Mossad's foreign operations have often embarrassed Israel

[Scurrilous]

Intelligence service has caused diplomatic rows with agents using other nations' passports for espionage and assassinations

<snip>

"If the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month is confirmed as a Mossad operation, it will not be the first time that Israeli agents have used or tried to obtain foreign passports.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 49, was found dead in his room at the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel last month. Within days, Hamas officials claimed he had been murdered as part of a secret operation by Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service.

Dubai police said yesterday they were looking for 11 suspects in the killing, each carrying European passports: six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from France and Germany. Dubai's police chief suggested the assassination was a foreign intelligence operation, although he stopped short of blaming Israel.

Mossad agents have been caught with foreign passports before, triggering diplomatic rows. In 1997, two Mossad agents using forged Canadian passports were arrested in Amman after trying to assassinate Khalid Meshal, a Hamas official who is now the movement's leader, by spraying poison into his ear."

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[Don Caballero]

1. I just read a great book called Kill Khalid about the botched assassination attempt

of Meshal. Also Gideon's Spies is a good read about Mossad.

[Scurrilous]

2. New Hints of Skulduggery in Hamas Killing

<snip>

"The murder was straight out of a cheap spy thriller. A team of at least 11 professional assassins, some wearing wigs and fake beards, tracked a senior Hamas official to his Dubai hotel in January and killed him with cold precision, fleeing the country afterwards on European passports, the Dubai police say.

But even as the Dubai authorities called for an international manhunt Tuesday, questions emerged about the identities of the suspects, deepening the mystery around the killing.

British and Irish officials said the suspected killers’ passports — which were unveiled at a news conference Monday by the Dubai police along with their photographs and surveillance video footage — appeared to be fake, and in at least three cases appear to have been stolen from British citizens living in Israel.

“We believe that the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation,” the Foreign Office in London said in a statement. Six of the 11 suspects identified by the Dubai police Monday are British and three are Irish. In Dublin, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it had been “unable to find any record of Irish passports having been issued with details corresponding to those published in Emirati newspapers,” and added that “we have received no evidence that any Irish nationals were involved.”

An Emirati official said the passports had been used repeatedly for several months before the killing, in Europe and Asia. He added that the hit team had included a total of 17 people, six of whom have not yet been identified. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

In Israel, a British man named Melvyn Adam Mildner told Reuters that he had the same name as one of the suspects, but that he was a different person from the one whose photograph was provided by the Dubai police, and that he had his passport with him.

“I am obviously angry, upset, and scared — any number of things,” Mr. Mildner was quoted as saying. “And I’m looking into what I can do to try to sort things out and clear my name.”

Two other British men living in Israel, Steven Daniel Hodes -- who lives in the same town as Mr. Mildner -- and Paul John Kealey, also appear to have had their identities used by the suspects, according to reports on Israel’s Channel Two News, which interviewed the men.Because the victim, Mahmoud al Mabhouh, was a senior Hamas official, many have suspected that Israel’s intelligence service was behind his assassination. Hamas has accused Israel and vowed to take revenge.

The Dubai police chief, Dahi Khalfan al Tamim, did not accuse Israel, but said it was possible a foreign government had ordered its intelligence agency to carry out the killing."

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[IndianaGreen]

3. How is this different from the US?

Was Mossad wrong for going after the perpetrators of the Munich massacre?

Were they wrong for sparing Arafat who actually ordered the Munich massacre?

Was Mahmoud al-Mabhouh a Hamas version of Nelson Mandela?

My answers:

No
Yes
No

[Violet_Crumble]

4. If you go back and read the article, you'll find out why...

Also, even if it wasn't different from the US, how does that make it right?

Three stupid questions with three stupid answers! Well done! I wish one of these days you'd stop veering wildly from one extreme to the other and actually find a middle-ground that's reasonably balanced...

[Kurska]

5. Wouldn't you atleast admit this type of operation is better then a drone attack that kills

15 people and maybe gets the guy you want. One person is dead, that person was trying to secure illegal arms that would have made alot more people dead, the people fired on by them and probably even the people firing them.

I don't think this a death the universe should weep for or anything.

[azurnoir]

6. So would you react with the same enthusiasm

if Avigdor Lieberman got taken out the next time he leaves Israel,
or would you be crying terrorism and murder? I would bet the latter I would say both acts are terrorism and murder

[Kurska]

8. There is a huge difference between a elected official of a recognized government

and a officer in a internationally recognized terrorist group.

Now that said, I'm not going to pretend I would cry if the supreme leader of Iran dropped dead, or even if Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ended up face down in the desert somewhere. I'd certainly recognized those as killings as terrorism and murder, but I probably wouldn't get all bent out of shape over them.

If Lieberman died tomorrow I probably wouldn't expect you to feel at all bad about it, given you clearly don't like the man. I however don't like the man either, but the safety of the Israeli government is important to me, might not matter to you, I'm not privy to your internal feelings on such matters. Nor would I be a position to pass judgement on you if you do feel that way.

Now that said the Israeli government would certainly have a huge problem with their FM getting killed, just like Hamas is very mad that their guy got killed. The question is who is in a position to do anything about it and what should they do if anything.

[azurnoir]

11. Murder is murder and there is no difference

but I did wonder just how you would excuse Israel here

[Kurska]

13. War is murder, whoever did this and Hamas are probably at war.

Either declared or undeclared, a war of guns or a war of long knives. I'm just glad the causalities didn't extend beyond the directly involved parties and that some street vendor didn't get vaporized because he happened to be pushing a cart where near a car bomb was set off to take out a target. Thats the only morality I can take out a action and a profession that are by their very nature amoral.

[Arrowhead2k1]

14. The man may have been tortured.

"Video footage recorded at the five-star al-Bustan Rotana Hotel catches Mr Mabhouh, 49, arriving alone. The killers, disguised as sporting tourists, then move into place and trail him, even riding in the same lift as him to establish his room number. They return later and wait for their victim, who was suffocated, possibly following electrocution and torture."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-moment-mossad-agents-got-their-man-1901727.html

" medical team also stated that they found signs of strangulation. Blood samples were sent to a French laboratory that confirmed he died from electrocution. Dubai authorities have stated that they were ruling the death a homicide and were working with the International Criminal Police Organization to investigate the incident<16> from what was first identified as an electrocution to the head with an electrical appliance just after arriving in Dubai.<14> Despite the Dubai government's claim that he died from an electrocution.<17><18><7>
"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Mahmoud_al-Mabhouh

Doesn't sound too much like such a simple assassination. If this is true, Israel has another war-crime on its hands.

[Kurska]

15. May have been? Sounds like he was smothered with a pillow to the point of death and finished off

with electricity. Atleast that is how I read it. I really can't comment given no one is quite sure exactly what went down there and given even the media can't get it straight, I doubt the high powered detective work of the DU is going to sort this whole mess out.

Get back to me a couple of days when this clears up, I'll be more then happy to comment on it then when I have some good information.

[Violet_Crumble]

7. I've got zero time for comparative attempts at justification....

I want to make it very clear here that operating on fake passports of countries that are supposed to be friends of Israels is totally unacceptable. There's no justification for it at all, and no amount of comparative 'well, he deserved to die anyway' stuff makes it acceptable...

[Kurska]

9. Thats really a matter for the governments whose passports were used and whoever did it.

Surely if we are talking about the death of a man, any moral considerations on the abuse of a country's passport system is secondary to a much bigger question of the morality of targeted assassinations

[Violet_Crumble]

10. And why would you think any country would think it was okay to use a fake passport??

They wouldn't. Aren't you aware of the way New Zealand reacted when Mossad agents used fake New Zealand passports? It caused a diplomatic crisis and Israel had to apologise. I don't understand why you'd think for a second such behaviour is in any way justified or acceptable...

[Kurska]

12. I would never try to justify something that happens in the dark seas groups like Mossad dwell.

The passport thing is something Britain or whoever can take up with whoever did it, provided they ever figure out who did it. Like I said, forgery is certainly secondary in moral concerns, when the larger question of morality is murder. I'm not even going to try to justify or make moral what happened, nor am I prepared to condemn it.

A bad person died, or atleast one I view as bad, I'm just glad that in a political situations where killings like this are inevitable, that no one else was harmed besides the target.

[IndianaGreen]

16. Will you consider the possibility that in your zeal to oppose Israel and her occupation of Palestine

that perhaps you are falling into the same trap many did during the Soviet-Afghan War of ignoring the dismal human rights record and religious zealotry of those on "our" side?

Hamas is not a legitimate national liberation movement, anymore than the Taliban is in Af/Pak or the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. Hamas is a politically reactionary organization whose goals include the establishment of an absolutist theocratic state in which women and LGBT rights will go the way of other countries under the subjugation of sharia law. I won't even mention Hamas true intentions toward the State of Israel, but it ain't pretty!

[Violet_Crumble]

17. There's no zeal on my side of things...

Zealotry brings out stupidity and extremism, and I tend to view this conflict more from a level of abject disappointment...

Indy, whatever 'our' side is, I'm not on it. Nor do I ignore the human rights record of any groups, and I'm not sure why yr taking it upon yrself to lecture me about Hamas. It doesn't excuse yr flip flopping extremism in this forum and I don't get why you can't hold a more balanced view on the conflict than you do. I once had an online friend who veered from one extreme to the other on this issue, and the only thing that was consistant was the complete silliness of what they were saying, no matter which way they veered.

[Shaktimaan]

18. I don't know that I agree with you here.

Hamas is legitimate in that they were elected by their constituents in what was generally considered to be a fair election. Now their actions since then might call that legitimacy into question, but just because their goals and acts are despicable doesn't necessarily mean that they lack legit governmental status. (Whatever that even truly means in Gaza at this point.)