The shameful and shabby checkmating of Israel at the 2013 World Youth Chess Championships

...Did those contributing funds understand that the Israeli delegation would be treated in this shabby manner and that apparently the Israeli Chess Federation would roll over and allow the children to be compelled to play under the cover of anonymity?

David Singer..
J-Wire..
29 December '13..

The 2013 World Youth Chess Championships just held in Abu Dhabi have been marred by the scandalous behaviour of the 120 national Chess Federations that agreed to compete against Israeli players as an unidentified group under the banner of FIDE – the World Chess Federation.

WorldChess The United Arab Emirates (UAE) like most Arab countries, does not recognize Israel. In 2009, the country denied Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe’er a visa to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships, garnering widespread condemnation.

The invitation to compete was clear and unambiguous:

“The UAE Chess Federation and Al Ain Chess Club, under the auspices of FIDE, have the honor to invite all FIDE member federations to participate in the World Youth Chess Championships 2013 (Under 8, 10,12, 14, 16 and 18 years old – open and girls) scheduled 17 (arrival) – 29 (departure) December 2013 in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.”

Somewhere thereafter the World Chess Federation became a willing player in excluding Israeli children aged 8-18 playing under their national flag and national identity.

Palestine – a member state of UNESCO whilst still claiming to be stateless – has been calling for inane and senseless academic and economic boycotts to be instituted against Israel in support of Palestinian statehood.
Yet Palestine is a member of the World Chess Federation and was represented by two players whose country was designated as “Palestine”.

The ultimate insult to individual Israeli competitors was the failure to list their country as “Israel” in the players’ biographies. Instead they were identified as citizens of “FIDE” – a place with no Capitol, area or population.

Palestinian competitors fared slightly better – players at least having their country identified as “Palestine” in their biographies – although that country too is listed without a Capitol, area or population.

One would be hard put to find a more blatant case of discrimination, racism and apartheid – - played out against children to boot.

What mindless morons representing Chess Federations in competing countries like America, Australia, England, Norway, Sweden, Canada and France allowed this farce to be perpetrated?

What have their Governments had to say about this pernicious and underhanded behaviour?

Anti-Israel Animosity Claims Non-Israeli Victims in Dubai and Qatar

...But a petty refusal to post race results does absolutely nothing to pressure Israel or advance the Palestinian cause; it didn’t even prevent an Israeli swimmer from winning medals in both Doha and Dubai. All it did was make life miserable for a lot of non-Israeli swimmers, while making a mockery of the equal treatment rules that FINA, like other international sporting organizations, claims to uphold.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
23 October '13..

A minor sports tournament held in Dubai and Qatar over the last two weeks offers an unusually clear glimpse of the corrosive effects of the world’s casual tolerance of anti-Israel prejudice. Needless to say, both hosts of this leg of the FINA Swimming World Cup blatantly violated the rule requiring all participants to be treated equally regardless of nationality: The Israeli flag wasn’t flown (a fact Qatar’s foreign minister boasted of in a joint press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday); the word “Israel” never appeared; and to avoid having to utter it, announcers in Dubai even referred to Israeli competitors as the swimmers “from ISR.” But as swimmer Gal Nevo explained upon his return to Israel this week, the organizers’ petty spite also produced a lot of non-Israeli collateral victims:

“In order that our national flag and name wouldn’t appear, the results of every race we competed in were not publicized … Competitors swim with us in the heats in the morning, and expect to see the results on the scoreboard in order to know whether they’ve qualified for the final. But on the screen they’re already broadcasting the next race, without mentioning the names and times from the previous heat.”

In short, the entire tournament was disrupted, with competitors forced to run around madly trying to find out whether or not they had advanced to the final. Swimmers from other countries complained about the disorganization, and Nevo said they were stunned when their Israeli colleagues explained that this “disorganization” was actually carefully orchestrated from above.

What makes this so shocking is precisely the fact that the event is so trivial: This was prejudice devoid of any purpose. Anti-Israel prejudice is often excused on the grounds that it furthers a goal many people support. When, for instance, the EU imposes sanctions on activity in “Israeli-occupied territory” while actively funding activity in Turkish-occupied Cyprus and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, this double standard is excused because it serves the goal of pressuring Israel to withdraw from this territory.

Viewpoint: Afghan war logs, war crimes and hypocrisy

Carmel Gould
Just Journalism
30 July '10

It is difficult not to resort to worn phrases like ‘double standards’ when comparing the British media reaction to the contents of the Afghan war logs with its reaction to (any) Israeli military action. The basic equation is: Israeli operation which results in civilian deaths equals ‘war crimes’ and ‘disproportionate use of force’; Nato operation which results in civilian deaths equals nothing of the sort.

The over-arching theme in media coverage of the Gaza flotilla raid (May 2010), the Dubai assassination (January 2010) and the ongoing discussion of the Gaza conflict (2008/9) has been the question of legality, or, more specifically, the suspicion of criminality of the part of the State of Israel. Was Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara in international waters a war crime? Was its use of force against passengers disproportionate? Did the IDF commit war crimes in Gaza? Should Israeli officers be arrested for war crimes should they dare to visit the UK?

Followers of Middle East affairs will be desensitised to the media fixation with such questions. The crux of the matter is the underlying assumption that where alleged non-combatants have died at the hands of Israel, a crime must have been committed. So, with the release of 90,000 previously concealed records documenting the war in Afghanistan, including numerous incidents of the killing of Afghan civilians by Nato soldiers, we might have expected a similar narrative.

Not so. Of 52 articles published on the websites of BBC News, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times on 25 and 26 July (the first two days of reportage), not one cited the international legal concept of ‘proportionality’. Hence, no accusations of ‘disproportionate’ force against Nato troops.

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Inconsistent media attitudes to misuse of UK passports abroad

Just Journalism
30 June '10

Though many and crucial differences exist between the cases of the alleged Russian spy ring arrested in the US yesterday and the suspected assassination by Israeli agents of a Hamas leader in Dubai in January this year, the common misuse of British and Irish passports is worth noting. In the latter case, expressions of political and media outrage were abundant; in the former, not so much on either front.

An editorial published by The Guardian following the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from the UK following the Dubai affair: ‘Israel and Britain: The rule of law,’ (24 March 2010) carried the sub-head, ‘The forging of British passports is the work of a country which believes it can act with impunity when planning the murder of its enemies’. The piece described the faking of UK passports as ‘the mark[s] of an arrogant nation that has overreached itself.’ In today’s editorial, ‘Russian espionage: Spies like us,’ in the same newspaper, the alleged use of a forged UK passport failed to even elicit a mention.

The BBC, too, seems to view the fraudulent use of British passports by foreign governments in the service of illegal activities, as requiring nuance. In its coverage so far the profile given to the UK passport forgery is negligible. Of the eight articles (1) published on its news website on the subject in the last 24 hours, only three (2) even mention the issue. Paul Reynolds did draw a link between the two cases at the tail end of his piece, ‘Russian 'spies' were no James Bonds,’ identifying this common alleged use of British passports by Israel and Russia as ‘one diplomatic footnote which might be followed up by the British and Irish governments.’

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Prepare for moral confusion

George Jonas
National Post
16 June '10

On Jan. 19 this year a man named Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, described as a terrorist by Israel, was throttled in a Dubai hotel room. His killers, say Dubai officials, were Israeli agents. Dubai alleges that a travelling circus of Mossad assassins, 26 or more, participated in the hit, utilizing British, French, Irish, German and Australian passports.

Whether or not it takes a village to raise a child, it certainly seems to take one to put down a terrorist. A hit team of 26 sounds like overkill, though we should assume most were only roadies, pitching tents and picking up after the elephant. Given all the paperwork involved, 26 may not even have been the full complement.

On June 4, an Israeli citizen travelling under the name of Uri Brodsky was arrested by Polish border guards on arrival at Warsaw airport. The Poles were acting on German information that Brodsky had assisted the hit team in Dubai by helping to obtain a German passport for one of their members. Now the Germans want Poland to extradite the Israeli, so they can put him on trial for whatever role he played, if any, in obtaining a passport in Cologne for another person under the name of Michael Bodenheimer to travel to Dubai for the alleged purpose of participating in the hit.

The Israelis oppose the request for all the obvious reasons, but especially because they fear that Brodsky may end up being tried in Dubai. Indeed, news agency reports this week indicate that Dubai, after initially saying it had no interest in seeking Brodsky's extradition, is now changing its tune. The Gulf News quotes Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamim saying that a request for extradition may follow evidence showing a "direct link to the assassination on our soil."

There was a time when Dubai's request wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell, but hell offers air conditioning these days and modern snowballs are heat-resistant. In our topsy-turvy times of global warming and infernal cooling, an allegation of counterterrorism can get a person extradited faster than an allegation of terrorism. It's still unlikely that Germany would send an Israeli to an Arab country to be tried, but it's no longer unthinkable.

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Terrorist With A Five-Star Tab

Who was paying for the luxury lodgings of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh?


Claudia Rosett
Forbes.com
22 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Were it not for the recent, high-profile murder of a Hamas terrorist leader on the premises, the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel would be notable mainly for its glitz and comfort. As it is, in the many stories written about the death of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, found suffocated to death in his Al Bustan guest room in January, the hotel's five-star rating has been mentioned mostly in passing.

When I dropped by the Al Bustan Rotana during a recent trip to Dubai, it struck me that the luxuriousness of the hotel has not been fully conveyed. That matters. The opulence with which al-Mabhouh surrounded himself on his fatal trip underscores some big unanswered questions, not about the alleged killers (whose trail has received plenty of official attention) but about al-Mabhouh (whose doings in Dubai have yet to be explained).

Al-Mabhouh was, after all, a senior member of Hamas--a Palestinian organization that expects of its underlings an austere dedication to Islamic law and tutors them to sacrifice everything for such Hamas charter causes as the destruction of Israel. Al-Mabhouh, like a number of other Hamas leaders, was based in Damascus. But he was a big cog in a Hamas system that in 2007 seized complete control of Gaza and with the backing of Iran has made it a priority to saturate Gaza with weapons, while the population lives in poverty--dependent on massive handouts from places such as the U.S. and European Union, much of that funneled via outfits such as the United Nations.

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A portrait of the extremist mainstream in Great Britain, a man with a problem with Jewish names

Robin Shepherd
Robinshepherdonline.com
28 March '10

Back in 2003, Richard Ingrams, one of Britain’s best known columnists and a co-founder of the satirical weekly Private Eye wrote in the Observer (sister newspaper on Sunday to the Guardian) the following gem about his attitude to Israel and the Jews:

“I have developed a habit,” he said, “when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”

As I have said on many occasions (see previous entry for example), there is now no price to be paid in mainstream Britain for such attitudes. They are taken as normal. Now consider his latest piece of writing, this time in the Independent, as an example of what happens when such “normal” attitudes are allowed to fester.

Ingrams writes his column in the form of a diary which then goes on to address other subjects. Yesterday, he opened his piece by reflecting on Britain’s decision last week to expel an Israeli diplomat over the Dubai assassination of a Hamas terrorist. Here is what he said, with my italics to highlight the tone he adopts:

“The expulsion of a Mossad man from London following the affair over the forged passports used by a gang of Israeli assassins in Dubai is welcome, if only to remind us that regardless of this single expulsion Mossad operates openly out of London with the full approval of the British Government.

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Analysis: The Legacy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Jonathan Spyer
GLORIA Center
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Wherever departed Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is now, he is presumably (I don't share this presumption. Y.) enjoying the considerable trouble the nature of his exit is causing his Israeli enemies.

The British decision to expel an unnamed Israeli diplomat following the conclusion of an investigation into the alleged use by Israel of cloned British passports in an assassination operation probably does not signal the onset of a general crisis in relations between London and Jerusalem. Still, it is not an everyday act, and the language used by the foreign secretary in announcing the expulsion was notably harsh.

This affair has so far traveled along similar lines to the last major set-to between the UK and Israel over the issue of Israeli intelligence activities overseas. In 1986, a number of forged British passports were discovered in an Israeli diplomatic pouch in West Germany. This incident was followed a year later by the apprehending of a Palestinian employed as a double agent by Israeli intelligence, together with a cache of weapons, in a northern English town. The result was the expulsion from Britain of Arie Regev, an official at the Israeli Embassy. Regev was widely regarded as the chief of the Mossad station in the UK.

Then, as now, the anger of senior British officials was real, not feigned. And the public revelations of the events meant that a response of a public nature was also inevitable. But the substantive response was a managed one. Cooperation between Israeli and British intelligence services suffered for a while. But channels of communication stayed open via Washington. Information of really crucial importance continued to be shared.

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Guardian calls Israel “an arrogant nation”, and also gives op-ed to Foreign Office grandee who complained about Jews on the Iraq inquiry

Robin Shepherd
Robinshepherdonline.com
24 March '10

Charles de Gaulle once famously referred to the Jews as an “arrogant and domineering people”. The Guardian newspaper in its editorial today refers to Israel as “an arrogant nation that has overreached itself”. Not the government of Israel — castigated by the Guardian for using British passports in a “Mossad murder squad” in Dubai, as well as over the spat with Washington — but the nation of Israel itself.

I suppose they would argue that that there is still enough daylight, however thin a sliver of it, between de Gaulle’s open disdain for Jews and their equally open disdain for the Jewish state.

But let’s leave whatever room for discussion may still be available on that particular question to one side for a moment, and move on to an op-ed piece published alongside the editorial by a senior Foreign Office mandarin who last year made one of the meanest anti-Semitic remarks to have been made in mainstream Britain for many years.

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David Miliband cries crocodile tears for 'British Passport holders'. He should invite them to tea instead

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
23 March '10

Why is David Miliband getting all huffy over the use of British passports in an alleged Mossad assassination of a Hamas leader? Is it really because he is so concerned that “British passport holders had been put at risk as a result of the operation”? Sorry, David, but that doesn’t wash.

Six of the Britons whose passports were used as cover are, for all intents and purposes, Israelis. Like many people who immigrate to Israel they have retained their old passport because there is no penalty for doing so, but most are dual citizens who have been living in Israel for many years.

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'Snarky' Dubai Top Cop Losing Luster With Media

Honest Reporting/Backspin
09 March '10

CNN's Paula Hancocks says Dubai's deliberately setting up a "drip feed" of info on the assassination to keep the MSM spotlight on Israel:

The drip feed of information from Dubai’s police chief has kept the assassination of a Hamas leader in his Dubai hotel room on the front pages for about a month and a half.

Every day, without fail, the newspapers in the United Arab Emirates reserve part of the front page for an update, an opinion – even the tiniest hint of fresh information.

This is likely the intention of Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan. By releasing a tidbit here and there, the story stays alive and the international spotlight stays on Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, which Khalfan says he is 100 percent sure is behind the hit.

In the long run, CNN adds, this "drip feed" only benefits the Mossad mystique.

So why is Dubai's top cop doing this? A few days ago, I argued that the Gulf state's ruling elites are more interested in drawing the world's attention away from its debt crisis. And videos linked to Mossad conspiracies real or imagined are the mother of all distractions.

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Those bleeding-heart journalists

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem
03 March '10

In recent weeks, our media has indulged its penchant for masochism, depicting every incident in the most self-deprecating manner. This is exemplified in a column by Bradley Burston on the current homepage of the English edition of Haaretz. Titled “I envy the people who hate Israel,” he relates to real and imaginary blunders committed by our political leaders, and concludes with the breathtaking comment that “my father did not flee the Soviet Union just so that his son could one day have the chance to live in a place just like it.”

I would submit that the publication of such wacky remarks in a purportedly serious Israeli paper highlights the need for soul searching by our bleeding-heart editors.

Burston’s principal example of malfeasance was “our apparent violation of the basic conventions of all civilized states in the Dubai murder.” It is unlikely that the true facts concerning the assassination of the vicious Hamas killer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh will ever be revealed. The information disclosed by the Dubai police smacks of disinformation. It sounds somewhat bizarre for the Mossad to risk 27 agents and then send some of them on to Iran.

Initially, Israeli media reports of the assassination were exuberant. However, when it transpired that foreign passports belonging to Israeli dual nationals had been used, the euphoria evaporated and commentators who had portrayed Mossad chief Meir Dagan as “superman” began calling for his head.

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Dubai's Mossad Videos: The Mother of All Distractions

Honest Reporting/Backspin
03 March '10

Is Dubai’s police chief playing the media like a fiddle? I don’t rule it out after reading this NY Times snippet:

For the moment, Dubai’s aggressive response has interrupted the steady stream of negative news coverage about the city’s continuing struggles with debt, and — perhaps not coincidentally — shifted attention to its crime-fighting prowess. That may partly reflect the priorities of Mr. Tamim, who has strong ties to the city’s ruler and enjoys greater latitude than almost any other public official here.

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An Intelligence Agency Misused Passports: OMG!

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
02 March '10

The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack of blatant hypocrisy. Whoever did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh—whether it was the Israeli Mossad or someone else—clearly did have their agents use stolen or forged passports. Big deal.

Every good intelligence agency uses stolen and forged passports. The British have been especially adept at this means of spycraft. No country that uses fake passports in their intelligence operations has the moral authority to complain about the alleged misuse of passports in this case. The only ones that have a legitimate grievance are those individuals whose passports may have been misused without their knowledge.

I guess it’s the job of foreign ministries to complain publicly when other nations do what they themselves do secretly. Hypocrisy is, after all, the homage that vice pays to virtue. I’m reminded of the famous scene in Casablanca, when officer Renault declares, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A croupier then approaches Renault, and hands him a roll of currency: “Your winnings, sir.”

The hypocrisy in this case seems even more blatant than usual. Is it because Israel is the alleged offender, and the world has gotten accustomed to singling out Israel for double standard condemnation?

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Der Spiegel: “An Israeli Affront Against Germany”

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
02 March '10

The headline is breathless, and the article is stupid. The German paper claims that both the failure of the Shalit talks and the Dubai assassination were grave Israeli insults to Germany.

This marks the second time that the Germans have been snubbed. [The first time, Der Spiegel says, was when the Mossad did not tell the German mediator in the Shalit talks that the Dubai assassination was about to take place. No, that doesn't make sense to me either -- NP] In late December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected at the last moment a detailed agreement that his negotiator Hagai Hadas had hammered out with Hamas via the German intelligence agency. …

Zahar said it had been difficult to convince Khalid Mashaal, the exiled political leader of Hamas in Damascus, Syria, to approve the deal. Netanyahu’s subsequent rejection seriously damaged his reputation within Hamas, says Zahar. “I have suffered a lot internally,” he adds. “I am not ready to negotiate anymore.”

So Israel rejected a prisoner swap and hung Mahmoud Zahar out to dry? This is pure Hamas spin — and therefore very attractive to Western journalists. The reality of the negotiations is that Israel has been waiting on a Hamas answer on the prisoner swap since December, an answer that has not been forthcoming because of a rift between Hamas’s Gaza and Damascus leadership. The Gazans want to do the swap; the Syrian leadership does not:

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The Real Security Lapse in Dubai

Letting terrorists conduct business.


Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
01 March '10

The Times of London reports that police in Dubai are in a tizzy, six weeks after the killing of Hamas's Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel in downtown Dubai. A major security breach, an extrajudicial murder--it's being called all sorts of unsavory things. And police say they're certain that Mabhouh was killed by the Israeli Mossad, but don't provide hard evidence. Who exactly killed Mabhouh (aside from how they killed him, which the videos do a pretty good job showing) might not ever be known.

Dubai police are quick to blame everyone but themselves for security lapses.

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Spinning the death of a terrorist

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
28 February '10

The media continue to give prominent coverage to the investigation of the death of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found some six weeks ago in a Dubai luxury hotel. Dubai's police authorities have boasted that it took them just 24 hours to come close to solving the case, and their ostensible professionalism and efficiency have been widely praised after the release of extensive CCTV footage that supposedly shows various teams involved in al-Mabhouh's assassination.

However, it seems that few in the media have been willing to notice what was rightly highlighted in a report by Global Post correspondent Tom Hundley, who pointed out that Dubai "has become a kind of Arabian Big Easy where a senior operative in a powerful political organization can be assassinated in a five-star hotel - and the crime will be hushed up for more than a week while the powers-that-be decide how the story will be spun."

Indeed, it is definitely noteworthy that almost ten days elapsed before Mabhouh's assassination was announced by the UAE government's official press agency, which reported on the day of his funeral that he had been killed by an "experienced criminal gang."

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Related: Video Killer Thriller In Dubai
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Hitting the wrong target

Sarah Honig
Sidney Morning Herald
28 February '10

The false-passport row denies Israel's right to act against those trying to destroy it.

FOR average Israelis, members of the silent majority (as distinct from the country's chattering cliquey elite), the false-passports brouhaha abroad is just another sideshow in the international community's theatre of the absurd. In this global burlesque, everything can be turned upside down. The lie is granted equal standing with truth, and flagrant canards frequently gain the ascendancy and are paraded as fact. Values are devalued. Good and evil are interchangeable. Anything goes.

In this environment of intellectual anarchy, Israel's existential struggle stands no chance of being granted anything vaguely resembling a fair hearing.

The case of terror kingpin Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is instructive. After his body was discovered in a Dubai hotel, his own son, Abdel-Rauf, bragged on TV that the late lamented ''fought the Jews, hit the Jews, kidnapped and killed Israelis. He outfitted and dispatched suicide-bombers.'' That evidently made him an object for admiration. Killing Jews is a noble objective, one to take pride in, to revere.

Mabhouh co-founded the Hamas military wing and Hamas declared war on Israel. He was a self-confessed murderer. Last year he boasted on al-Jazeera about his personal culpability in the separate 1989 kidnap-murders of Israeli soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon. He crowed about smuggling into Gaza thousands of Iranian-made missiles for the sole purpose of making the lives of Israeli civilians hellish in the country's heartland, including Tel Aviv.

So when Israelis point to Mabhouh's gory record, it isn't just their biased say-so. It's hardly an unsubstantiated assertion, an excuse to justify assassination. Accustomed and resigned as Israelis are to the world's double standards, they nevertheless watch with renewed amazement as Mabhouh's suspected killers are placed on Interpol's wanted list, where Mabhouh himself never appeared - soaked with blood as his hands were. Has anyone, incidentally, bothered inquiring which passport Mabhouh was travelling under and why he was allowed to enter Dubai on a gun-running mission?

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When rhetoric rules the roost

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
26 February '10

There is something pathetic about what passes as European foreign policy these days. Quite simply, more often than not, the concerted positions of the EU member nations have nothing to do with any of their national interests.

Take the EU's initial response to the killing of Hamas terror-master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 19. A senior terrorist engaging in the illegal purchase of illicit arms from Iran for Hamas-controlled Gaza is killed in his hotel room. The same Dubai authorities who had no problem with hosting a wanted international terrorist worked themselves into a frenzy condemning his killing. And of course, despite the fact that any number of governments, (Egypt and Jordan come to mind), and rival terrorist organizations, (Fatah, anyone?) had ample reason to wish to see Mabhouh dead, Dubai's police chief Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim blamed Israel.

Not only did he blame Israel, to substantiate his claims, Tamim released what he said was video footage of alleged Mossad operatives who entered Dubai with European and Australian passports.

Relying only on Tamim's allegations, EU leaders went into high dudgeon. Ignoring the nature of the operation, the basic lack of credibility of the source of information, and the interests of Europe in defeating jihadist terrorism in the Middle East and worldwide, the chanceries of Europe squawked indignantly and threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation with Israel.

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Jason Bourne, Call Your Office

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Contentions/Commentary
25 February '10

Another day, and another Western government chastises Israel for the use of non-Israeli passports in the assassination of Hamas terrorist mastermind Mahmoud al-Mabhou. This time it’s Australia’s turn. Australia’s PM, Kevin Rudd, was quoted as saying that

Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response.

Clearly, one needs to believe Dubai’s police on the revelations about the forged passports. There is no smoking gun yet about Israel’s responsibility. And hopefully, Israel will keep quiet about this. As Yossi Melman indicates in today’s Haaretz, the investigation is rising to comical levels, even as the evidence against Israel is thin.

Look, anyone familiar with James Bond, Jason Bourne, and the Mission Impossible franchise knows that secret agents travel on forged passports. And even assuming Israel is responsible, what did anyone expect — a bunch of Israelis to show up at Dubai airport waving their Israeli passports? Just imagine the conversation.

UAE immigration officer: Nationality?

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