M pushes 007’s perfect false passport across the desk. Yet everyone seems to be peeved about what in all likelihood is a Mossad hit against a Hamas operative in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.
Oh, that’s right, because the Hamas guy – meanies though Hamas might be – was a real human being who’s now dead, after all.
No, wait, that isn’t it. Western governments don’t really care about dead Arabs. If they did, they wouldn’t have sent Tony Blair to be the Middle East peace-process point man for the Quartet (the UN, the US, the EU and Russia), even though it ought to be perfectly clear that the only person disliked more in the Arab world than the stammering King of Cool Britannia is the future head librarian of the Presidential Library in Crawford, Texas. (Why so unpopular? Started a war that killed a lot of Iraqis, that’s why. Arabs do care about dead Arabs…sometimes.) So it isn’t the dead guy that’s behind the international fuss.
Ah, that’s right. These spies used our passports. Of the 11 assassins identified by Dubai’s police chief this week, all were carrying British, Irish, German or French passports. Three of the British passports carried the near-perfectly correct details of three Brits who’ve also taken up Israeli citizenship. Three others included names similar to European-Israeli citizens, though other details were incorrect.
To a crime novelist, the passport thing seems pretty tame. I suspect that, actually, the Euro pols and dips would like to lambaste Israel for the hit itself. They can’t quite bring themselves to do it, because, after all, Islamic extremism is the West’s current Enemy Number One. And whatever you think of Hamas, they’re into Islam and they’re pretty extreme. So the passport shenanigans get to be the focus of Euro ire.
I can understand why European governments will feel the need to throw a diplomatic hissy fit. But they’re wasting their time on the Israelis. In Israel you can throw a real, full-on hissy fit in public at some outrageous slight, and your Israeli target will simply go blank-faced and turn away, as though you’re the one who’s gone too far. The diplomatic version is laughably unsuited to the Middle East.
In other words, diplomacy in this region is pointless. You want someone to get a message, you kill.
If that sounds like the world of crime fiction, then that’s why this neighborhood is so well-suited to the genre. That’s why my Palestinian crime novels are a better way to understand the reality of this place than the international pages of your newspaper (which, you can be sure, will be running stories in which diplomatic protests by Whitehall and the Quai d’Orsay are taken seriously, rather than being treated as the piffling waste of time that they truly are.) Don’t take them seriously. Get yourself a novel instead.
(I posted this on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog).
Palestinian sex-for-favors scandal
Was Israeli intelligence really behind the video showing an Abbas aide soliciting sex? (I posted this on Global Post.)
Devotees of Jamaican reggae singer Shaggy will already be familiar with the strategy of a Palestinian official caught with his pants down — to tell the truth, with his pants entirely off — in a sex scandal last week.
On his 2001 hit disc “Hot Shot,” Shaggy tells a friend caught in flagrante delicto to “Say it wasn’t me” when his girlfriend discovers him naked on the bathroom floor with another woman. That’s just what the Palestinian leadership is doing on behalf of Rafik Husseini, bureau chief to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Husseini was recorded on a hidden video camera stripping naked and attempting to persuade a Palestinian woman to get into bed with him (though one may assume the bathroom floor would’ve done just as well for him.) She had, as far as he knew, come to him needing a job in his office. In fact, the assignation was a sting.
But a sting by whom?
Like everything else in the world of the Palestinian Shaggies, by Israel of course. Except that it most likely wasn’t. That’s just the automatic reaction of Palestinian leaders — like the leadership of much of the Arab world — when they want to discredit someone.
In fact, the sting was set up by Fahmi Shabaneh, head of a Palestinian intelligence unit investigating corruption.
The video that Shabaneh gave to Israeli television shows Husseini disrobing and getting into bed. He speaks to a woman who isn’t seen in the shot: “Do I turn off the light or do you?"
The clip resulted in Husseini’s suspension for soliciting sex in return for favors. His boss, President Abbas, announced a commission to investigate allegations that this wasn’t the first time Husseini used his position to coerce sex.
Husseini’s defense has been to argue in a statement that he’s being targeted by unnamed organizations. He doesn’t mention Israel, but other Palestinian leaders and the Maan news agency have directly accused Israel of being behind the video. Israel’s intention, the argument goes, is to embarrass Husseini’s boss, because Abbas refuses to return to peace negotiations until Israel truly does halt construction in its West Bank settlements.
Undoubtedly Israel isn’t shy of dirty tricks. The government of Dubai this week released details of the team of assassins who killed a Hamas operative there Jan. 20 in his hotel room. The European passports the assassins carried were, in some cases, in the name of current British-Israeli citizens (who all deny involvement and whose faces don’t match the photos released by Dubai).
The track record of Israel’s foreign intelligence organization, the Mossad, would suggest that this was, indeed, an Israeli operation. So does the response of respected intelligence columnists in the Israeli press, whose response to the international outrage about the falsified passports could be summed up as, “So what? We got away with it — not that we’re saying it was us.”
There might possibly be some hidden level of Israeli involvement in Shabaneh’s case. But anyone with knowledge of recent Palestinian politics will understand that the Ramallah leadership has never needed Israeli help when it comes to corruption or infighting.
Shabaneh has been held for some months by Israel for operating as a member of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service while a resident of Jerusalem, which is under Israeli control. The heart of Husseini’s defense is that, while in custody, Shabaneh agreed to give the Israelis dirt that would discredit Abbas’ office.
That might fly if the Israelis had set Shabaneh to entrap Husseini. But Shabaneh was acting under the orders of his boss in General Intelligence, Tawfik Tirawi. And Shabaneh says he showed the incriminating video to Abbas himself a year ago, before his own detention, and the Palestinian president refused to take action against Husseini.
Palestinian politics is forgiving of those discovered to be corrupt, because of the Shaggy defense (“No, that was an Israeli agent on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t me.”) Husseini’s hope is that discrediting Shabaneh will rescue him. But he’ll probably have more trouble than the Mossad getting away with this particular piece of wickedness.
Devotees of Jamaican reggae singer Shaggy will already be familiar with the strategy of a Palestinian official caught with his pants down — to tell the truth, with his pants entirely off — in a sex scandal last week.
On his 2001 hit disc “Hot Shot,” Shaggy tells a friend caught in flagrante delicto to “Say it wasn’t me” when his girlfriend discovers him naked on the bathroom floor with another woman. That’s just what the Palestinian leadership is doing on behalf of Rafik Husseini, bureau chief to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Husseini was recorded on a hidden video camera stripping naked and attempting to persuade a Palestinian woman to get into bed with him (though one may assume the bathroom floor would’ve done just as well for him.) She had, as far as he knew, come to him needing a job in his office. In fact, the assignation was a sting.
But a sting by whom?
Like everything else in the world of the Palestinian Shaggies, by Israel of course. Except that it most likely wasn’t. That’s just the automatic reaction of Palestinian leaders — like the leadership of much of the Arab world — when they want to discredit someone.
In fact, the sting was set up by Fahmi Shabaneh, head of a Palestinian intelligence unit investigating corruption.
The video that Shabaneh gave to Israeli television shows Husseini disrobing and getting into bed. He speaks to a woman who isn’t seen in the shot: “Do I turn off the light or do you?"
The clip resulted in Husseini’s suspension for soliciting sex in return for favors. His boss, President Abbas, announced a commission to investigate allegations that this wasn’t the first time Husseini used his position to coerce sex.
Husseini’s defense has been to argue in a statement that he’s being targeted by unnamed organizations. He doesn’t mention Israel, but other Palestinian leaders and the Maan news agency have directly accused Israel of being behind the video. Israel’s intention, the argument goes, is to embarrass Husseini’s boss, because Abbas refuses to return to peace negotiations until Israel truly does halt construction in its West Bank settlements.
Undoubtedly Israel isn’t shy of dirty tricks. The government of Dubai this week released details of the team of assassins who killed a Hamas operative there Jan. 20 in his hotel room. The European passports the assassins carried were, in some cases, in the name of current British-Israeli citizens (who all deny involvement and whose faces don’t match the photos released by Dubai).
The track record of Israel’s foreign intelligence organization, the Mossad, would suggest that this was, indeed, an Israeli operation. So does the response of respected intelligence columnists in the Israeli press, whose response to the international outrage about the falsified passports could be summed up as, “So what? We got away with it — not that we’re saying it was us.”
There might possibly be some hidden level of Israeli involvement in Shabaneh’s case. But anyone with knowledge of recent Palestinian politics will understand that the Ramallah leadership has never needed Israeli help when it comes to corruption or infighting.
Shabaneh has been held for some months by Israel for operating as a member of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service while a resident of Jerusalem, which is under Israeli control. The heart of Husseini’s defense is that, while in custody, Shabaneh agreed to give the Israelis dirt that would discredit Abbas’ office.
That might fly if the Israelis had set Shabaneh to entrap Husseini. But Shabaneh was acting under the orders of his boss in General Intelligence, Tawfik Tirawi. And Shabaneh says he showed the incriminating video to Abbas himself a year ago, before his own detention, and the Palestinian president refused to take action against Husseini.
Palestinian politics is forgiving of those discovered to be corrupt, because of the Shaggy defense (“No, that was an Israeli agent on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t me.”) Husseini’s hope is that discrediting Shabaneh will rescue him. But he’ll probably have more trouble than the Mossad getting away with this particular piece of wickedness.
Secret Mossad Hit List Revealed
My partner at new alternative news venture DeltaFourth Matthew Kalman wrote on The Times of Israel about our ebook
The Murder of Yasser Arafat
, in which we show that a senior Palestinian from the leader’s inner circle poisoned him. One of The Times’ other columnists responded with a piece in which he said Arafat was offed by the Israeli Mossad.The Israelis may – or may not – have provided the polonium used to wax Arafat. But they didn’t put it in his tea. That, we discovered, was left to one of his close advisers.
Still the Mossad is thought of as pretty much having a finger in every nasty pie, by everyone from Palestinian coffee vendors to British newspapermen to thriller writers the world over. So here it can be revealed for the first time, the tally of secret Mossad hits:
The Mossad killed Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
The Mossad killed Michael Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Roger Rabbit. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
The Mossad killed Che Guevara, JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald and Reinhard Heydrich. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
It assassinated Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and King Xerxes I of Persia. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
The Mossad killed Meir Kahane, Aldo Moro, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Vlad Dracula. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
It joined forces with video to kill the Radio Star. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
The Mossad killed Snorri Sturluson, Lord Mountbatten, and Vlad Dracula again, this time for good with a silver bullet. But it didn’t kill Yasser Arafat.
It killed Olof Palme, Jill Dando, and Dick Cheney (though having used its silver bullet on Dracula that one didn’t stick.) But it didn’t kill Arafat.
The Mossad killed Thomas a Beckett, Simon Bocanegra, and Old Hamlet. But it didn’t…
There are more, but they're far too dangerous to name. Naturally DeltaFourth will be delighted to hear if there are others you think we’ve missed.
New Mideast thriller parallels mad reality
Dan Williams blows the lid off the Middle East with his new thriller STRIP MINE
Dan Williams is a leading foreign correspondent covering the Middle East. He also has a profound background in fiction writing which he lets rip in his new novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller. What's it about? Check this out for a fine example of what in the business is called a logline:
"A Mossad spy. A Hamas detective. An unthinkable alliance, to thwart an unthinkable crime."
Try telling me you don't want to read that.
Here Dan writes about how he got the idea for his thriller.
In May 2002 I was among foreign journalists staking out Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where a band of Palestinian gunmen were holed up, surrounded by the Israeli military. The siege became almost routine.
Then, something extraordinary happened: A dozen foreign activists dashed across the plaza and right into the church, eluding Israeli troops who had - presumably - sealed off the area long before.
It was one of those double-take moments with which Middle East geopolitics bristles. One of my colleagues turned to me and quipped about the activists: "I bet they're Israeli spies or something, sent in to finish off the resistance."
They weren't, of course, but the idea stayed with me as a kind of parallel perception of what might have happened. And it evolved into a pivotal scene for my novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller .
Seasoned journalists, returning from the field, speak of "emptying their notebooks" onto the page for fresh, first-hand reportage. Perhaps the fiction-writing version of that involves emptying out your imagination - all those shelved conspiracy theories, fancied snippets of conversation, and backstories applied to actual people who, with just a little extra color and contrivance, make great characters.
I worried, for a while, about whether writing the novel necessitated a strict right brain/left brain separation from my journalism - say, by fictionalizing the names and locations of security agencies in Israel or Gaza. I eventually relaxed, realizing that real events in the region were such an unpredictable jumble that they might end up hewing, by sheer happenstance, to my plot.
That happened, arguably, in regards to the theme of Hamas and Israel finding themselves equally challenged by radical Salafist Muslims, or of the Jewish state feeling lethally penned in by sectarian bedlam on its borders.
But things may eventually improve, in which case I hope the book will serve as a snapshot for the Israeli-Palestinian mood at a tumultuous time.
Related articles across the web
Gaza left out of Mideast peace talks
Kerry, Abbas to Discuss Mideast Peace in Paris
Dan Williams is a leading foreign correspondent covering the Middle East. He also has a profound background in fiction writing which he lets rip in his new novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller. What's it about? Check this out for a fine example of what in the business is called a logline:
"A Mossad spy. A Hamas detective. An unthinkable alliance, to thwart an unthinkable crime."
Try telling me you don't want to read that.
Here Dan writes about how he got the idea for his thriller.
In May 2002 I was among foreign journalists staking out Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where a band of Palestinian gunmen were holed up, surrounded by the Israeli military. The siege became almost routine.
Then, something extraordinary happened: A dozen foreign activists dashed across the plaza and right into the church, eluding Israeli troops who had - presumably - sealed off the area long before.
It was one of those double-take moments with which Middle East geopolitics bristles. One of my colleagues turned to me and quipped about the activists: "I bet they're Israeli spies or something, sent in to finish off the resistance."
They weren't, of course, but the idea stayed with me as a kind of parallel perception of what might have happened. And it evolved into a pivotal scene for my novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller .
Seasoned journalists, returning from the field, speak of "emptying their notebooks" onto the page for fresh, first-hand reportage. Perhaps the fiction-writing version of that involves emptying out your imagination - all those shelved conspiracy theories, fancied snippets of conversation, and backstories applied to actual people who, with just a little extra color and contrivance, make great characters.
I worried, for a while, about whether writing the novel necessitated a strict right brain/left brain separation from my journalism - say, by fictionalizing the names and locations of security agencies in Israel or Gaza. I eventually relaxed, realizing that real events in the region were such an unpredictable jumble that they might end up hewing, by sheer happenstance, to my plot.
That happened, arguably, in regards to the theme of Hamas and Israel finding themselves equally challenged by radical Salafist Muslims, or of the Jewish state feeling lethally penned in by sectarian bedlam on its borders.
But things may eventually improve, in which case I hope the book will serve as a snapshot for the Israeli-Palestinian mood at a tumultuous time.
Related articles across the web
Gaza left out of Mideast peace talks Kerry, Abbas to Discuss Mideast Peace in Paris 
