Scandal over Mossad use of UK passports curiously fails to materialise with Britons awe struck at Israeli daring

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
18 February '10

There is something very strange going on in Britain, and Israel’s detractors are hopping mad. Not, I hasten to add over the apparent use by the Mossad of six British passports in the assassination in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Criticism on that score is both reasonable and necessary. No country can allow its passports to be used by a foreign state, let alone in the course of a secret service hit job. Britain is no exception.

What vexes them is not so much the use of the passports per se as the fact that the kind of hysterical public furore that we have come to expect whenever a stick presents itself for the beating of Israel has singularly failed to materialise. On the contrary, large sections of the British press have responded with barely disguised awe at the audacious operation that the Israelis had the balls to carry out.

The usual suspects in the Guardian and the BBC look uncommonly isolated. Witness BBC MidEast Editor Jeremy Bowen on World Service Television this morning.

A dour and subdued looking Bowen was asked to reflect on the effect the affair might have on the UK’s already strained relationship with the Jewish state but was only able to warn of “very severe” consequences at some vague point in the future if the allegations were proved to be correct.

Seumas Milne, a regular columnist for the Guardian and one of the most fanatical opponents of Israel in the British press, was almost tearful at the sheer refusal of both the media and the government to jump to attention in the usual manner. Writing in today’s Guardian he said:

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